The Strawberry Blog

In my world Catherine Keener can do no wrong and it was she–leading a perfect cast–who drew me last Sunday to Hollywood’s Arclight Cinema for writer-director Nicole Holofcener’s “Please Give,” a film much about wanting.

At the Arclight I sat through a number of trailers, one of them a documentary-as-cuddly-feature called “Babies.” Could it be that I was the only person who didn’t coo myself to nap time or dribble “aaaawwws” all over my shirt for Thomas Balmès’ trailer of what should be tears? (or, at the very least, a parity of emotional reels?–sorry for the out of hand double entendres here, equally sickening, I know). I could barely contain myself–or, more specifically, my dread of each impending frame of adorable-ness. Los Angeles Times film critic Betsey Sharkey describes it “a joyous and buoyant new documentary that has been charming audiences for months.” But some of us in the audience could barely stomach the trailer, contorting this viewer into an angry fetal position despite her comfy chair. At least Sharkey also (partially) saw it for what it was: a work of high-gloss infant air-brushing. How thrilling. Downright antsy, I couldn’t wait for it to end its slobbering screen smiles and cap the heartstrings-plucking. What was Sharkey & Company’s Bundle of Joy was yet another case of Cute porn to me–the visual equivalent of almost any John Williams-for-Spielberg score. It ended, much to my relief, after what felt like 15 minutes of Stage Parent as Important Artist, seguing into another French offering that was (thank you, Jesus), an actual piece of creative celluloid.

It was Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s “Micmacs” that served as instant posture relief. It was sheer rompy, whimsical delight, and I don’t care how many people describe it thus–it was genius compared to the treacle fest of the infantapalooza before it. I couldn’t wait to order my tickets and assert my imaginative adult self. Hooray! Filmmaking lives! I wanted to shout.

And then…the trailer for ”Letters To Juliet” appeared in all its Veronan glory–a movie starring the luminous Amanda Seyfried in what felt like a “Babies” for Young Adults. But here I was stupidly smitten–and self-berated, I can assure you. Smitten not exactly for the predictability of the storyline but for the embrace between Seyfried and Vanessa Redgrave (and…well, yes, despite the heavy-handed tone, the part about long-lost loves and second chances in Italy also did it).

But I quickly gained my composure, falling head first into “Please Give,” in which a slight embrace between an unrelated mother and daughter nearly left me drowned. Holofcener’s pitch perfection (and lack of bombastic score), complete respect and trust in her actors is the tonal difference between this and, say…almost everything else I saw this week, whether trailing before me to titillate or unfolding before me to contemplate. It is also the difference between art and artlessness. Between art and sincerely trying.

A couple nights later, I attended a screening of Rodrigo García’s “Mother & Child,” another film about wanting. García’s “Mother & Child” was at times heart-wrenching, nauseating, and perfect. Los Angeles Times film reviewer Michael Phillips and I disagree as to the amount of suds this “classy, well-acted soap opera” dispersed. The essential difference between it and Nicole Holofcener’s “Please Give” was the restraint each director possessed. Holofcener clearly owns her films; García, while so damned satisfying and tonally correct most of the time, seems to have given in to some Hollywood executive who chose to prolong the movie well past its natural ending and wrap it in a pink bow.

All of these films and trailers, I realized, were viewed during the week before that most Hallmark of holidays, Mother’s Day (I know its honorable history; it’s the present-day transmogrification of which that I am referring). “Babies,” I might add, is just the sort of trailer my mother would have fallen for; “Please Give” is the film she might have loved…and not known why.

