Weekly Wilson

Beth Emhoff (Gwyneth Paltrow) is Patient Zero in “Contagion,” the new movie about a viral epidemic/pandemic, that is directed by Steven Soderbergh. Why Beth has to have a backstory of infidelity is something I cannot explain and, given her brief time on film, I don’t feel the need to shout “Spoiler Alert!.” The rest of the film seems to pay no attention to that plot point (and multiple others), either. Why we had to be told that Gwyneth would die in the trailer for the film is another good question. (Never a good idea to give away all the good stuff in the trailer.)

It doesn’t matter, in the overall scheme of things, because Soderbergh and writer Scott Z Burns still do a good job of ratcheting up the tension of this all-star cast in a movie with the tag-line, “Don’t talk to anyone. Don’t touch anyone.”  (This is my normal state, so that part did not panic me.) The scenes of a panicked public gone mad and the adolescent romance between Mitch’s (Damon’s) daughter and her boyfriend reassure us that humanitarianism is not dead and things will return to normal…eventually.

Cast

The cast includes such luminaries as Kate Winslet as Dr. Erin Mears, who helps fight the outbreak of the mysterious virus; Matt Damon as Beth’s husband Mitch; Laurence Fishbourne as Dr. Ellis Cheever, head CDC operative; Marion Cotillard as Dr. Leonara Orantes, a French physician assisting with the fight; Elliott Gould as Dr. Ian Sussmann, who is an eccentric lone wolf researcher; Jude Law as Alan Krumwiede, an aggressive blogger; and Bryan Cranston (“Breaking Bad”) as Lyle Haggerty, representing the government. [I couldn't help myself: I half-expected Cranston's character to offer the suffering natives some crystal meth when things got really bleak. Which they did almost immediately.]

Origins of the Epidemic

Beth Emhoff travels to Hong Kong and, because “Somewhere in the world, the wrong pig met up with the wrong bat,” her meal in a casino has unintended consequences not only for her, but for the entire world.  Lines like, “It’s hard to know what it is without knowing where it came from” and “It kills every cell we put it in” are not encouraging. Rhesus monkeys must endure additional indignities in order to save mankind (“First we shoot them into space and them we shoot them full of a virus.”) Ultimately, as the plot has it, “We have a virus with no antidote.” This is not good and every cough, whether on celluloid or in the crowded theater, resonates with the audience. It especially resonated for me when my seat mate’s wife said he had been feeling sick all week and the tattooed seatmate began wiping his dripping nose on his hand. (eeeuuuwww).

Historical Basis for Epidemic Plot : Spanish Flu, Swine Flu, Polio, Bird Flu

I used to listen to my mother talk about the Spanish flu epidemic of 1918, which killed 1% of the world’s population. Mom was born in 1907, so she was 11 years old when some class members in her small school in Hospers, Iowa, failed to show up for class.  When she went to her friends’ houses to find out where they were that day, she learned that they would never again be coming to school. Or anywhere else. The youngsters had died of the deadly Spanish flu. Paranoia (and school closings) mounted as the death toll rose.

I also remember the closing of public swimming pools in the days before Jonas Salk discovered the polio vaccine in 1955, a time when I was approximately the same age as my mother during the Spanish flu scare. My best friend’s mother died of polio after lingering in an iron lung. Neighbors would not even make contact with the victim’s family at the door, but simply left the funeral food on the front step and ran. Even as recently as “W’s” administration in 2009, there were swine flu concerns, and the H5N1 bird flu still remains dangerous and capable of causing a pandemic, according to scientists.

 Societal Breakdown: Crowd Psychology

The most interesting part of the film, for me, was how society breaks down when faced with a crisis of this proportion. It becomes every man (or woman) for him or her self. Even the do-gooders (nuns, nurses, volunteers) are overrun and pushed aside as food runs short and the supply of what may (or may not) be a palliative measure—a homeopathic treatment known as Forsythia—runs short. It took me right back to my Sociology classes and the studies on crowd psychology.

 Political Echoes of Strident Tea Party-like Activists

In today’s climate, I couldn’t help but think of the strident followers of some political elements, those who think that “he who yells the loudest wins the argument” and are overly proud of their membership in the NRA. I could really imagine those individuals leading the charge to break in to pharmacies to take the drug everyone thinks will make their family safe, or launching aggressive measures to find out where the doctors (who get the drug first) might live, in order to break in and steal same. All this plays out in the film.

Humanitarianism Prevails

One nice humanitarian touch was the “regular guy” played by Oscar-nominee John Hawkes (Uncle Teardrop in “Winter’s Bone,” whose birth name in Alexandria, Minnesota was John Perkins). Hawkes’ character has an ADD son and asks the head doctor (Laurence Fishbourne as Dr. Ellis Cheever) for advice, early on. Cheever says it is out of his area of expertise, but he knows it’s treatable and he can recommend someone in the field. Later, Cheever will personally see that the boy is inoculated. Humanitarianism lives on.

Nevertheless, we are told by Bryan Cranston’s character that Dr. Cheever is going be brought up on charges because he let his new bride in on a secret: the severity of the epidemic. He urged her to evacuate Chicago (which is embargoed) despite being  sworn to secrecy. He wanted her to  make a run for Atlanta, where the CDC (Center for Disease Control) is located. The scripted line is, “They’re looking for a scapegoat.  You just made it easy.”

It is little old meth-maker Bryan Cranston, the government stooge, who informs Cheever that his neck is still on the chopping block, late in the film. Again, this plot strand was about as needless and  disconnected to the plot’s thrust as the personal information about Gwyneth which was  shared early in the film. I write fiction. I know how it goes. You insert an idea, intending to integrate that plot thread later on, but other things intrude, get in the way, or seem more important and the planted seed never grows or fluorishes. That was my biggest complaint about the film: dropped plot conceits that are never fully fleshed out or finished off.

Verdict

The film is otherwise quite riveting, intense and educational. It is hard to care too deeply about characters who drift through  as quickly as pedestrians caught in a giant revolving door, but the main idea (i.e., man’s vulnerability to forces outside his control) sticks with you, propels the film and holds your interest for the duration. After all, it’s almost cold and flu season. In fact, when I sat down next to that tattooed man with 3 others and his wife leaned around and said, “Don’t get too close to him. He’s been sick” it put me on high alert.  I still don’t know if this was her idea of a joke (she seemed serious), but watching him subsequently blow his nose on his hand (!) didn’t do much for my popcorn-eating and I refused to move my paper cup full of Coca Cola to the left cup holder nearest this stranger. From that point on, every cough, every sniffle was part of my experience of the film.

A third plot point that disrupted the smooth flow of the movie was Jude Law’s character of Alan Krumwiede. First of all, with a surname like “Krumwiede,” chances are that Jude isn’t going to be “the good guy,” although, at first, we think he is. He is an aggressive blogger who breaks the story and helps it go wide before the government would like word to get out. I found Jude Law somewhat extraneous in “Road to Perdition” and he is again extraneous here, except to point out that, in times of peril, there are people who profit mightily from the misfortune of others and it has ever been thus.

 n this day and age of Wiki Leaks and Julian Assange, Jude is Julian. Unfortunately, that is another sub-plot that does not seem all that well-integrated into the main storyline. It almost seems that the script wants Jude to function as the “surprise twist” in a plot that is otherwise pretty straightforward in showing how doctors are not “Jesus in a lab coat” and in explaining in riveting detail how a virus like MEV1, (the fictional virus of the film), could well cause widespread death and disruption in a very short time, spreading to as many as one in 12 with 25 to 30% attrition by Day 26.

