Did ya read that Todd McCarthy review of Shark Tale? Whoa. “The fish aren’t fresh,” he begins in his Toronto Film Festival review. “It has [recently] seemed all but impossible to miss with underwater cartoon fare, but DreamWorks’ latest in-house animated effort finds a way to do just that by basing almost all its ideas on old movies. The odor around this one will result in the wrong kind of b.o. for what was obviously intended as a blockbuster follow-up to the studio’s summer smash Shrek 2.” Will Smith’s lead character, a “hyper-active, jive-talking hustler” named Oscar “proves a tiresomely familiar figure,” he adds. The most amusing voice-actor in the whole enterprise, says McCarthy, is director Martin Scorsese, who “machine-guns his dialogue and whose puffer fish is even drawn with the director’s trademark thick eyebrows.”
In that participle-title chart submitted by Pittsburgh reader George Bolanis that ran last Wednesday, George forgot to include two participle flicks that pre-date all the flicks he listed: Killing Zoe (directed by that great Hollywood Wild Man, Roger Avary) and Chasing Amy (directed by my former boss). And this went right by me.
Peter Rainer has been canned as New York magazine’s film critic and replaced by Entertainment Weekly‘s Ken Tucker, as mandated by mag’s editor-in-chief Adam Moss. Tucker’s an excellent writer, but he’s not part of the monk’s order of sanctified film critics; he’s essentially a rock music critic. This hire follows a trend of bringing in non-monks to fill prestige berths, with examples like (a) Richard Roeper taking Gene Siskel’s place alongside Roger Ebert, (b) L.A. Times TV writer Carino Chocano taking Manohla Dargis’s slot as second-string film critic under Kenny Turan, and (c) a reported interest among Chicago Tribune editors in not wanting to hire a 40ish or 50ish white-guy monk (and to find a younger woman, perhaps) to replace re-assigned Chicago Tribune film critic Mark Caro.

David Poland writes in his Toronto Film Festival capsule review of P.S., the brand-new film from Roger Dodger helmer Dylan Kidd, that costar Laura Linney “[looks] so good in this film that I spent time trying to figure out whether she had gotten cosmetic surgery. (I am told that the answer is ‘no.’).” Next time a woman I know fairly well turns up at a party looking especially attractive, I’m going to go up to her and say, “Wow, you’ve never looked so good and…well, I don’t get it. I mean, I know how you usually look. Did you go under the knife or something?”
A couple of 40ish guys drive up from L.A. to go on a wine-tasting tour of vineyards north of Santa Barbara for a few days. They get lucky with a couple of local women. The lying they use to get going with these women, not to mention certain character flaws (immaturity, impulsiveness), comes back to bite them, but the truth is faced and modest growth steps are taken.
That, in a nutshell, is Alexander Payne’s Sideways (Fox Searchlight, 10.20). It may not sound like much on the surface, but there’s a whole lot going on beneath it, believe me. The sum effect is that Sideways is one of the best films of the year. I don’t care what comes out between now and 12.31 — it stays on the top-ten list.

A day after seeing Sideways on Tuesday night, I put it into the Oscar Balloon as a Best Picture contender, as well as one for Best Director (Payne), Best Screenplay (Payne and Jim Taylor), Best Actor (Paul Giamatti), and Best Supporting Actress (Virginia Madsen). I don’t think I’m over-reacting. I know I’m not.
This is Payne’s most mature and fully realized film ever, and that’s saying something when you’re talking about the guy who made Election, About Schmidt and Citizen Ruth.
But can we agree to cool it with the wine-tasting allusions in the rave reviews to come? No sloshing the movie around in your mouth and mentioning the tannic undertaste, no coming to appreciate this or that character’s vaguely nutty flavor or subtle fruitiness…none of that.
This will be hard, I realize. If there’s ever been a movie awash in the culture of wine-loving, it’s Sideways. It says people are grapes or bottles of wine (or both), and vice versa. It observes how the potency of a life, like a bottle of good wine, can peak at a certain point and then start to inexorably lose it. (Whoa…downer, man.) It plays with the idea of a certain character having the behavioral tendencies of a Pinot grape and another character being more like a Cabernet, etc.

I wrote these words for the WIRED column on Thursday morning: “Sideways is fantastic in lots of small little ways that add up to one big score. It’s not a rock-your-world, drop-your-socks, home-run type of thing, but at the same time it’s damn near perfect and gets better and better the more you mull it over.”
This is what matters in spreading the word, I feel, and not the wine-lover metaphors, which will put off Joe Sixpack types for obvious reasons.
The worst thing a film can do (apart from being awful or boring you to tears) is to deliver this or that cheap high when you’re watching it but then fall apart on the way home. Sideways does the precise opposite. It’s okay at first, and then better, and then deeper and then really funny, and finally very touching. Then it seems to get even better the next morning, and better still a couple of days later.
Sideways walks and talks at times like a buddy movie, but it’s so much more emotionally mature than any buddy movie I’ve ever seen that it doesn’t feel right to call it that.