August 14, 2006

Considering my recent return to Hollywood from New Orleans, you were probably expecting the requisite entry on what it was like being back home in Louisiana after four months away.
Not so fast, buddy. We’re not that predictable.
Instead, waxing about visiting home is usurped by a Hollywood institution: a film. Ahem—a movie. Perhaps one of the most irredeemably awful movies I have ever seen. So bad it was…worse. Nothing to save it except as an excellent means for compare and contrast sessions in college film courses.
The steaming turd? Miami Vice. It’s a puzzler, this one. Though I wasn’t particularly looking forward to seeing it—it was another DGA screening so, though it took two hours of my life it didn’t take my money—I was up for a silly, flashy piece of light entertainment. It had all the elements of Collateral (incl. Jamie Foxx and and director Michael Mann), yet absolutely none of its success. It had name recognition, yet chose to muddle the Miami palette. No displays of sleek, Art Deco chrome and sculpted derrières beachside. Where were the pastels and sundrenched mojito bars? Instead, we got white supremacists in dark, dingy trailer parks that looked like Ohio. The only time I knew I was somewhere was when we were obviously in Cuba and South America. Otherwise, it may as well have been called Cleveland Vice.
And as for the jittery handheld camera/ Michael Mann trademark? How about using it for a reason, an artistic call, as character psychology—as they did in Collateral. Here it was just annoying. Dark, muddy, and reverberatingly hand held now just equals I Grow Weary of This Filmmaker.
Despite the production design misfire, I was hoping for some witty repartée, or at least some good looking male leads being good looking and snappy. Instead, what we got were a couple of la-con-ic actors saying some of the worst lines heard on screen since I sat at Graumann’s Chinese Theatre for Titanic, audibly groaning. This audience (mostly SAG actors) laughed aloud at unintentionally funny lines. I’d like to say that the women were strong but they weren’t; they were just one-note angry in that cartoonish fuming-from-the-orifices sort of way. And you couldn’t understand half of what the Japanese woman said. Therefore, I hated her.
Midway through this torture, I finally realized why Colin Ferrell’s character seemed so ill at ease. Wouldn’t you feel out of place in the 21st century…in a mullet? Jamie Foxx, well after delivering the funniest line in a sex scene (replete with let-me-lick-you-up-and-down contemporary R & B) also delivered the most unintentionally funny line of the whole, painful evening:
“Let’s take it to the limit…one more time.” The audience half expected Glen Frey to cut in for a solo. Patently ridiculous. But it gave us the first reason to be freely uproarious.
Colin Ferrel got the other line. With zero irony, he cocked his gun and said, “Let’s do this thing.”
Nobody says that. Not even in a movie.

July 9, 2006

Normally I do not attend opening days of anything. I do not seek out mobs of people in a confined space. But I made an exception for the reopening of the National Portrait Gallery on July 1st. The new best spot in D.C. is the Portico Café to sip French 75s, listen to a quintet, and enjoy a breeze and vista. For those of us who frequented the area in the Eighties and Nineties the view now is nothing short of a miracle. The building renovation, the whole presentation from architectural masterpiece to the over 5,000 works inside, is exquisite.
The same cannot be said for the crowds, however. While most were well behaved, they were poorly dressed for even the opening of an ice cream stand. Sure, it’s humid and the temperatures unflinchingly high, but can’t American men find it in their hearts, if they don’t possess an innate sense of style, to consult with a higher authority before they descend upon the republic? Can’t they show a little respect for what Whitman called “the noblest of Washington buildings” by forgoing the pleated khaki shorts with white socks and sandals? (that applies to Germans, too). Mid-length pleated khaki shorts don’t even look good on this month’s super model. Listen up, khaki shorts: as we used to say back when the Portrait Gallery was across the street from seedy peep show joints, “U-G-L-Y, you ain’t got no alibi, you ugly!”
But while pleated khaki shorts are nothing short of an affront to the senses, ratcheting down any national pride, worse perhaps is the American obsession known as Cult of the Child. On my visit it lurked in Presidential Portraits. I was minding my own business, gazing at the famous Lansdowne portrait of George Washington when a 40-something mother strolled up beside me with her three or four year old something daughter slumped on wheels.
“Look! What does George Washington have in his hand, sweetie?”
The child ignored her.
“Honey, what is the president holding in his hand? Do you know what it is?”
“Go,” said the dear thing, aglow with the thought of 18th century American history.
“What did you say?” said mother in a cloying tone.
“Go!” barked the toddler who could launch a million bars of Ivory soap if only mother had a backbone.
“This is a very famous portrait of Washington,” said mother.
And the princess with the mousy hair, captain of her stroller ship, threw her arm in front of her, ordering mommy to cross the Delaware and to just “GO!”
At which point the woman in the wide brimmed hat whose head was fixed on this sad state of affairs said, “And that is a most obnoxious American child.”
People, please: kindly remember that this is a republic and that allowing your children to rule you frightens the rest of us. So for the health and well being of this nation’s future, invest in the restoration of a national portrait by hiring a British nanny—whatever it takes—but please…resist the pleated khaki part of your parenting skills.

July 2006

I promise—unlike Jerry Bruckheimer—I’ll keep this brief. If Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest was swashbuckler megabusting at its best, this latest in the naughty nauticals is more Pirates of the Caribbean: Another Day, Another Overblown Budget .