Earlier Film Precedents

The film is light years better than Dustin Hoffman stumbling around as Colonel Sam Daniels in 1995′s “Outbreak” (he looked ridiculous in that suit) and is better compared to 1971′s “The Andromeda Strain,” which had Michael Crichton as one of the screenwriters. Soderbergh vaulted to stardom at age 26 with “Sex, Lies and Videotape” (featuring a then very thin James Spader) and regained his early form with 1998′s “Out of Sight.” In 2000, he earned a Best Director Oscar for “Traffic” and also directed Julia Roberts to her Oscar in “Erin Brockovich.”

 Soderbergh Speaks

It’s been 10 years since “Ocean’s Eleven” and Soderbergh, who suggested to Colin Covert of the Minneapolis Star Tribune that after his next 3 films he is going to take some major time off. However, he wanted to do “Contagion” because, he said, “It felt ‘zeitgeisty’ to me in the same way that ‘Traffic’ did when we were making it…that there was something in the air. In this case, literally.” The political tone of angry mobs in this film is not coincidental. As Covert said in his review of the film, “‘Contagion’ plays like a parable of a stricken body politic.  The film describes an America where confusion and fear explode when things get crazy, where ordinary people struggle to survive in a society coming apart.”

So, see it for its medical information and pay attention the backstory and try not to criticize overmuch the lost thread plots that seemed like good ideas when they were first thrown into the mix.

 

Ryan Gosling, who turned 30 on November 12, 2011, is in George Clooney’s new film “The Ides of March,” which is to open the 68th Venice Film Festival on August 31, 2011. Clooney both acts and directs in the film, portraying the fictional Governor Morris, based on Dr. Howard Dean, in a run for the Democratic presidential nomination.

Gosling will play Governor Morris’ spokesperson, with Paul Giametti as a rival campaign manager. I was there at “the scream heard ‘round the world” (ValAir Ballroom, Des Moines, Iowa, 2004) and I  look forward to seeing how the movie makes use of that climactic moment in the Dean run for the roses.

Gosling also just acted in his first romantic comedy (“Crazy, Stupid Love”) with Steve Carell and Emma Stone. Next up will be his turn as an action hero in “Drive.” It seems that the handsome, idiosyncratic actor can play anything and is everywhere, these days, just as it seemed as though Shia LaBoeuf was everywhere with the “Wall Street” reprise, “Transformers” and his role as Indiana Jones, Jr. just a year or so ago.

With Gosling, however, you get the sense that— like Marlon Brando whose accent he says he copied after  living in Florida  with Canadian roots (born in London and grew up in Cornwall, a mill town on the border of Quebec and the United States). —it’s more about the craft of acting.

Beginnings

Gosling has been acting since the age of 12, after winning a spot in the Disney troop alongside such future stars as Justin Timberlake, Christina Aguilera and Brittney Spears. He beat out 17,000 other child actors and, with his mother (Dad, a paper mill worker, had split), he and Mom moved to the Yogi Bear trailer park in Kissimmee. Ryan’s acting paid the bills and was the duo’s sole income.

Of his Disney years, Gosling has said, “I loved the idea that Walt Disney had this dream of a place and then made it a reality.” Later, in discussing the David Lynch film “Blue Velvet” Gosling says, “It’s so clearly one person’s singular dream.  The fact that somebody believed in their idea so much to make it a reality…I want to be that kind of person.”

Gosling has become that kind of actor, with indie cred but also the bankability of roles such as his 2004 starring role in “The Notebook” opposite Rachel McAdams. After “The Notebook” hit, he took a job in a sandwich shop near where he lived.  Why?  “I’d never had a real job.” Noting that “The problem with Hollywood is that nobody works” he concludes that it would be “a much happier place” if actual work were performed there.

Oscar Nod

Gosling has done some serious work in films that were honored by the nomination committee of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences, most notably his leading actor nomination for the role of drug-addicted teacher Dan Dunne in “Half Nelson.” Most experts predicted he would be nominated last year for his leading role opposite Michelle Williams in “Blue Valentine,” but only his co-star got the nod. Of that film, Gosling says it’s the best film he’ll ever make and comments on Director Derek Clanfrance’s dedication in having the cast actually live together in a house, as a family, prior to shooting the film.  Clanfrance had spent 12 years on the film, declaring it “the film that I was born to make” and he allowed his actors to improvise much of their dialogue. “They had so much to do, so much to say in it,” says Clanfrance.

“Blue Valentine”

As for Gosling, he appreciated the opportunity to become part of the dream of a happy couple whose marriage falls apart, saying, “I thought it was really smart of him (Clanfrance) to do that, because even though you don’t see it in the film—they’re not scenes in the movie—I think you can feel it.” He also commented on the onscreen chemistry, saying, “It’s a love story, you know, and physical intimacy is a part of that and we were trying to capture that in a way that was not gratuitous or trying too hard to be sexy or something.” Gosling felt another dream world had been created and said, “Michelle and I found it hard to take off our wedding bands when it was over.  We’d built this castle and then had to tear it down.” He does note, “What I like about the film is that it leaves it open.”

By that, Gosling means the end of the film, where the young couple seems as though they could, conceivably, reconcile. Or not.  In that way, “Blue Valentine’s” ending was similar to Nicole Kidman’s film “Rabbit Hole.” Kidman was Oscar-nominated as Best Actress last year in that film, which also leaves the viewer to decide if the couple, (whose son has been killed in an automobile accident), is going to survive the tragedy or not.

Hot, Hotter, Hottest

Gosling’s onscreen chemistry with his leading ladies has been remarked upon repeatedly. In “The Notebook,” his scenes with Rachel McAdams were so incendiary that they almost earned the film an ‘R” rating. After making “Murder by Numbers” with Sandra Bullock, the two were a couple from 2001 – 2002, despite the fact that Gosling was 22 at the time and Bullock 37, a 16-year age difference. (The 47-year-old Bullock is rumored to be dating another younger Ryan, the twelve years younger Ryan Reynolds, age 34, her co-star  in “The Proposal,” who is just out of a brief marriage to Scarlett Johansson.)

Doing It His Way

In a career that, despite his relative youth, has been ongoing for 18 years, Gosling is making his mark, and he’s doing it his way, selecting films that are idiosyncratic, like “The Believers” (2001) or “Lars and the Real Girl” (2007) and then switching over to his most recent box office offerings.

As he said, “There’s this idea in Hollywood, and I’ve seen it work for people, where the unspoken rule is, ‘Do 2 for them and 1 for yourself.’ And that’s kind of considered a fact.  I’ve never really found that to be true for me.  I’ve gotten more opportunities out of working on things I believed in then I ever did on things that weren’t special to me.”

For this actor, who points to Gary Oldman as his favorite actor, that method works for him. And it works out quite well for his audiences, as well. It is rumored that he will reprise Michael York’s role as “The Sandman” who catches “Runners” in the film reboot of “Logan’s Run,” the ’70s movie made from the classic William F. Nolan book.

Whatever Gosling does, it will be interesting.

“The Tree of Life” is Director/Writer Terrence Malick’s fifth film and recently won the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival. It is playing in large cities. Fox Searchlight, as “Hollywood Reporter” Todd McCarthy has noted, “will have its work cut out for it in luring a wider public.” McCarthy called “The Tree of Life” “A unique film that will split opinions every which way, which Fox Searchlight can only hope will oblige people to see it for themselves.” Or not, more than likely, since I had to drive 7 hours to find it playing anywhere.