It’s mainly about Paul Giamatti’s character, a divorced wine connoisseur and would-be novelist named Miles. Calling him a guy with a downer attitude isn’t the half of it. To quote again from WIRED, Giamatti is “a master at conveying morose, cynical, self-loathing funkitude,” and he nails Miles with moves that are always sad and honest, and sometimes hilarious.
Co-stars Thomas Haden-Church and Virginia Madsen are nearly as well drawn, and the fourth character, played by Sandra Oh, is believably inhabited in every imaginable way. Haden-Church doesn’t start out as the funny half of the duo, but he sure as shit ends up that way, and without trying once to be overtly “funny.”
Although Haden-Church plays it real and earnest each step of the way, the reality is that his character, a marginally employed actor named Jack, is close to being a total goon. I’ve known plenty of guys like Jack; they see themselves as reasonably mature and aware, and they’re mostly about nine years old.
Virginia Madsen, who just turned 41, plays Giamatti’s love interest, which struck me as a bit surprising, frankly, if you follow the rule that birds of a feather go out together. She also plays the character with the most soul. She doesn’t have one of those big shouting or crying scenes that great performances are supposed to include, but every time she appears she’s grounded and heartfelt and never once seems to be “acting,” if that’s not too vaguely put.

(It’s funny but I was standing behind Madsen in the check-out line at Pavilions a few weeks ago and trying to remember what she’d last been in. If I’d seen or known about Sideways at the time, I still wouldn’t have said anything…but I wouldn’t have had all those life-is-hard thoughts. Actresses have a very tough time once they pass 35 or so.)
This is a film about some very fundamental things. It’s not an up movie, per se, but only because it’s dealing with recognizable mid-life issues — hurt, fear (of age, failure, loneliness), falling for someone special, stupidity, middle-aged adolescence — in mostly non-Hollywood ways.
And it’s got the funniest scene I’ve seen in any film since the accidental death-of-Wheezy-Joe bit in Intolerable Cruelty. And it involves terrible, turn-your-eyes-away nudity. I was laughing so hard I couldn’t stop, which got in the way of my paying attention to the follow-up scene.
So don’t take a big sip of Sideways or stick your nose in the glass. Don’t swirl it around in your mouth, and don’t wait for the flavor to grow or any of that other wine-snob crap. Just see it and write me and tell me I’m wrong about this film. It won’t happen.
World of Disappointment
[Like I said on Wednesday, I didn’t care enough about getting into a screening of Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, so I asked Alex Stanford, a Team Elsewhere member based in Ottawa, Canada, to weigh in.]
I collected comic books as a kid, I used to work in a video store and my current job is in the high-tech field. All of these things should have made me the perfect reviewer for this film. Who if not someone like me should be able to fully appreciate the pulp-level thrills, the homage to a classic film genre and the technical achievements that Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow has to offer?
I didn’t.

The movie starts off with intrepid reporter Polly Perkins (Gwyneth Paltrow) searching for a group of missing scientists in a stylized 1940’s New York (called Gotham City …clever!) The audience is treated to the backstory through newspaper headlines and radio-news voiceovers, and for the most part the intro works. The problems begin when it’s time to greet our hero.
Sky Captain (Jude Law) is a mercenary for hire, but for what, exactly, we’re never told. He has a fantastic array of gadgets and a super-secret airbase, but again, for no reason I could fathom. Maybe they were just waiting for giant robots to attack. Luckily for them, that’s exactly what happens.
The military calls in Sky Captain, who manages to stop a few of these invaders before they complete their mysterious task and leave a job well done. The only real thing that Cap does in this sequence is rescue his ex-girlfriend. Yeah, you guessed it — Polly.
The most interesting part of this film is the brief moments they lend to the investigation of why these scientists have gone missing and where the robots are coming from. This lasts only about 10 minutes, unfortunately. The rest of the film consists of set pieces and spectacles aimed at wowing an audience right until the end. And they do everything they can to keep your interest, but it always seemed forced.
From references to Indiana Jones, James Bond, THX1138, The Empire Strikes Back and Jurassic Park, you might get the idea that this film is a fun-filled action adventure. But it’s essentially a collection of scenes that hasn’t been strung together in any kind of way that lets you just “enjoy” it for the fun stuff.