The fairest thing I can muster is that Number Three clocked in about one hour over time and that Keith Richards is both the best and the most disappointing thing in it. But despite this third, regrettable voyage, Johnny Depp’s Captain Sparrow is utterly delicious. Sparrow is so beautifully modeled in part on Keith Richards’ guitar-wielding swagger that it was sheer genius to cast Richards as his father. But on screen the Rolling Stone as actor is neither swagger nor…Keith Richards. Instead of letting Richards be Richards—rock star of legendary excess who’s worn a skull ring on his finger since the 1970s—they made him menacing, ominous; less like Richards than Depp’s assured variation on a theme. Sure, they stuck a string instrument in his hand, teasing those of us who fleetingly hoped he’d strum a few chords of “You Got The Silver,” but ultimately it was a missed opportunity to capture in the real, well-worn flesh what Depp so assiduously applied to his character.
And for the love of Neptune, how is it that despite shrinking leisure time, summer blockbusters have the audacity to fill in three mediocre hours what would have made two solid ones? While the 180 minutes passed like a gallstone in a maelstrom, I re-wrote many lines while mumbling quietly to myself. Here is one example:
BILL “BOOTSTRAP” TURNER: What was my promise to you, son?
WILL TURNER (my new line): That you wouldn’t make Number Four?

January 24, 2006

I have an animal in mind. What is a stout kangaroo that is neither lithe nor particularly athletic—a bird that soars in water only?
His is a most remarkable anatomy/Not drawn at any academy/
Just waddles and flops/Not chainés and drops/A most remarkable anatomy.

These are the beginnings of my song, “Ode To A Penguin” (there! I’ve given the answer away), written while screening the French documentary, March of the Penguins. If you have ever wondered how best to explain life, death, sex and birth to a child, then you have these French filmmakers to thank forever more. Penguins don’t have taxes (arguably, theirs is a much longer, harsher season) but everything else is covered here in under 80 minutes.
At first, this ancient lot in trademark tuxedos are an amusing sight. But it is too easy to call our reactions to the films’s stars anthropomorphism. It is also, perhaps, simply too inaccurate. Rather, I think that it is more a case of seeing us in them—of seeing our animality—than the other way around. Watching the penguins, sated to bursting, start their annual mating trek—over 70 miles of the toughest, coldest terrain imaginable—I am reminded of a friend meeting Mr. Hottie in Vegas one weekend only to board a plane to London the following week to reunite. The parallels between us and penguins are painfully obvious: bitter U.S. air travel methods, replete with brutally scarce in-air food supply and—egads!—probably a layover in Cleveland. In winter.
The penguins travel with full, distended bellies because, when they do arrive and sniff out a mate, the males will not eat again for four months, the females for three—during which time they will have choreographed their mating dance, sounded their fondness for one or the other, and mated Greek style (or do we do it Penguin style, hmmm?). Oh, and endured several cruel winter storms that claim the lives of at least one of their clan. Couples are limited to one monogamous year during which we are told, at other points in the season all bets are off. I can’t imagine one would have the energy to bet at all after going without food for a quarter of the year while trying to keep an egg warm.
And that’s the Male Problem.
Once a female penguin is [ahem] with egg, she passes it along to the father for safekeeping because, after all, she has gone plenty long without food during gestation and must return the 70 miles to fishy sustenance if she is to take over the next leg of parenting. This is no simple task. We’re talking about rotund birds more at home in water than on the icy terrain—despite spending most of their time walking it or flopping to their stomachs. The Dance of The Egg Switching—really just a more logical way of being pregnant—is at times a painful choreography. Let’s just say that neither a Fosse nor an Ailey resided among those first Emperor Penguins; so that the ancient dance ritual, embedded in their DNA, is a clumsy one at best. Their rehearsal process is proof that another’s pain—anyone’s pain, even a penguin’s—is often the best humor.
It’s something like watching people who can’t dance…dance. Or watching people who are too embarrassed to dance, who have no cultural tie to dance, tie one on instead, mocking dance while making dancing fools of themselves. But the Penguin Dance of the Egg Switching, while agonizing at times—truly agonizing because some couples get this far only to lose the egg in the dance process—is after all an ancient ritual. They rehearse it ad nauseum; then, if lucky, the male gets the egg while the female hoofs it to the sea for feeding.
After she is gone, the males look suspiciously like a Wintry Million Man March, huddled football style, taking turns to be in the center of the greatest warmth—all the while keeping their eggs safe from the elements—wordlessly ensuring that everyone gets a shot at the best circumstances…under perhaps the worst circumstances possible. Didn’t socialism make this claim, too? Well, it actually works here in the arctic.
We all know that human newborns are rarely aesthetic beauties, but that kittens and puppies and bears are categorical cuties. I daresay that the baby penguin has few rivals for sheer charm. But it wasn’t just because they’re cute that the sniffles and tears at the sight of a frozen egg or a dead baby were audible at the DGA. I remembered what my father said and what a friend said recently, too—that all other death is natural, can be handled…but that of a child. My father said that if I had died he couldn’t go on. My friend echoed the same thing. Lucky for the penguin race, as sad as their parents are at the sight of one of their young dead—and they do trumpet mournfully—they do go on. Amazingly so—given that their entire year, save three months of jocular water play and gorging, is geared toward making new penguins in an unutterably savage climate. It is perhaps the greatest surprise of all that the penguin has survived this long.
It is even more shocking that they haven’t figured out that they should move. One wants nothing more for them than for some enormous environmental real estate shift so that life’s a little less harsh for these poor birds; to fill their short lives with a little more fish and fewer biblically proportioned storms.