Terrence Malick was born in Ottawa, Illinois, and the town depicted in the film seems like a typical Midwestern town. Malick was born in 1943, was a philosophy major at Harvard and taught philosophy at MIT. He was Phi Beta Kappa and taught in France from 1979 to 1994, which may help explain whey he only has a few films to his credit, those being “Badlands” (1973) which gave us a young Martin Sheen and Sissy Spacek in a loose retelling of the Charles Starkweather Midwestern murder spree; “Days of Heaven,” (1978) which gave us Richard Gere, Brooke Adams and Sam Shepard in a tale of western intrigue and violence; “The Thin Red Line” (1998), which gave us James Cavaziel, Sean Penn and Nick Nolte in a retelling of James Jones’ autobiographical novel about the World War II battle of Guadalcanal; and, last (and certainly least), “The New World” (2005) with Colin Farrell as Captain James Smith in a retelling of the Pocahontas (Q’Orianka Kilcher) story.

I didn’t study at Harvard and I’m guessing that the majority of the audiences weren’t philosophy majors there, either, so I happily admit to being in over my head, even though I have the equivalent of a doctorate in Literature. The average audience probably didn’t spend much time reading Kirkegaard, Wittgenstein and Heidegger, as Malick did when a Rhodes scholar.

Most of us will be going to the movie to see if Malick has, once again, fashioned a truly compelling story with outstanding visual effects, as he did in three of his films. The problem is, Malick doesn’t always reach his goal of “compelling story” although they are always cinematically impeccable. This film reminded me of “Synecdoche, New York,” which Roger Ebert thinks is the best film of the past 10 years, but which I found an admirable whiff, (much like when your Little League son swings as hard as he can to hit a homer and totally misses the ball.) Go figure. Different strokes for different folks.

This time out with Malick, we are left to grapple with the story and figure it out ourselves (and me without my Kirkegaard reference work!), as Malick wrestles with Life, Death, Birth and Infinity [as the beginning of the old “Ben Casey” TV series used to put it.] Normally, one wouldn’t give the plot away, but when the plot is so sparse, it’s really not giving much away. It’s kind of a “do-it-yourself” plot.  To quote Roger Ebert, “What’s uncanny is that Malick creates the O’Brien parents and their three boys without an obvious plot.” (June 2 review by Roger Ebert).

“Uncanny” is not the word the average movie-goer will use after plunking down their $10 (and up) to see “The Tree of Life,” if, in fact, they do attend.  One anonymous IMDB reviewer wrote, rather harshly, “I can’t believe I wasted 2 and ½ hours (183 minutes) on this movie.”

It’s a gorgeous film, if you don’t mind a movie with an extremely rudimentary plot that is mostly “fill in the blanks” and which is described as  “metaphysical, impressionistic and evanescent.” The dialogue is sparse. The acting, especially from the parents (Mr. and Mrs. O’Brien) played by Brad Pitt and Jessica Chastain, is fine, although having the mother float in the air at one point blurs the distinction between “real” and “fantasy” as does the fairy tale glass coffin-for-Mom scene in the woods, which could be considered a minus.

The film opens with a Biblical quotation (Job 38.4.7):  “Where were you when I laid the foundations of the Earth? Tell me, if you have understanding.” From there, we hear single words that are barely spoken, but whispered mysteriously: “Brother. Mother.” The philosophical principle is posed that we have to choose which one of these we’ll follow in life: Grace, which doesn’t try to please itself and accepts insults and injuries (Read: religion) and Nature, which only wants to please itself, wants others to please it, too and finds reason to be unhappy when love is shining through all things. (Hedonism, perhaps ?).

You posited a mouthful, Terrence! (Couldn’t we be a little of each?)

Mom (Jessica Chastain) gets a letter, is instantly upset and calls Brad, who becomes equally upset. One of their 3 sons, apparently the middle son most like Brad in his artistic temperament and his looks, Steve, has died. (We never know exactly how).  That brings on the platitudes at the funeral:  “He’s in God’s hands now.”  (Mrs. O’Brien responds, “He was in God’s hands the whole time, wasn’t he?”)

Watching these clichés being spouted, (“Be strong. You have your memories.  The pain will pass in time.  Life goes on.  Nothing stays the same.  You’ve still got the other 2 boys. The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away.”) I was reminded of the film “Rabbit Hole” in which Nicole Kidman’s young son was also killed when he chased his dog into the street and was hit by a car driven by a teen-ager. During group therapy, the grieving mother is none too receptive to the concept of “God needing an angel” and asked, why God didn’t just MAKE another (expletive deleted) angel.  (“After all, He’s God, isn’t He?”)

Certain “chapters” or “dividers” are used in the film, almost as within a book, and these “chapter dividers” are evanescent amorphous shots of glowing light (the legendary Douglas Trumbull was visual effects consultant) that reminded me both of the light show I once saw at a Pink Floyd concert in Birmingham, England (1967), of watching glass being blown in a documentary about the glass sculptures of Dale Chihuly, and of previous work Trumbull has done for films like “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” “2001: A Space Odyssey,” “Star Trek: The Motion Picture,” and “Blade Runner.” It is worth noting that Trumbull is actually a year older than Malick, so both men are probably thinking about “the end” at this point in their careers. And I don’t mean just the end of movie-making.

A Biblical quotation (Job, see above) leads to very little dialogue but leads into the disclosure that the couple’s middle son (Steve, played by Tye Sheridan) has somehow died at 19. (One reviewer speculates in a war, but we never know, for sure, and Job seems appropos.) Then, while hearing, in no particular order, Bach, Brahms, Berlioz, Mahler, Holst, Respighi, Gorecki and Alexandre Desplat’s work as music coordinator, you see the following:

Flocks of birds flying

The mother walking in the woods

A slit

An egg

The universe (probably)

A placenta (probably)

Something resembling Biblical descriptions of Hell

What may be the iris of an eye

A storm

A fire

A volcano erupting

A bomb exploding

Clouds of volcanic ash

Is there a reason for these images? I filled in the reason (myself) as the creation of the universe and/or a chance to show some truly wonderful shots of nature. The only dialogue (from the Mother walking in the woods) is “Lord, why? Where were you? Answer me.” [The Lord, as is His/Her custom, says nothing.]

Shortly after the volcanic ash (truly amazing visual images), we have the very short dialogue, “My soul. My son. Hear us.” Then we see:

Ocean water (waves)

Bubbling mud

Zygotes

Something resembling the Pink Floyd light show images I saw in 1967

An egg being fertilized

The ocean

Space

Something that appears to be conception

A jellyfish

Algae floating on water

Fish swimming in the ocean

A desert valley

Two dinosaur-like creatures (escapees from “Jurassic Park”?) on the beach

Hammerhead sharks swimming in the ocean, from below

A stingray

Veins/arteries

Something that looks like the nourishing of a fetus

A forest

A rainforest creature

Huge trees

Please excuse me if I have misidentified what I was looking at. It went on for quite a while (a different reviewer referenced “occasional uncertain stretches”) and, later, was followed by shots of (again, apologies all around if I misidentify):

Brad Pitt listening to the sounds of his unborn child in utero, within the mother’s pregnant belly

Old ruins (looked Mayan)

People underwater

The mother giving birth

Tiny feet held in the hands of Brad Pitt (used on movie poster)

A baptism

Fish in a bowl with a child looking at the goldfish

A child with an “owie” from playing

A butterfly

A cat

Dancing

Sun through the trees

A toddler and a new baby

Bubbles

An epileptic male suffering a seizure

Brad and son planting and watering a tree (Dialogue here:  “He’ll be grown before that tree is tall.”)

A barking tethered dog

Churchlike choral singing

One of the sons going to the attic dormer room where he sits in a rocking chair while  a tall man stands nearby

Etc.. etc.. etc.