There’s a serviceable enough plot in this film, but unfortunately they don’t give you enough time to appreciate it. I’m reminded of the scene in Spaceballs where the evil plan is revealed in intricate detail, and Rick Moranis looks at the screen and says, “Everybody got that? Good.”
Before you know it, we’re brought to another locale or given another whimsical exchange between Polly and Cap. It felt after a while that we were just moments away from having the “Mystery Science Theatre 3000” silhouettes show up.
The characters all seem to be stereotypes: The Hero, The Dame, The Other Woman, The Sidekick , The Villain. I suppose that, given a green screen and little script to work from, each of the actors involved were expected to bring as much as they could to the roles.
Jude Law plays the square-jawed-Joe as well as could be expected. He’s dashing and heroic, but never more than a plot outline. Gwyneth Paltrow does a good job in trying to weave herself into every facet of her character, but unfortunately she’s more whiny than intrepid. Give me Jennifer Jason Leigh from The Hudsucker Proxy any day.
Angelina Jolie has ceased to be an actress, and now resides in the pre-Matchstick Men, Jerry Bruckheimer era of Nic Cage-styled acting. If someone told me that she was totally created in CGI, I wouldn’t blink an eye.

I can’t say much about the villain as it might infringe on the surprise element, but I’m still waiting for the payoff. And the bad guy’s Darth Maul-esque sidekick (played by Bai Ling, another character that could have been all CGI) was, again, less a character than a plot device.
The only character I actually liked was Dex (Giovanni Ribisi), Sky Captain’s sidekick, who played kinda like Q from the Bond films. He was surprisingly subtle, and looked like he actually gave some thought into his role. They must have filmed his scenes separately.
I loved the concept-y art of this thing. The tall buildings, shapes and textures sraddle the line between fantasy and history, and are fairly fantastic. Unfortunately, it still felt like they were in front of a green screen for any of the large set pieces. The only time it works is when they’re in close-quarters like a lab or a storeroom, and there are a few more tangible items around to give the feeling of depth.
Gwyneth runs away from robots for a few minutes at the start of this film, and she may as well have been running on stage with the film projected behind her.
Using soft lighting to cover up the line between real and animated was a good choice. The animators obviously knew their weakness here and tried to turn it into a strength by making it part of the look of the film. Unfortunately, most of the scenes come off looking like the characters are sitting around a campfire with a flashlight pointing up at their faces.

The creators also knew that that the human form is hard to animate realistically, and so they did everything but that. There are a few times (in the movie theatre scene, the air platform, etc…) where they are forced to fill a room or a walkway with people, and they look positively flat. But they nail the robots, the vehicles, the mountains and the dinosaurs.
Yup, dinosaurs. Don’t ask.
There are a few exchanges between Polly and Cap that do work, the film is fun in several sequences, but aside from that, forget it. This is purely a film in service of visual graphics, instead of the other way around.
And it’s too bad, because it is quite obvious that writer/director Kerry Conran has some real talent. I think that computer graphics have come a long way in the last decade, but still aren’t up to carrying a film. The audience is so used to seeing them employed for “the big payoff” that they look for it. I prefer the approach taken by some directors (e.g., David Fincher) to blend computer graphics with actual scenes to achieve shots he just couldn’t get with a regular camera setup.
And I don’t care how many modificiations Dex comes up with, there’s no way a plane can fly underwater. I think they were just trying to piss me off, as they do it twice . Oh, and another thing: this film definitely wins the award for “worst inclusion of ‘Somewhere over the rainbow’ since Face/Off. I’m just saying.
At best, Sky Captain is an interesting failure. The younger crowd might enjoy it, but any sophisticated moviegoer is going to have a hard time.
Familiar
In his Wednesday column filed from the Toronto Film Festival, MCN’s Len Klady writes:
“When I hit the circuit Wednesday the atmosphere had changed. The wattage level had dropped conspicuously and the press/industry participation seemed to have diminished to almost nothing. The change was so dramatic and abrupt that I began to doubt the obvious and found myself asking others whether they were experiencing it too.
“‘It’s over,’ said one Los Angeles-based sales rep. ‘I’m outta here tomorrow.’ A lot of other people came for the weekend and departed on Tuesday and as the festival nears its conclusion, there’s precious little on the horizon set to debut that was among the must-see titles.”

