Balls and Walnuts
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Category Archives: At the movies
Now the Coen Brothers are all right with me.
So y’all know I wasn’t down with A Serious Man, right? But being the forgiving sort, I took myself to see True Grit today. I read the Charles Portis novel this last summer and loved it. Would the Coen Brothers give it their No Country For Old Men (i.e., slavishly faithful) treatment? I hoped so.
Happy to report that they did, indeed. While they felt it necessary to add at least one scenelet to punch up the drama (a bit between Mattie and LaBouef, wherein she tells the Texas Ranger that she “threw in with the wrong man”), they followed Portis’s novel quite well, cribbing whole swaths of dialog. One slight misstep, in my opinion: they include the novel’s coda (which the John Wayne version, to my recollection, dropped) but Mattie’s voice-over was lacking. If ever the Coens should have taken something whole from the novel, it was Mattie’s dismissal of Cole Younger’s and Frank James’s traveling road show. This was Mattie’s (and Portis’s) way of saying goodbye to the myth of the Old West, and it would have been a nice touch to include it in the movie’s end. Instead, we get some bland comment that time goes by, or some such.
Anyway — see it. You’ll have a good time. The Coens played it more for laughs than did the John Wayne version, which is in keeping with Portis’s own sly humor. And while I think Kim Darby was the best thing by far about the old version, Hailee Steinfeld does a stunning Mattie, and I hope she gets at least a nod from the Academy for her performance. Jeff Bridges does a fine Rooster Cogburn, chewing and gargling his lines, and Matt Damon’s LaBouef crushes Tom Campbell’s performance (but any non-comatose actor could have done that).
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What the hell was that all about?
A Serious Man is a Coen Brothers movie. How could I go wrong? Not to mention it’s received all sorts of awards and critical acclaim, an 88% from Rotten Tomatoes. And it’s all about the tribe (my tribe, that is) back in the late 1960s.
The equations? Don't tune your laser on 'em.
The film centers on physics professor and shlimazel Larry Gopnik (pictured above), a sad sack who bears the brunt of one bad turn after another. His wife is leaving him, but not before draining the bank account and kicking him out of the house; his brother — who is working on some sort of Map of the Universe-as-betting system theory called the Mentaculus — has moved in with him, so when Larry departs to the Jolly Roger Motel, the brother goes with him; one of his students is trying alternately to bribe or sue his way to a better grade, and the Tenure Committee promises that they’ll try to ignore all those anonymous letters accusing Larry of moral turpitude.
Oh, and then there’s this shtetl-tale at the movie’s beginning, which as far as I can tell was tacked on to provide narrative drive to an otherwise drive-less film. No, really. I would have quit watching half way through if it hadn’t been for the little tale in the opening, because — well, you know, it’s the classic “mystery drive” — I had to know what connection this opening had with the rest of the movie. Turns out, none. According to the Wikipedia article, it’s meant to set the mood. To which I call bullshit, since in a movie, as with a short story, there should be no spare parts.
As Larry’s world crumbles, he visits one rabbi after another. Their vacuous platitudes, their complete and utter inability to provide Larry with anything approaching help or understanding, was the only thing which resonated with me in this whole film. Which is really saying something, considering I was a Jew growing up in much the same era as Larry’s son.
By the end, I’m lost. If I don’t understand this, not even a little, then no one can*. Once again I call bullshit. This is the emperor without his clothes. All those critics who raved, all those awards: these are people who do not want to admit they didn’t understand A Serious Man.
Karen saw a point to it, though. Her summary: “Jehovah’s a bastard.” Anyone who has perused the Old Testament would have to agree, I think. So I guess one has to ask what it is about us Yids that we cling to the Guy who on a bet smote the crap out of Job’s world, then berated Job for looking at Him crosswise. Who thought nothing about destroying the world and starting all over again.
But that deity only makes sense in the archaic world of the time. Think of the Greek pantheon (or any of those ancient pantheons) and all the gods’ shortcomings and petty evils. They were humans with the powers of a god. Modern day Jews and Christians would like to think their God is somehow above all that, but the scriptures don’t give much support. And while Jesus made the attempt to make it all about love, forgiveness, and charity, how many nowadays live that message? It’s almost as though they’re more content with their bloodthirsty God than with his hippie Son.
Anyway, I’d say give A Serious Man a pass, unless you’re so OCD you have to see every Coen Brothers movie.
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Or else I’m stupid. Arrogant and stupid.
too tired
I can go a whole call week without a single call. It has happened many times.
Tonight I got three calls, all patients that had to be seen, and I saw them one after the other. When it rains . . .
So this is all I got. I especially like the movie about killer contraceptives:
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Must watch
Channel surfed around this evening to find something to watch while we ate my pad thai . . . lit upon Peter Jackson’s The Lovely Bones, great case of fascination of the abomination there. I watched just enough to assure myself that Roger Ebert’s review was spot on, and enough to remind myself how much I hated that book. Then channel surfed across the cable and got torn between two movies I really love: Groundhog Day and Clueless. Clueless won, but only because Alicia Silverstone is so adorable.
And once I start watching, I have to watch to the end. I’m that way about rom-coms more than anything else. I have to see Alicia hook up with Paul Rudd, or Bill Murray with Andie McDowell, or Gene Wilder with Teri Garr (what, you didn’t know Young Frankenstein was a romantic comedy?) I’m that way with Grosse Pointe Blank, too, and I don’t even care that much for Minnie Driver. But you gotta love John Cusack’s blood-soaked proposal at the end.
How about you — what movies do you love so much you’ll watch them over and over, no matter how many times you’ve seen them before?
Listening to Pandora right now . . . Uncanny how well it reads my likes.