 So, let’s try to parse the story, as best we can, because, dear audience, it is up to us to fill in the (considerable) blanks. I like fantastic shots of volcanoes erupting and unborn fetuses as much as the next filmgoer, but what kind of character and plot do we have  here?

The film is set in the 1950s and the attention to detail (Jack Fisk was the production designer) is spectacular. The town used to film “The Tree of Life” is actually Smithville, a town of 3,900 inhabitants just southwest of Austin, Texas, where Malick now lives (and where, previously, the movie “Hope Floats” with Sandra Bullock was filmed).  The big old oak tree, in fact, is a 65,000 pound live oak in Smithville.

So, we can reasonably assume that, at age 68, with only 4 previous films to his credit (all of them eagerly awaited by legions of impressed and loyal fans), Malick, the philosopher and deep thinker with the visual eye of a true artist, is now pondering his own mortality (I know I am, and I’m younger than Mr. Malick) and his place in the Universe and “the meaning of life.” One reviewer said it shows how a young man interacts with his father (young Jack O’Brien has the most significant role as played by Hunter McCracken as a young boy, who grows up to be Sean Penn).

It is true that Penn has the line (interior monologue):  “Father. Mother. Always you wrestle inside me. You always will.” So the simplistic interpretation of the plot is that Mother = Grace and Father = Nature. Does this mean that the mother figure is “good” while the father figure is “bad”, however?

Not for me. Dad may have a quick temper and be overbearing, but he seems to be trying to be a good father to his three sons.

This same-sex parent dynamic of conflict goes on between girls and their mothers and between sons and their fathers. The father does seem to have a bad case of displaced aggression in one dinner-table scene, and as played by Brad, he seems to enjoy “lording it over” his small sons. This may be because Mr. O’Brien really wanted to be a concert musician (organist) and, instead, ended up running a plant that gets shut down, causing Mr. O’Brien to go from one extreme to another in his thinking.

In earlier scenes, Mr. O’Brien is all confidence, saying, “You make yourself what you are and you have control of your own destiny.  You can’t say I can’t.   You say, ‘I’m havin’ trouble, but I’m not done yet.  You can’t say I can’t.” At various times he forbids one of the sons to speak at the dinner table (“Do not speak unless you have something important to say.”), rides his oldest son, Jack, constantly; teaches all his boys to fight; and pontificates on the nature of the boys’ mother’s naiveté, saying, “People will take advantage of you.  Don’t let anyone tell you there’s anything you can’t do.”

Of course, later, after he loses his job at the plant, Dad changes his tune and comes home to Mrs. O’Brien and says, “I wanted to be loved till I was great. The Big Man. Now I’m nothing.  I dishonored it all and didn’t notice the glory. They’re closing the plant. I was given this choice: no job or transfer to a job nobody wants.” After sulking about how he had never missed a day of work, Mr. O’Brien (Brad Pitt) has a tender scene with young Jack, telling him, “You’re all I have.  You’re all I want to have.  You’re a sweet boy.” And, at that point, Dad apologizes for being tough on Jack and the others. By film’s end, the whole family is  pulling out in a cloud of dust, away from the house that was their home, bound for less green and gorgeous climes (Waco, Texas).

Jack has a period of time in adolescence where he is tempted by “the Dark Side” and keeps giving in to temptation. He throws rocks through a window, breaks into a house and riffles through the lingerie drawer of a classmate, helps shoot a helpless frog into space on a bottle rocket.  When his mother accosts him, telling him to behave (Dad is out of town on a business trip), Jack defiantly says, “No. What do you know?  You let him run all over you.”

Young Jack also thinks, at one point when his father is at work under a car, “Please God, kill him.  Let him die. Get him out of here.” Jack recognizes that his father is a hypocrite, as he tells the boys not to put their elbows on the dinner table, but then does so himself. So, this is not a smooth-running father-son relationship (at one point, Jack says, to his father, “You’d like to kill me”), but Jack is a young, confused boy who also intentionally shoots his brother with a bee bee gun and afterwards says, “I do what I hate.  What I want to do I can’t do. I’m sorry. You’re my brother.”

Many of the themes of the long film are articulated by the minister in a church scene, who says such things as, “The only way to be happy is to love.  Unless you love, your life will flash by.” Sentiments such as “Help each other. Love everyone every way you’d like (surely the Golden Rule Redux). Forgive” abound.

[If I may be permitted to digress (and I may), this is the perfect film for Sean Penn. He has directed a few films himself. In 1991, he directed “Indian Runner.” In 1995, he directed “The Crossing Guard.” Most recently, Penn directed “Into the Wild” (2007). If there is a more self-indulgent director, who loves to focus lovingly on, for example, ducks on a pond for a good 15 minutes, to the boredom of his audience, that director has not come forward. Penn is one of the most gifted actors of his generation (and has the Oscars to prove it) but, when I see that he has directed a film, it is the Kiss of Death.]

At film’s end, we have one of those “Lost” endings where you wonder if everyone is dead already. I said, to someone, “Is this death or marriage?” which provoked a laugh at an inopportune moment.

People are standing on a beach. Sean Penn sinks to his knees. His mother is there, comforting the small child with no hair who survived a housefire. Other people are wandering around on the beach (one heavy woman in the background scene has on a very ugly, misshapen tee shirt). There are gigantic ocean swells. Mom hugs Sean. Brad is hugging Steve, the son who died young.

Here’s the rub: Dad and Sean walk together on the beach, and Sean looks older than Dad (Brad Pitt), so this has to be symbolic of heaven. Sean is a grown-up, but the others are as they were. A black mask drifts to the ocean floor, just to help us out with the symbolism.  The artistic second son is shown walking through a door in the middle of nowhere (desert like setting) and the mother is shown walking towards the son and uttering words that sound very religious, at least in the Judaeo-Christian ethic (“I give you my son.”)

Soon thereafter, Sean Penn, a city-dweller and apparently a successful architect, is shown going down in an elevator in the city.

Skyscrapers

Bridge.

Weird evanescent light.

All right-y then. This is me, ignoring the advice to “Go towards the light” and heading for the exit, with much admiration for Emmanuel Lubezki, who was the Director of Photography, and Jacqueline West, who did the costuming, and following two little old ladies with white hair, one of whom said, “I should have read up on this before I came. Now I’m going to have to go home and find out what it all means.”

Not really, Ma’am. It’s a Terrence Malick film. Just go with it.

It was reported in the Chicago Tribune on Thursday, May 26, that a film about Sarah Palin entitled “The Undefeated” is going to be screened first in Iowa. The Hawkeye state already has a reputation for all things corny, as I well know (being a native), so this seems appropriate.

It seems even more apropos should the Palin person decide to announce she is running for President of the United States. After all, if Donald Trump can (and Pat Paulsen before him), why not Sarah Palin? Why else make a movie about a woman who didn’t even finish out her full term a Governor of Alaska and is now reported to be buying real estate in Arizona?

The film is a 2-hour documentary financed by conservative filmmaker Stephen Bannon. With $1 million and Palin’s help and permission, footage has been obtained (and included) of Ms Palin’s time as a member of the Wasilla City Council. (It was not reported if there was film of her resigning her office as Governor mid-way through her term.)

Besides giving me a “heads up” that I must make it a point to catch this no-doubt Oscar-worthy and eminently objective movie, it set off political pundits at the Tribune to the point that an entire article was devoted to possible alternative titles (tongue-in-cheek). They ran in the Sunday, May 29, 2011 Chicago Tribune, and, quite frankly, they are too good to keep under wraps. Some appeared on various blogs, but I have added quite a few original titles of my own:

Possible Alternative Titles for the Film about Sarah Palin’s Illustrious Political Career:

“All About Sarah”

“Dark Victory”

“Forgetting Sarah Palin”

“Mooseferatu”

“To Kill and Field Dress A Mockingbird”

“Children of a Lesser Todd”

“Children of the Corn Meet Children of the Candidate”

“The Devil Wears Mukluks”

“In What Respect, Charlie Brown?”