One year earlier, I wrote the following dispatch from Toronto:
“The Toronto Film Festival began to suddenly downshift on Wednesday [9.10.03], revealing a fact that is not widely known: this is a five-day festival that happens to run for ten days. Trust me, the juice was all-but-gone as of midnight on Tuesday, 9.9. Nearly all of the hot-ticket attractions were press-screened the first five days, primarily to accomodate the film-buying community which prefers to get in and get out, fast.”
Eight months earlier, I wrote the following from Park City, Utah on 1.23.03:
“The ’04 Sundance Film Festival ran out of steam about two days ago. Sometime late Wednesday afternoon, I’d say. You could feel it everywhere. Familiar faces were missing. Main Street wasn’t as crowded. Journalists and ticket-holders were still going to films yesterday (i.e., Thursday), but the spark was gone.
“There’s a reason that festival programmers always front-load this festival. People quit after five or six days. Seven days max. Even if you’re 22 years old and in perfect health, your body rebels at a certain point.”
To Arms?
“I appreciate your spreading the word about Universal Home Video’s forthcoming DVD release of Charley Varrick. But did you read the info in Uni’s link? It says that the title will be released in an aspect ratio of 1.33:1. Full frame. Modified to fit your screen.
“Didn’t you recently run a screed against Sony for doing same with their release of Castle Keep? Given your position of influence, reporting the release of a ‘modified’ DVD only feeds the fire of ignorance, and indeed, sends the wrong message to the studios, and…well,you know it, man.
“We DVD fans sometime unreasonably demand the moon, but in the case of Charley Varrick, all we want is the OAR (original aspect ratio). And a trailer. I expect you, as a passionate film fan, to insist on nothing less. How about amending your item and taking, and taking Universal to task?” — Dave S..

Wells to Dave S.: Original aspect ratios indeed! This doesn’t sound good. I tried asking Universal Home Video’s publicity people about this on Friday morning, but they were in a meeting.
Before you get your knickers in a twist, you should consider that there may be an upside to this situation…maybe.
First of all, Charley Varrick is not a Castle Keep because it wasn’t shot in 2.35 to 1 Scope. It was shot in the standard Academy aspect ratio of 1.33 to 1, and then either hard-matted in 1.85 on the prints, which is uncommon, or simply projected at 1.85 in theatres.
Most of the time, a 1.33 to 1 aspect tratio on a DVD means they’ve chopped off visual information, but when it came to Stanley Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket DVD (which was a very unusual DVD mastering, granted) it meant that more information than was commonly seen in theatres was being provided. So it’s conceivable, if unlikely, that UHV’s Charley Varrick DVD will be the same kind of deal.
It wouldn’t surprise me if the forthcoming Varrick DVD will provide an image with the sides lopped off. You’re usually on safe ground if you assume laziness of the part of DVD distributors, especially when it comes to mastering older titles that aren’t regarded as Oscar-level classics, which is the case here.
Like you, I would prefer to see a Charley Varrick with as much visual information as possible. I’m just saying it doesn’t necessarily follow that a 1.85 to 1 crop will provide that. Technically, a film shot in a standard Academy ratio loses information off the top and bottom of the image it’s shown or matted at 1.85 to 1.
Aaahhh!
“I noticed in your Sideways review you talked about a funny scene that featured ‘turn-your-eyes-away nudity.’ I have yet to see the film, so i don’t know for sure, but there was a clip from Sideways that came online this spring that sounds like it could be that scene you’re talking about…only this clip wasn’t a finished scene, merely an outtake.
Well, anyway, I thought you might enjoy seeing the outtake…whether it’s that scene or not. It’s at joblo.com: http://www.joblo.com/movs/show-sideways.mov.
The Talmud says that the only sin God cannot forgive is despair, according to regular reader Joe Greenia. Even if the Talmud doesn’t proclaim this, these are words I should probably think about. Especially considering the latest Harris Interactive poll posted on the Wall Street Journal‘s website today (Thursday, 9.16), reporting that John Kerry has gotten 48 percent of the intended vote, compared with 47 percent for Bush. (Nader got 2%.) Great, but I’m still pissed at Team Kerry for all their fumbles and hesitations.

Johnny Ramone is dead at 55 and I’m sorry. A Republican, yes, but 55 is way too young to leave the planet. But don’t just hang your head — go see End of the Century: The Story of the Ramones this weekend and really put your body and your wallet into celebrating one of the 20th Century’s greatest rock bands. Johnny himself called it “a very dark movie…accurate…it left me disturbed.” And yet it’s a film about kicking out the jams until there’s nothing left to give, and if that isn’t a positive, life-affirming, never-say-die attitude, I don’t what would be.
Alexander Payne’s Sideways is fantastic in a lot of small little ways that add up to one big score. It’s not a rock-your-world, drop-your-socks, home-run type of thing, but at the same time it’s damn near perfect and it gets better and better the more you mull it over. People are grapes and vice versa, and shove that schnozz right into that wine glass, baby! David Poland may be right in calling it “the first true masterpiece of 2004.” Paul Giamatti (a master at conveying morose, cynical, self-loathing funkitude) is God, Virginia Madsen is a likely Best Supprting Actress nominee, Sandra Oh hits it on the head and Thomas Haden-Church is a total howl.
Who can think about movies at a time like this?
The bad guys are probably going to be running things for another four years and I’m supposed to shrug this off and bang out some kind of riff on this weekend’s openers — Wimbledon or Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow or Head in the Clouds?
Okay, let’s briefly do that. Except I don’t have much to say.