In short, these birds need more rehearsal time. More dancing, please. An arctic second line.

December 20, 2005

Because I do not relish the idea of being hit squarely on the head with an anvil, suffice to say that I am not Stephen Spielberg’s biggest fan (though I would love to chat with him at a cocktail party some day). His later films particularly have the subtlety of an unneutered pitbull and, quite frankly, I do not appreciate my intelligence, emotional and otherwise, regularly insulted by heavy handedness. What grates me the most perhaps is that it doesn’t have to be this way because, creatively and financially, he is all powerful. That’s the kicker: that he often ruins his own movies either through the aforemoentioned anvil or the herculean efforts of the string section. “D minor…the saddest of all chords.”

MUNICH is not that kind of film. And though I winced toward the end when the possibility of a Saving Private Ryanesque moment appeared on the emotional horizon, I forgave its near possibility because the previous two hours or so resonated as a portrait of a climactic time and place, untainted by the anvil-wielding auteur.

This is an important film to see this season for a few reasons: 1) There is no fat, unnaturally ebullient man in a red suit, 2) Unless their parents are legally insane, there will be no children in the cinema, and 3) This is all about universal themes played out on an even handed, if awfully violent, stage. Just in time to ponder away for the new year.

Oh, yes, there is one more reason to see it: just when you didn’t think you could stomach any more violence, heartache and talk of spilling the blood of [insert your favorite ethnicity or race here], the mighty reverend Al Green saves us. All of us.

Tonight’s fare, MATCH POINT, was brought to us by another film giant, Woody Allen. I guess that the same gods who governed the way of the hurricane season this year are also perhaps influencing Hollywood. It’s about the only good havoc these gods have wreacked in months.

If you’re after bitingly good portrayals of the English upper class and ways in which the mere mortal under classes can and cannot infiltrate them; the obsessions, means and ways committee of the English landed gentry; and the perfect crime, then this one’s for you. It’s Allen at his best in years—with an unlikely cast and no New York backdrop in sight (if you want a bit of Brooklyn, head to MUNICH).
The direction is deft, the script nearly impeccable; and if you want a perfect representation of the pedigreed young Anglo woman, Emily Mortimer’s posture is its manifestation. Her back and shoulders alone should be nominated. I hesitate to single her out because the performances were flawless, but it reminded me of what an older English friend said to me on the beach in France: “You can always spot the English girls because they walk like they’re embarrassed to be alive.”

December has just trumped April as the cruelest month indeed.

To numb your senses after overload? A 2003 Protocolo red wine from Spain—where extremists run with bulls and the country estates are simply dazzling, darling.

December 12, 2005

Terence Malick has made four films in his life. He allows actors to breathe, requires four editors to manage the nuances of his sound design, and most of all: Malick doesn’t direct the moments in his films; his moments are the whole film. Witness: I can barely get out of my seat at the DGA in West Hollywood after Pocohantas dies on an English estate, yet I am jonesing to stretch. Why the trouble with standing? Well, the spleen is weighted, the torso internally twisted…at one with the the Native American heroine. Her Man. Her Other Man. Her Child. The Mother. Her Death.

And may I suggest Glenn Gould’s “The Goldberg Variations” with your Pinotage? Gould also savors his moments—all thirty two of them. A wine aficionado and former violinist with the New York Philharmonic told me that Gould suffered from terrible hypochondria. Well I can tell you that while I watched Malick’s new film, there was no such thing happening in my spleen, no sir. It was real. I was sick with love, faint with longing, and hungry for the woods. My eyes even hurt.

Pocahantas falls in love with John Smith it is as pure as (17th century) Virginia soil. Making love in tall grasses along the James River, separating, reuniting, losing him to a storied drowning. Freeing her spirit despite her loss. Under lesser directors these circumstances fall into maudlin hysteria. But under Malick & Company they are experienced in their raw state—sound, vision, and internal dialogue conspire to come as close as possible to Being Pocohantas. To Being John Smith.

To knowing when your own spirit needs freeing. Knowing when to blow kisses at the sun and thank it for remembering who you are. And when the music stops suddenly at the end and you are jolted from its sinewy, noted mantra and back to nature’s purest sounds, back into the Green World, well…Shakespeare would’ve been proud.