“I Can See Russia from my Seat Ringside at ‘Dancing with the Stars’”

“Citizen Vain”

“There Will Be Blood Libel”

“Kiss of the Snider Woman”

“Blazing Prattle”

“South from Alaska”

“Desperately Seeking Syntax”

“From Within Sight of Russia, With Love”

“The Todd Also Rises”

“Mama Grizzly, Dearest”

“Birthers of a Nation”

“Must Hate Wolves”

“Motorcycle Mama”

“Driving Miss Dizzy”

“Death Panel Becomes Her”

“Honey! I Exploited the Kids!”

“No Country for Newspaper Reading Sissies”

“Close Encounters of the Third-Rate Kind”

“Nightmare on Elk Street”

“Belfries Are Ringing”

“The Dumb Luck Club”

“I Know That You Quit Last Summer”

“Gone Is the Win”

“Dancing Toward the Dark”

“When Sarah Met Romney”

“The Shawshank Refudiation”

“Fear and Loathing in Des Moines”

Add your own potential title for the new Sarah Palin movie below.

 

Copyright 2011 by Connie Wilson

Ever since Jennifer Hudson rocketed to stardom as an Academy Award winner for the 2006 film “Dreamgirls” (after having been cut from “American Idol” in 2004), she has embarked on a life journey that is no less remarkable than that of the fictional women of “Dreamgirls.”

If you tried to write a play with a heroine who is multi-talented but scorned by a nationwide viewing audience, but then comes back loud and proud, to win an Oscar, only to have her personal life reach epically tragic proportions when her mother, brother and nephew are all killed in Chicago by her sister’s estranged husband….well, let’s just say that people would say it is too far out to be true.

WEIGHT LOSS

If that weren’t enough drama, the 5’ 9” singer then embarked on a weight loss program as the spokesperson for “Weight Watchers” that has seen her shed 80 pounds. Her television ads now feature a slinky, sensuous, sexy young woman (Hudson was born in 1981).

PERSONAL LIFE

her personal life, she is engaged to Harvard Law School graduate and WWE wrestler (another unlikely combination) David Otunga. The two have an 18-month-old son, David Jr., born ten months after her family was nearly completely wiped out, in August of 2009.
Even Hudson, herself, says, “It’s like, ‘What’s gonna’ happen to the girl now?  Will she come back again? It’s like a movie, even to me.”

NEW FILM ROLE AS WINNIE MANDELA

Hudson is coming back to the big screen, and that is one of the reasons she worked so hard to lose the weight. She is playing Winnie Mandela, the 74-year-old former wife of Nelson Mandela.  These days, Winnie Mandela goes by the last name Madikizela-Mandela and serves as a member of South Africa’s parliament.  Winnie was married to Nelson in 1958 when she was 22. She had 2 daughters before he was sent to prison in 1963. The couple divorced in 1996, but, during the 27 years that Nelson Mandela was imprisoned, she was involved in many controversial situations, including charges of being a thief, an adulteress and a murderer. She was convicted of theft and fraud and kidnapping, in connection with the death of a 14-year-old boy…which also sounds too far-fetched to be “real life.” Says Jennifer Hudson of the role, “Half the country think she’s Satan. The other half think she’s the world’s greatest hero.

THE GRAMMYS

Musically, Hudson appeared on the Grammys recently as part of a tribute to the Queen of Soul, Aretha Franklin, and she says, “If I was born in the ‘60s, I’d be right there with them.  Every song I do or film role I get seems to fall right back in that era.”

And she marvels…as I did after seeing her sing at Invesco Field in Denver when Obama was to speak before the huge crowd at the Democratic National Convention:”Ten years ago I was singing in Chicago theaters and living in my mom’s house. That’s all vanished.”

And, one could say, not all “vanished” in a good way. But much, now, is good and getting better.

NEW CD “I REMEMBER ME”

Of her new CD, “I Remember Me,” Hudson says she has returned to her soul-inspired roots and remarks that she “used to sing Aretha songs at the top of my lungs and drive my music teacher crazy.”

l

Irish-born actor Liam Neeson (movies.yahoo.com/movie/contributor/1800019540) has not spoken out in detail about the tragic death of wife Natasha Richardson’s on March 18, 2009. Natasha had been skiing in a remote area of Quebec (Neeson was filming in Toronto) when she fell and hit her head. Immediately after the fall, she seemed fine.

Three hours later, she complained of headaches. Seven hours later, she was in critical condition and was airlifted to Lenox Hill Hospital in New York. Two days later, Natasha Richardson Neeson died  at the age of 45 (Liam is 58).

Neeson has not spoken about that tragic night.—until now.

THE NIGHT NATASHA DIED

In the March, 2011 “Esquire” magazine, Tom Chiarella interviewed Neeson (pp. 108-113).

The interview was supposed to have taken place over a year  earlier. Neeson canceled  as Chiarella was on his way to the restaurant. Neeson says, apologetically, that it was just too soon to talk about Richardson’s death , the events  too raw and fresh in his mind.

THE EMERGENCY ROOM DRAMA

The night that Natasha died, Neeson says:  “I walked into the emergency–it’s like 70, 80 people, broken arms, black eyes, all that—and for the first time in years, nobody recognizes me. Not the nurses. The patients. No one. And I’ve come all this way (from Toronto where he was filming Atom Egoyan’s “Chloe,”)   (movies.yahoo.com/photos/red-carpet/gallery/2123/the) and they won’t let me see her.   I’m looking past them, starting to push—I’m like,’ F***! I know my wife’s back there some place’. I pull out a cell phone and a security guard comes up, starts saying, ‘Sorry, sir, you can’t use that in here,’ and I’m about to ask him if he knew me when he disappears to answer a phone call or something.

So I went outside. It’s freezing cold, and I thought, What am I gonna’ do? How am I going to ge past security? And I see 2 nurses, ladies, having a cigarette.  I walk up, and luckily one of them recognizes me.  And I’ll tell you, I was so f****** grateful—for the first time in I don’t know how long—to be recognized.  And this one, she says, ‘Go in that back door there.’ She points me to it. ‘Make a left.  She’s in a room there.’ So I get there just in time.  And all these young doctors, who look all of 18 years of age, they tell me the worst.  The worst.”

WORK AS SALVATION

Liam Neeson went back to shooting “Chloe” after Natasha Richardson’s funeral. He says, “I just think I was still in a bit of shock.  But it’s kind of a no-brainer to go back to work.  It’s a wee bit of a blur, but I know the tragedy hadn’t just really smacked me yet.” (p. 113) Neeson also said, in a “New York Times” article  (Monsters and Critics.com, “Liam Neeson Talks of Wife’s Final Moments”), “I think I survived by running away. Running away to work.”

Neeson is still surviving by “running away to work.”  Called “one of the most compelling actors of the late 20th century” (Sunday, February 20, 2011 New York Times”), Neeson has a new movie, “Unknown,” where he plays Dr. Martin Harris, whose life is co-opted by another. (news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110217/ap_3n_ot/us_film_review_unknown).

He has a small role in this year’s “The Hangover, Part II,” which he credits to friend Bradley Cooper He replaced Mel Gibson in a cameo role as a character called Tattoo. (in.news.yahoo.com/iam-neeson-thankful-pal-bradley). In 2011, there is also “Last Stand” (www.obsessedwithfilm.com/movie-news/liam-neeson-is-an).