Paramount Pictures publicists let me come to their screenings but they don’t go out of their way to invite me either, so I haven’t seen Sky Captain because I haven’t made the effort, but I don’t think anyone needs my help in sussing this out. I’ll go this weekend, I suppose.
Head in the Clouds (Sony Pictures Classics), a 1930s and ’40s European wartime romance thing with Charlize Theron, Stuart Townsend and Penelope Cruz, is, in a certain sense, nicely written and directed (by John Duigan), but there’s no tension in the story, and so the movie tends to more or less lie there.
And there didn’t seem to be much reason to see Wimbledon, and I didn’t give a damn about seeing Mr. 3000 either so that just about covers it, I think.
Back to the “blues” feeling the blues…
I’m sure Moveon.org will disagree, but it’s obvious what’s happened over the last week or so. There’s a strong likelihood that election is over and Dubya — the worst President in the country’s history…the dumbest, the cockiest, the most deeply indebted to the most venal and loathsome people in the country, plus the most arrogant and dangerous…it’s very likely that Bush has it sewn up.
I can’t believe I just wrote that. I’m very angry about this. But look at this rundown — http://www.electoral-vote.com — and tell me I’m wrong.

As far as I’m concerned John Kerry is a major bad guy for letting this happen. He’s done a masterful job of out-Dukakis-sing Michael Dukakais with his idiotic inability not to see that the counsel of Bob Shrum, the Democratic candidate killer, was leading his crusade into quicksand, and this along with his regular-guy personality, awesome steadiness and clear-cut focus on his Iraqi War policy positions…he just won the swing voters over.
To the Bushie side, I mean.
Even if he turns it all around and wins, he’ll still be a jerk and a girly-man. I’m thinking I might vote for Nader out of disgust, and I never thought I’d say that. All right, I’m still a Kerry supporter but what a muddle-headed wimp he turned out to be.
A Connecticut guy named Jim Hammell saw my WIRED posting on this catastrophe yesterday afternoon and wrote back the following:
“You’re right on the money. Four months ago I was betting on a Kerry victory. Now I’m all but certain Bush is going to be re-elected.
“In my opinion, one of the big reasons for Kerry’s downfall (besides his less-than-stellar personality) is negativity. For the past six months, the Democrats, Michael Moore, Al Franken, etc. have attacked Bush relentlessly. Yes, it’s deserved. Yes, Bush has failed on virtually every level of being a President. Yes, he needs to go. But I got the message the first 10,000 times.

“From talking to swing voters (yes, there are a few in Connecticut) I’ve found that many are considering voting for Bush not because of his record, but out of spite. The constant attack by the Democrats, Hollywood, etc., have made them think of Bush as, believe it or not, an “underdog.” A ridiculous concept…but that’s the perception. They feel sorry for him. It’s maddening.
“With two months until the election, I have enough reasons not to vote for Bush. Now I need reasons to vote for Kerry. I need a reason to get behind him. The Democrats have to go positive at this point…despite the fact that it’s easier to go negative.
“Kerry has my vote regardless, but I really think we’re looking at a blown opportunity.”
No Masterpiece
Roger Ebert has called Undertow (United Artists. 10.29) a masterpiece. Director David Gordon Green definitely has his brief together and he may very well one day turn out a truly grade-A film, but forget the “m” word as far as this Terrence Malick-y, southern-fried, kids-on-the-run movie is concerned.
Call it an “s.i.,” as in somewhat intriguing.
Green’s thing so far (in George Washington and All the Real Girls ) has been to plumb the inner lives of rootless disenchanted kids in the South. This time he throws in action, violence, murder and a deranged low-rent villain, played by (was there a choice?) Josh Lucas. Green is obviously trying to go mainstream, and I like the gently spun character and atmosphere flavorings that he uses to make things feel real and lived-in, but the story is a so-whatter.