When 2012 rolls around, Neeson is set to play a role in “Battleship” (www.thelifefiles.com), “The Grey” (www.totalfilm.com/news/liam-neeson-starring-in-the-grey). He recently made a guest appearance on “The Big C” with Laura Linney as “the bee man” (Neeson and Linney co-starred on Broadway in a remake of “The Crucible”) and he will be in “Wrath of the Titans,” as well,  reprising  his role as Zeus in the sequel to 2010′s “Clash of the Titans,” a remake of the 1981 film. (movies.yahoo.com/news/usmovies.thehollywoodreporter.com).

ACTING AS PRAYER

Back on May 9 of 2010 when excerpts from Retta Blaney’s book “Working on the Inside” (Rowman & Littlefield publishers) were printed on www.beliefnet.com, Neeson talked about his life as an actor, a life crossroads, his faith, and how he realized that acting is a form of prayer (“Acting is a Form of Prayer, May 9, 2010, Retta Blaney for www.beliefnet.com).

Said Neeson, “I found out in the jungles of South America (while filming “The Mission” with Robert DeNiro in 1986) that Stanislavsky (the originator of the ‘Method’ school of acting) had based his technique on the Spiritual Exercises (of Jesuit founder St. Ignatius Loyola.  It was a real revelation to me, and it brought 2 big parts of my life together.  The Irish Catholic side was married to the life of an actor, and I found out that acting could be a form of prayer.  It helped me, knowing that.  It was like a little godsend message.”

Before that, said Neeson, “I was reasonably successful as an actor. I was 32 or 33 with a potential career ahead of me.  I had done some flim-flam movies, but I didn’t understand what being an actor meant any more.” He described his life at that crossroads, when he was still single, as “getting drunk at night and getting laid as much as I could.”

BEGINNINGS

Neeson’s rise as an actor can be attributed to his stage work. He was appearing onstage in Dublin at the Abbey Theatre as Lennie Small in an adaptation of Steinbeck’s “Of Mice and Men” when Director John Boorman (“Deliverance”) saw him and offered him a part as Sir Gawaine in “Excalibur,” Neeson’s first movie break.( www.rottentomatoes.com/m/excalibur). Neeson moved to the United States in 1987 and is a naturalized citizen, which he announced on “Good Morning, America” on August 9, 2009. In a February 21, 2011 “People” Q&A now on the stands, Neeson said of his adopted homeland, “I love the people, the spirit and the landscape—the vastness of it.” (www.People.com).

Luck is always present in anyone’s life and/or career.  Steven Spielberg saw Neeson in Jodie Foster’s film “Nell” and offered him the career-making role of Oskar Shindler in his much-honored film “Schindler’s List.” (movies.yahoo.com/movie/contributor/1800019540/bio)

THOUGHTS ON RELIGION AND LIFE

Once Neeson recognized that acting might be a prayerful thing, he said, he began to change. “I offer my performances as prayer for someone I’ve worked with as an actor or someone who has died.  The image that comes into my head as I walk to the stage, I offer that performance up for that person.”

Although he referred to himself as “a fallen-away Catholic” in the March, 2011 “Esquire” interview, he does acknowledge that he is raising his two sons (Micheal, 15, and Daniel, 14)  as Roman Catholics. In Retta Blaney’s book, Neeson said of faith, “I question more now. I don’t mean that it’s all hocum, but I’ve lost a simple faith.  I do still believe, but I like to encompass all religions now.  I believe we’re all paying homage to God.”

In that earlier interview—given before Natasha died— (from “Working on the Inside” by Retta Blaney, published by Rowman & Littlefield, excerpted on www.beliefnet.com on May 9, 2010), Neeson added, “Generally, I just give thanks for how lucky I am.  I’m healthy.  I have some money in the bank (the Neeson Millbrook, NY home was valued at close to $4 million dollars; he and Richardson purchased 16 more acres nearby in August of 2004) and I have a wonderful wife.”

The new Edward Zwick (“Thirty Something,” “My So-Called Life”) film “Love and Other Drugs” is based on a novel entitled Hard Sell: The Evolution of a Viagra Salesman by Jamie Reidy. That, alone, should tell you that you’re in for a polemic on the world of pharmaceutical sales.

It is also a love story about a 26-year-old Parkinson’s patient in 1996 (Anne Hathaway as Maggie Murdoch) who is screwing her way through stage one of the disease. I say “screwing her way through” because one of the things this movie will be most remembered for are the many and numerous sex scenes. They are plentiful. For the most part, they are quite good, although the first scene in Maggie Murdoch’s (Anne Hathaway’s) apartment is, as Entertainment Weekly phrased it “particularly carnal.” (“Naked Truths” by Dave Karger, November 26, 2010).

Anne Hathaway was just announced as the co-host with James Franco of this year’s Academy Awards. I wonder if there will be jokes aimed at her boinking the living bejesus out of co-star Jake Gyllenhaal—lately rumored to be getting it on with the much-younger Taylor Swift (Gyllenhaal will turn 30 on December 19^th, while Swift will turn 21 on December 13^th).

The first thing I noticed about the film was Jill Clayburgh, playing Jamie Randall’s (Jake Gyllenhaal’s) mother. Clayburgh was voted one of the 25 best actresses in Hollywood by Entertainment Weekly in 1999 and remained a beautiful woman until the day she died at age 66 on November 5^th of this year. “Love and Other Drugs” is not her last movie (that distinction goes to the still-in-production “Bridesmaids”) but I remember thinking how great it was to see her onscreen after such a long time. And how sad I feel knowing that she is gone, never to light up a movie screen with her intelligence and her beauty again.

But times have changed. And how!

Now we have the gorgeous Jake Gyllenhaal and the less-gorgeous Anne Hathaway screwing like mink onscreen every chance they get. Because, you see, the heroine is ill (with Parkinson’s disease) and brittle and fragile and extremely cranky and controlling.  Hathaway is quoted in the Entertainment Weekly piece mentioned above this way: “So, for me, this role was pretty out-there in terms of the way I usually am in public concerning my body.  So, I thought, ‘Okay, I’m going to be in control.  I’m going to do everything properly, disrobe at the last minute, and in between shots get the clothes back on.’ But then I found that every time I put my robe back on, it rubbed all the body makeup off, and that added 20 minutes to filming.  As with all things in life, the second you stop making it about you and you make it about everyone else, it just got, dare I say, fun.” I got kind of tired of her cranky, cynical act and wanted to smack her a few times, but I’m sure that’s just me.

Jamie is the bright ne’er-do-well son of a doctor (George Segal) and his wife (Jill Clayburgh) and his overweight, unattractive brother Josh (comparisons to Jonah Hill abound) is a dot.com millionaire…although his wife has just thrown him out of the house, for reasons we never quite understand or learn. Mostly, we don’t understand why someone worth $35 million finds it necessary to impose on his handsome bachelor brother for long periods of time—except that, otherwise, all the opportunities for loutish “Hangover” style humor would be missed. When he moves in with Jamie, Josh (Josh Gad), the unattractive brother, says, “If you could make money f******, you’d be even richer than me.” Probably true.

The smart part of the movie is the part denouncing pharmaceutical firms like Pfizer (which is featured prominently, by name, at all points, so go figure) with lines like, “They’re turning complex medical decisions into commercialism.” Oliver Platt, who plays Jamie’s boss in pharmaceutical sales notes, “They’re even starting to hire strippers.” Platt has decided that the good-looking Jamie is his ticket to ride back home to Chicago, the Promised Land, from Pittsburgh. (“I’ve got an idea that you and your swinging dick might be my ticket to the Big Leagues.”)