You’ve got two brothers (Jamie Bell, Devon Allan) being raised by their hee-haw dad (Dermot Mulroney) in a ramshackle, Tobacco Road-type farmhouse. Then along comes Muloney’s lower-end-of-the-gene-pool brother (Lucas), who’s just gotten out of the slammer and wants to move in. He’s trash, of course, and soon enough wants some gold coins left by his and Mulroney’s father for himself.
Then a very bad thing happens, Bell and Allan are soon running away from Lucas and he’s hot on their trail, and yaddah-yaddah.
And that’s it. I’m not saying there aren’t dabs of beauty in this film — there are — but it’s more in the dialogue, acting and pictorial mood stuff. I’m basically saying it’s a little bit boring, but in a quality-type way.
Poor Josh
Part of my impatience with Undertow had to do with sitting through the umpteenth Josh Lucas performance as a fiendish psycho nutbag. He definitely seems to be Hollywood’s go-to guy for playing reprehensible assholes, but aren’t we all tiring of this?
Lucas played a relatively decent sort in A Beautiful Mind, a fairly likable dad in Jordan Roberts’ Around the Bend (Warner Independent, 10.15), and a somewhat tolerable guy(a dead one, possibly) in Lasse Hallstrom’s An Unfinished Life (Miramax, 12.24). And I believed in his character’s bottom-line decency in Around the Bend.
As Lucas is a pretty good actor, it seems a shame that he’s been typecast this way. I’m sure he’s played other non-offensive types…only they’re hard to remember. All I know is that he’s played nutters so often that all he has to do is walk onscreen and audiences go, “Yo…bad guy!”
He played Laura Linney’s dickwad ex-husband in You Can Count on Me. He played a malevolent type in American Psycho. He was a predatory gay guy hitting on a teenage boy in The Deep End. He played Eric Bana’s evil antagonist (a truly disgusting character) in The Hulk. His Wonderland character was so rancid you almost had to laugh.
I’ll bet Lucas has played more bad guys in the seven or eight other films he’s made; I just haven’t seen all of them.
I thought when he romantically hooked up with Salma Hayek earlier this year that he might get some power out of this alliance and possibly shake things loose. Maybe that process is underway. He needs something.
Finger Lickin’
Sally Potter’s Yes, which showed at the Toronto Film Festival a few nights ago (but hasn’t yet landed a distributor), is a kind of lust story.
Set mostly in London, it’s about an affair between a married Irish-American scientist (Joan Allen) and a Lebanese doctor (Simon Akbarian) working as a chef in a London restaurant. Sam Neill plays Allen’s husband. Shirley Henderson has a curious little part as the couple’s maid who has a perceptive take on their personal undercurrents.
The finest things in Yes are Alexei Rodionov’s cinematography and Daniel Goddard’s editing. You could watch it without sound and…actually, if you did that you’d miss the iambic pentameter dialogue, and that’s supposed to be important, I think.
Anyway, Allen and Abkarian’s fuckathon eventually runs into difficulty when he starts to get enraged about a feeling that he’s being treated like, or regarded as, her Lebanese boy-toy. The whole post-9/11, Anglos-looking-askance-at-Arabs thing is harshly reviewed.

Yes is certainly not your usual older-white-woman-falls-for-somewhat-younger-Arab-guy movie. I especially liked the scene in which Abkarian has manual finger-sex with Allen in a restaurant with people and waiters nearby, and then licks his digits for dessert. Good bit.
But I have to say something: Abkarian doesn’t have the dignity, discipline and inner thoughtfulness of Chiwetel Ejiofor, the man of color who played the London immigrant and African doctor in Stephen Frear’s Dirty Pretty Things, had. Mr. Ejiofor had class; Abkarian has a lot less. He’s less considered, less carefully composed. I didn’t much like him because of this.
And his nose is too big. I kept staring at it. Cyrano! Durante! I’m sorry but he seemed common to me, like a chuckling rug merchant you might meet in the Marrakech medina. I hated a scene in which Abkarian dances for Allen on a table top. And I despised him for getting into an argument with a couple of guys in the kitchen, and he’s stupid enough to hold a knife like a weapon, knowing that he’s more likely to be found at fault if the authorities come, which of course they do.
Can I say this? I’m going to say it anyway. Abkarian isn’t good enough to copulate with Joan Allen, and she lowers herself appreciably in our eyes by spreading her legs for him. I’m sorry to voice this in crude stereotype terms, but he’s not my kind of Arab. (Did you ever hear the line that Woody Allen once said about Harvey Weinstein? “He’s not my kind of Jew,” he said. I got this straight from a guy who worked for Allen.)
I read over Sally Potter’s nicely written press notes about the film, and in some ways they frankly told me more about the film than the film itself did. That should tell you something right there.
Uncle Charley
Again, a movie I included in my Most Wanted DVD column of two or three weeks ago is now scheduled to be released on DVD. Don Siegel’s Charley Varrick (1973) is due from Universal Home Video on 12.28.04.
Here’s the link: http://homevideo.universalstudios.com/title.php?titleId=317
Here’s what I wrote about this 1973 semi-classic last month:
Don Siegel’s Charley Varrick, with Walter Matthau, Joe Don Baker, John Vernon, Andrew Robinson, Sheree North, Woodrow Parfrey and Norman Fell, is one of the best second-tier, no-big-deal crime flicks ever made.

Admired for its low-key tone and character-driven action, for the crackling tension from Siegel’s shooting and cutting of the opening bank-robbery sequence, and for Matthau’s easy-going turn as a wise, cagey, seen-it-all indie felon. But it’s Baker and Vernon who give the tastiest performances — the former as a suave, southern-fried, pipe-smoking assassin in a cowboy hat and cream-colored suit, and the latter as a Reno exec fronting for organized crime.
The dialogue in Vernon’s heart-to-heart scene with Parfrey, playing a wimpy Las Cruces bank manager to perfection, is so good that Quentin Tarantino ripped it off. “You know what kind of men they are,” Vernon informs Parfrey, whom he suspects may have colluded with guys who made off with $300,000 in mob loot. “They’ll strip you, tie you down and go to work on you with a blowtorch and a pair of pliers.”
It’s also worth noting that Universal Home Video has finally gotten around to putting out Costa-Gavras’ excellent 1982 film Missing, set for 11.23
Participles
Pittsburgh-based reader George Bolanis has written the following:
“Let’s look at the mini-trend of participle-based movie titles. (Of which the latest lifeless, imagination-less example I have seen in this group is Being Julia.)
“I will start with the contention that Being John Malkovich kick-started the trend as everyone who passed on that project salivated with envy and pounded their head with regret. From there on, people just saw a title-packaging strategy.

“I’ve tried to remember as many titles as I could recall along these lines. I decided to plot the titles on a bell curve showing the Originators (known in marketing parlance as early adopters) on the left against the Bandwagon-Jumping Laggards on the right. (See attached.)
“Should a producer-distributor even bother trying to buck a popular trend that might contribute to a more substantive fare falling flat because its title falls within an overused device even if it suits the art in the long run? Are a few bad apples ruining it for everyone else?
“I myself tend to get sick of any product (movie, snack food, whatever) that might even seem to be jumping on the bandwagon.” — George Bolanis, Pittsburgh, PA.
Hold The Line!
“I’m sympathetic to all the feelings you expressed about Kerry sinking and the fight already lost, because I’ve felt them myself over the past few weeks. But it’s time to for each one of us to cowboy up and fight, because this one’s going to be close and we need everybody we can get. Worry is healthy, but despair is toxic. Kerry is a good guy who thinks about what he does and then does what he thinks is right. He will make a much better president than the one we have. That’s what matters.” — Rob Thomas, Madison, WI.
“While I love your movie column, I have to say you’ve jumped over a cliff on this Kerry-has-already-lost thing.
“I’ve been following electoral-vote.com for the last month or so, and can honestly say that on any particular day it doesn’t tell you much of anything about which way the vote is going to go. Two days he had Kerry winning this thing. What changed? Two polls in Pennsylvania and Florida changed a few points. That accounts for a flip of almost 50 electoral votes. And yet both are very close to being in the margin of error of the poll.
“It could be a skewed poll (like some of the recent national polls that call more registered Republicans). It could be all the emergency aid money Bush is pumping into Florida. It could be people talking up Nader who may never get a chance to vote for him. So calm down on that one.
“As for Kerry losing it….well, just wait. His bump in the polls after the Demo convention was expected. As was the reverse after the Republican convention. And
don’t forget the polls from Iowa that said he wasn’t even going to compete in the caucus, and look how he made everyone look like fools on that one.
“As for him going soft, of course he has. Independent voters are more more likely to go toward candidates that offer hope rather than accusations and fear. That’s why Bush declared himself as a compassionate conservative four years ago, even though he’s been proved well wrong on the first part.
“And for your letter writer who said that people he’s spoken to in Connecticut are tired of the left the picking on poor Bush…what!?! Yes, the Swift Boat ads were against him. Yes, Cheney said if he’s elected terrorists will strike. Not to emntion the flip-flopper, unpatriotic liberal, didn’t deserve his medals, etc.
“This is a messy campaign with the attacks coming from both sides. Please don’t give in to it by pretending one side is getting it worse than the other.” — Mike Shea, Washington, D.C.