The “meet cute” portion of this love story is handled in cynical fashion, as the two meet in a coffee shop and the extremely brittle Ms. Murdoch (Hathaway) says, “This is about finding an hour or two of relief from the pain of being you.” She admits she wants the same thing. So, the two, not unlike Woody Allen and Diane Keaton in “Annie Hall,” …who merely kiss to “get it out of the way” in innocent 70’s style…go to Maggie’s apartment and have at it. Watching this sex scene was like watching an episode of “Wild Kingdom.”

Gyllenhaal, when asked about this particular first love scene, admitted that, in love scenes, “I’ve always felt, particularly with women, it’s good to have a dance, like choreography.  ‘I’m going to turn you here, then that’s going to happen…We were like, fake having sex and being like, ‘Knock the pot off, knock the pot off.’ I was not focusing on her at all and instead focusing on knocking the f***** pot off for Ed (Zwick, the director).” [It should be noted for the record here that Gyllenhaal played Heath Ledger’s gay lover in “Brokeback Mountain,” where Hathaway was his wife, so he has some experience in love scenes with both genders.]

The pot was definitely knocked off in the carnal kitchen love scene.

When Viagra hits the market in 1996, Jamie begs his boss (Oliver Platt) for the chance to sell it, saying, “Who can sell a dick drug better than me?” He has a point. Jamie takes on his arch-nemesis, Trey Hannigan (Gabriel Macht), an ex-Marine who was once Maggie’s very-married lover. He is always trying to best him at getting key doctors to prescribe Prozac rather than Zoloft.  Now, he will beat him with a dick drug. The Trey Hannigan subplot started and then died aborning, with no real resolution as to exactly what happened when, why or where. Just another lost thread or another lost opportunity. There are many threads…too many, really, for one movie to adequately follow.

Another reviewer (Trisha Leigh) warned her readers not to see it with their parents. (Trisha Leigh on www.Poptimal) I went with my daughter (age 23) and I liked the film better than she did, so what does that say about us? Not sure. Pretty sure it means I’m not a prude about hot sex scenes. I know this to be true, because, one summer vacation, my college roommate and I rented every hot sex scene we could think of and watched them all, rating them from “1” to “10.”(Another article, perhaps?)

The sex scenes in this film are superb. The drug rant: likewise timely. The obnoxious Jonah-Hill-like brother: not as well-received. The sentimental love story? I’ll let you decide where you stand, judging some actual lines from the film:

Oliver Platt to Jake Gyllenhaal, on using Jamie Randall’s sales and bedroom prowess to earn his way back to Chicago (“the Big Leagues”):  “It takes a talented eye to spot talent in a colossal f***-up such as yourself.”

Jake Gyllenhaal, to Anne Hathaway:  “You’ve got to understand that you’re still there…still yourself.  And life is beautiful.” (Maybe a little too Pollyanna-ish?)

Anne Hathaway, to Jake Gyllenhaal, discussing her Stage One Parkinson’s disease:  “It’s not a disease.  It’s a Russian novel.”  Later, she tells Jamie, “This is the first time in my life that I’ve never not felt alone.  That someone is there.” (Bi-polar mood swings? I think there’s a drug for that.)

Anne Hathaway to Jake Gyllenhaal:  “Apparently, you need to know I’m going to get better in order to love me…Nobody wants to be the one who runs away.”

Maggie Murdoch (Anne Hathaway) on the sex tape the two lovers make, when she’s in one of her rare non-brittle, non-cynical moods:  “It doesn’t matter if I have 10,000 more moments or just this one, because I have this one.” (OK. Pollyanna rules.)

Anne Hathaway:  “I have never known anyone who actually believed I was enough.  Until I met you.” (Awwwwww).

Or there’s this line:  “Sometimes the thing you most want doesn’t happen. And then you meet one person and your life is changed forever.” (Jack the Ripper comes to mind.)

Now that I’ve given you the treacly stuff (Line: “What is this? An episode of ‘General Hospital’?”), here are the good things about the movie and the bad things about the film:

GOOD:

Acting: good.

Sex scenes: good.

Ranting against pharmaceutical companies: good.

Old guy warning Jake that, if he had to do it over again, he wouldn’t marry the wife he loves: good.

BAD:

Younger brother in film: bad. Wrong movie for this.

Logic in many spots and in general: bad. (What does this Maggie person do for a living? All we ever see her do is sit around trying to control scissors so she can do something artistic in her bohemian apartment? Where does she keep coming up with these phenomenal boyfriends? [Please share that information with all the single girls in Pittsburgh/Ohio/Chicago; they want to know.])

Constant bitchiness of the female lead: bad. Maggie has good cause to be bitter, but the line Ms. Hathaway gave about being “in control” in the Entertainment Weekly interview certainly came through in her really cynical, mean girl performance. She is afraid that she will be a burden, so she wants to live in the moment and enjoy all the sex she can for now, because tomorrow is on the horizon and who knows what tomorrow will bring? We get it.

Ms. Hathaway:  I may be the only theater-goer in America that does not find Ms Hathaway that appealing physically. The over-large mouth (a la Julia Roberts), the anorexic frame, the big brown eyes. Dare I say that she reminds me of a preying mantis, when apparently every “boob man” in Reviewland has remarked on her complete baring of her breasts (and almost everything else.) (Her breasts are small; it ain’t no big thing, as was muttered in another film with sex scenes.)

Jake Gylenhaal also gives it up and does near-total nudity for his art, but not to the extent of Kevin Bacon in “Wild Things” or Richard Gere in “Breathless.” While it was great admiring his toned body, there were a few bits that the film hedged on and kept covered. Let’s have the Full Monty if we’re going to go to these lengths for this many sex scenes, in the future.

Therefore, the advice about going with your parental unit, while cute and relevant if you’re very young, was unnecessary. There have been films with a lot “hotter” love scenes than this film, (and, if you want a list, I’ll write one up for you.
There just haven’t been many films that had this many love scenes that co-opted the entire film and almost ruined the message for young lovers and pharmaceutical companies.

During the Chicago Film Festival (Oct. 7-21) I had the opportunity to meet and greet several famous folk.

One was Guillermo del Toro, who was very sweet and sincere. Another was Ron Perlman, in town to give Guillermo an award. Then there was Forest Whitaker, Cecile DeFrance (the Belgian star of “Hereafter”), David Schwimmer, Alan Cumming and the assorted stars of “Trust,” a David Schwimmer-directed film. There was also Danny Boyle, the director of “Slumdog Millionaire ” and “127 Hours.”

With Labor Day in the rear view mirror, we can officially say that summer is over. I went to a lot of summer movies, but here I will try to separate the wheat from the chaff. In some cases, I couldn’t get to a few that I really wanted to see (Winter’s Bone, The Pat Tillman Story).

Early in the summer, I missed an opportunity through CinemaChicago to see The Kids Are All Right for free. I regretted it then and I regret I now. It seems to have become the only pure breakout independent hit movie of the summer, and I am much more about small, independent character-driven films than giant Transformer type fare, (although I did trek down to the Chicago River and do some on-the-spot reporting from the Chicago sets of that film sequel shooting in the Windy City.)

The last film-of-summer I hurried out to see was George Clooney’s The American. Contrary to the good review Roger Ebert gave this Anton Corbijin (a Dutch director) film, it was a total dud. Unless you like interminable shots and discussions of weapon assembly that go on for hours (which feel like days), pass on this one. I got the feeling that Clooney…who, as we all know, has an estate in Italy…just wanted to stay close to his Lake Como digs and make a few bucks filming in places with names like Castelvecchio and Castel del Monte. Those of us who are big Clooney fans (count me among that number) and really enjoyed “Up in the Air” and “Syriana” and “Michael Clayton” and “Good Night and Good Luck” were sucked into the vacuum that this film represents.  “Rolling Stone” magazine (September 16, “Arthouse Vs. Grindhouse”) described The American as “a film of startling austerity” (read boring) and “remote to a fault” (read boring). There were 5 of us who attended this movie together, 3 of them male. The snoring began almost immediately. George’s anguished driving scene merely made him appear constipated; not his finest acting hour Very disappointing film.