Wells to Shea: I hope it turns around, of course, but I’m enraged that Kerry isn’t scrappier and faster-on-the-draw with all this stuff flying at him. I don’t how to explain this even to myself, but I’m starting to really dislike him now because of his general hesitations and ineffectualness. If Bush is re-elected for another four it’ll be Kerry’s fault and no one else’s, and for this he will deserve a lifetime of condemnation.
“Your attitude is exactly what the Republicans are hoping would happen after their
bizarro-world convention. Check any of the latest polls and you’ll see not only has Bush lost any bump he got out of his convention, but he’s rapidly losing ground to Kerry once again.
“If you honestly believe this is an important election and if you think Bush deserves to be defeated after four years of unmitigated disasters, then you need to stop whining about it and do something. Call, write or email anyone you know in a swing state. Get them on board. Get off your ass.
“Nader’s not a solution — he’s part of the problem. The problem is George W. Bush.
“You write like you’re quitting. Now is the most important time of the election. Who gives a damn if you thought Kerry had it sewn up two months ago or if you think Bush has it in the bag now? The election is on November 2, dumbass. That’s the only time any of this matters, so do something now.
“Come on, Wells, I like you and respect your work, but this attitude you’ve got right now is bullshit.” — K. R. Olson.
Wells to Olson: I’m not quitting. I’m just angry at Mr. Candy-Ass and his dithering mind-changing manner. I’m sick of his equivocations. He’d better turn it around and get on the stick (and you’re right — so should I) and win this damn thing or else, or he should be exiled to the Solomon Islands and kept there under armed guard.
“Your Kerry depression is completely justified. I read with interest the rah-rah Kerry types you are scolding you, but those guys are living in dreamland.
“I have worked in public opinion polling for a decade and these recent polls (especially state polls) demonstrate a real certainty that Bush will not only be re-elected, but that he will probably have 2 to 5 more GOP senators to work with, and maybe 5 to 10 more GOP representatives.
“Kerry has stopped all media buys in Missouri — he’s written off the prototype middle-American state, and no president has taken the White House without winning Missouri in, like, 75 years. This is simply incredible for a candidate to do.
“Florida is lost to Kerry — the polls there are very bad now. A friend of mine who works on a Senate campaign there says the internal polls he has seen show Bush leading well outside the margin of error. Unemployment is lower in Florida than anywhere in America.
“The meta-problem revealed by these polls is that Bush has led consistently since the convention by margins far more pronounced than Kerry ever did. Kerry did not bounce like this after the Democratic convention. As the election gets near, the polls show people becoming more and more solidified in their choice, and polls have shown this for decades.
“Since the national and state polls appear to show Bush leading, one should expect that this lead will hold, as more and more people have made up their mind (I think in excess of 85% for both parties).
“Kerry’s focus on gun control the last week is a big indicator that even he knows he’s finished, he’s merely trying to rally the base now and hope to win a few close congressional races.
“While I am not fond of Bush, the Democratic party really insulted the intelligence of independent voters like me with Kerry. He’s an empty suit, passionless, with a far-left-wing voting record in the Senate….way too far left to win a national election. (Bill Clinton was the prototype they should have looked for.) Bush is no prize, but believe me, a lot of swing-staters out here who would have been happy to vote for a decent Democrat will be drinking Bush Kool-aid on election day.
“‘Anybody but Bush’ isn’t a road map to success if the anybody is a candidate and man as weak as Kerry.” — Kansas City Chris.


Can George Butler’s Going Upriver: The Long War of John Kerry make a difference? Answer: Probably not because it’s hitting theatres too late in the game. “Will audiences pay to see what amounts to a two-hour political tribute to a man spotlighted free on the news every night?,” asks Sharon Waxman in a 9.14 New York Times story. “Can a theatrically released feature film create last-minute momentum for a presidential candidate? Could the effort boomerang?” Bitter answer: Kerry is toast. It’s over. Butler’s doc, if you care, will open in 200 theaters on 10.1, less than five weeks before the election.
A Tuesday New York Post story says Harvey and Bob Weinstein are looking to stay with Disney now that Michael Eisner’s agreed to step down (and you can bet he’ll be gone well before ’06). The brothers are no longer considering splitting up, the Post story reported, and are looking for a way to stay within the fold. Miramax spokesman Matthew Hiltzik told the newspaper that the Weinsteins “remain dedicated to achieving an amicable resolution that will allow Miramax to perpetuate Eisner’s legacy, and their own.”
Val Kilmer will soon begin performing his singing role as Moses in The Ten Commandments, a “spectacular pop stage musical” that “tells the 3,3000 year-old story of Moses’ exodus from Egypt and his journey towards happiness, life and rebirth,” according to Broadway World.com. (It’s apparently based on the DreamWorks animated musical feature.) Moses was happy? The only time Charlton Heston’s Moses smiled was when he embraced Anne Baxter. This sounds like horseshit for the tourists. And Kilmer is doing this for…the money?

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