Then there was Get Low, which was almost as slow-moving at times, but done with spectacular attention to detail. How can you not like watching Robert Duvall play a scene opposite Bill Murray portraying a pencil-mustachioed undertaker? The plot, (for most of you who will miss the film), was supposedly based on a true story and involved the eccentric Duvall, who lives in the woods and is considered a crackpot, trying to arrange to host his own funeral while he is still alive. [Be sure to arrive at the beginning so you don’t miss the scene of the unknown stranger jumping out of a burning house.] It is only at the funeral that we learn that Duvall has actually summoned everyone in the county to the celebration so that he can confess to crimes of the heart committed many years ago. With able acting support from Sissie Spacek as a long-ago sweetheart, Lucas Black as Buddy, Gerald McRaney as the Reverend Gus Horton and Bill Cobbs as the Reverend Charlie Jackson, I have to admit that I thought about this film for days after I saw it, appreciating the lovely cinematography (Director Aaron Schneider is better-known as a Cinematographer) and the spot-on period piece music (“I’m Looking Over A Four-Leaf Clover,” “Blue Skies,” a Bix Beiderbeke piece). There are some great lines. Bill Murray: “I sold 26 of the ugliest cars in the middle of December with the wind blowing so far up my ass I was farting snowflakes into July.” Robert Duvall:  “There’s alive and there’s dead and there’s a worse place in between that I hope you never know nothin’ about.”  Murray again:  “That’s one thing about Chicago. People know how to die.  They drown. Get shot.  Whatever it takes.” This film was only showing at 570 sites, according to “Entertainment Weekly” and its take was far below that of the summer’s blockbusters, but it was a fine film from Director Aaron Schneider, who previously won an Oscar for his cinematography work. It shows in this film and I wouldn’t ever count Robert Duvall out in the Oscar acting category.

Big Blockbusters of Summer:

There’s no question that Inception and Toy Story 3 were the films to smile about this summer. Inception will be nominated for numerous Oscars, and has raked in $270.5 million (“Entertainment Weekly,” September 10, The Chart, p. 75).  Toy Story 3 has done even better, with a take of $405.7 million. Both of them great films.

Other films that were enjoyable include The Other Guys with Will Ferrell and Mark Wahlberg as unlikely crime-fighting partners. The fact that Ferrell’s character drives a red Prius (“I didn’t know they put tampons on wheels” is one put-down from the film) and that Wahlberg’s cop is known as the guy who shot Derek Jeter are just a few of the comic touches. Brooke Shields’ husband Chris Henchy and Adam Mckay co-wrote. (Look for Brooke in a cameo appearance, sitting next to Ferrell at a Lakers game.)

Cyrus with Noah Hill, John C Reilly and Marisa Tomei was a nicely acted comedy with some depth. It depicted the unhealthy relationship that has emerged between a divorced mother and her adult son. A great supporting performance by Catherine Keener as Jamie (Who can forget Keener shouting, “Check, please!” in Being John Malkovich after John Cusack’s character tells her he is a mime?) Unfortunately, Jonah Hill also was part of Get Him to the Greek this summer, an attempt to cash in on crass comedy of The Hangover variety. Russell Brand did a good job portraying a prima Dona rock star, but the low humor killed it for me.

I came out of The Switch feeling sorry for Jennifer Aniston…and not just because Angelina Jolie ran off with Brad Pitt. It wasn’t a bad film, depicting, as it does, an unmarried independent career woman planning to give birth by means of artificial insemination. The best thing about the film was co-star Jason Bateman portraying Anniston’s long-time neurotic male friend Wally Mars (Anniston to Bateman:  “You’ve got to hide your crazy at least through the appetizers.”) The plot, as most will know, involves Wally switching the sperm sample Cassie plans to use for making a baby, which gives rise to a little Wally (child actor Thomas Robinson, who didn’t cut it, for me). The inevitability of Jennifer’s character Cassie and Bateman’s Wally eventually ending up together is a foregone conclusion. My husband objected to having to go to “a chick flick.” I have read reviews that trumpeted the film as “the end of Jennifer Aniston’s film career.” I think that is a bit harsh and overly dire for what was a pleasant-but-predictable film with some good acting from the principal characters (including able support from Jeff Goldblum as Leonard, Juliette Lewis as Debbie and Patrick Wilson as Roland, the sperm donor). However, there is no question that it was uncomfortable watching Jennifer Aniston play a more-or-less close to her real life character’s situation: an attractive, independent female who hears her biological clock ticking and is becoming desperate. Desperate is never fun.

I saw Dinner for Schmucks and found it much better than the trailer the advertising gurus chose to use to promote it (see previous Associated Content article).

Here are the films I purposely avoided and am very glad I did:  The Expendables, Eat Pray Love, Sex in the City 2, The Last Exorcism, Prince of Persia, The A-Team, Jonah Hex, The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, Step Up 3D, Knight and Day, Killers, The Twilight Saga: Eclipse.

Here are the films I saw and could just as happily have missed: Iron Man 2, The American, Journey to Mecca (IMAX offering). Count these as disappointing.

Here are the films I caught and am glad I did:  A Piece of Work (Joan Rivers documentary), Toy Story 3, Inception, Get Low, and Cyrus.

Here are the films I am going to make sure I see before Oscar-time:  Winter’s Bone, Despicable Me.

Happy movie-going to us all!

They’re shooting “Transformers 3″ in Chicago and one downtown hotel, Hotel 71 on Wacker Drive, has even sold out its “Transformers” packages, according to the manager, Steve Shern. It sure didn’t look like the patrons of that hotel would get much sleep between Thursday, July 15, when the movie crew shut down Michigan Avenue at Randolph, and Monday morning, July 19, when the main drag opened up to regular traffic again.

On Sunday, July 18th, I took my trusty Canon camera and boarded a bus to get as close as possible to the shooting at Michigan and Wacker, right at the bridge that leads to the Tribune building and the Gleacher Center, where the University of Chicago holds classes.

As I walked the final couple blocks, three huge explosions could be heard. This would be in line with the fireballs, skydivers and wrecked autos that were said to be littering the place. Tribune employees reported that, during the day, they could see star Shia LaBoeuf running to and from one rock to a pile of debris (cars, mostly) several times. This time out, Shia’s co-star is Rosie something Whiteley, a former Victoria’s Secret model. She replaced Megan Fox, who seems to have become embroiled in a war of words with Director Michael Bay, who chalked up her mild criticism of the “scream-and-run” school of acting to her extreme youth. (She’s 23). I saw no similar criticism of Shia LaBoeuf’s nearly identical comments within a “Vanity Fair” article on the Michael Douglas reprise of his Gordon Gekko role on “Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps,” due out soon.

It was boring standing there hoping the car (pictured) would fall into the Chicago River, and I can only imagine that it would be even more boring to have to run from a pile of wrecked cars to a rock several times, convincing people that a child’s toy gone wild is threatening the Earth.

I did read that, this time, Chicago will really represent Chicago, rather than Gotham City as it did in the last “Batman” movie. That will be nice, and I will be able to say I saw the filming, which, really, would be more accurately phrased as, “I heard the filming, on Sunday, July 18th, 2010.”