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More Madeline
Continuing yet again my son’s education with Blazing Saddles. I haven’t watched it all the way through since the movie first came out, when I was what, twelve? I’d forgotten a great deal of it, which was cool, in a way. Like watching it (almost) for the first time.
Much appreciated by my son, although I think we all disliked the meta BS at the end. Thank heavens Brooks didn’t pull that in Young Frankenstein.
Oh, YouTube has embedding disabled for damn near every Blazing Saddles clip, so I couldn’t give you Madeline Kahn’s musical number. You’ll just have to click on the link above.
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My son’s ongoing education
Last week we feted him with The Man With Two Brains; tonight, Young Frankenstein.
What’s next? He’s seen all the Python movies. And Dr. Strangelove. Blazing Saddles, perhaps, or a Pink Panther movie?
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One fine moment of many
We’ve neglected Jake’s education, deprived him of so many Great Movies. True, we’ve made him watch Godfather I and II and Sunset Boulevard, but he hasn’t seen Lawrence of Arabia, or The Sting, or Little Big Man.
Or The Man With Two Brains . . . until tonight.
We have to make up for his knowledge deficit, and soon. Less than three years before he goes away to college. Hopefully we have the time. Next up on our Netflix queue: Young Frankenstein. He’s seen clips, but he’s never seen the whole thing.
What’s your Must See movie? And oh, don’t forget the contest.
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Curses!
While surfing the cable’s channel guide, Karen paused over Kung Pow Enter the Fist. We both registered the 2.5 stars someone had assigned Kung Pow, and waited with trepidation for our son’s response.
You have to understand that for Jake, Kung Pow is sacred text, quotes from which can be recontextualized to suit any comic circumstance. You wouldn’t believe how many ways he can spin (or — I admit it — how many ways I can spin) “Let me know if you see a Radio Shack,” or “That’s a lot of nuts!” No one fucks with his Kung Pow.
“The guy who gave Kung Pow two and a half stars should die in a fire,” my son declared.
Which cracked me up. My son, whom no one would ever suppose had a Jewish father — I mean, aside from his Yiddishe kopf, what’s Jewish about the kid? Oh. He likes latkes — had just come precariously close to uttering a Jewish curse. Needs a little work, mind you. Like any first attempt, it’s unrefined. Lacks that certain zing.
From this curious site, here are a few good ones that have withstood the test of time.
May they find thousands of new cures for you each year.
May you grow so rich that your widow’s second husband
never has to worry about making a living.
You should be like a chandelier — you should hang and burn.
And the similarly themed
May the sun and the spring breeze warm you and caress you like an apple as you hang from a tree.
Yeah, Jake, dying in a fire can’t hold a candle to growing beets in your stomach and peeing borscht.
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Inception
Jake and I saw Inception today, and while I liked the movie, it’s one of the trailers that really blew my mind.
They’ve made a movie about the creation of Facebook. No kidding. It’s called The Social Network and the trailer was about as thrilling as the title. While I enjoyed Jessie Eisenberg in Zombieland, I’m not following him to this execrable commercial-as-drama. What’ll be next, You’ve Got Gmail? Unless the Harvard students in this film develop a hunger for human brains, I’ll sit this one out.
But back to Inception. I almost didn’t see it because I happen to dislike Leonardo DiCaprio, or as he’s known in this household, Leonardo DiCrapio. He’s one of those actors (like Tom Cruise) who, for me anyway, always seems like he’s playing a role rather than living the character. Karen sat this one out because she’s even less forgiving than me — she thought his portrayal of Howard Hughes in The Aviator was lifeless.
Having seen the movie, I have one thing to say. Or rather, one thing to photoshop.
Just a few comments for now, since it’s late and I still need to play Civilization IV and kick some Incan ass. (Hey, they started it!) But first, if you haven’t read a review, here’s the movie in a nutshell: DiCaprio’s character (Cobb) and his band of technicians/psychologists/artists (they’re a bit of all three) can delve into a dreamer’s mind to extract secrets. They’re industrial espionage operatives, and they’ve been given a new job: to plant an idea, which in their parlance is known as inception. Cobb would rather not take this one on, since inception is either difficult or impossible (and, we come to learn, dicey emotional turf for him), but his employer, Saito, makes him an offer he can’t refuse. Pull this one off and Saito will fix some pending charges back home that prevent Cobb from returning to his family.
Hey, um . . . now, why couldn’t his family rejoin him in some extradition-less foreign country? Forget it, forget it. Suspend disbelief.
Some thoughts . . .
1. The movie has an interesting narrative structure. Not as ingenious as director Christopher Nolan’s earlier Memento, but still challenging. At one point in the movie, the dreams are nested four deep, so there are five layers of reality (one real one, four dream), and Nolan still manages to tell a clear story.
2. Which is not to say that the plot doesn’t have problems. Jake and I being Hoffmans, we promptly tore it apart not five minutes out of the theater.
Which is not to say that we didn’t still enjoy it.
3. Nolan wrote the screenplay, too, and he made superb use of a literary device known as resonance — repetition of a word or image (in Inception‘s case, some of both) to achieve depth and emotional punch. Marvelous work.
4. This movie is a smorgasbord of former child actors. Lukas Haas (remember the kid in Witness?) is here, as is Joseph Gordon-Levitt (“Third Rock from the Sun”). Ellen Page was in two TV shows as a kid: something called “Pit Pony” and another something called “Trailer Park Boys.” And Leonardo DiCaprio made his bones as a teenager in “Santa Barbara,” “Roseanne,” and “Parenthood.”
5. The science is bankrupt, inasmuch as Nolan perpetuates an old myth that time passes more slowly in dreams than it does in the real world. Did I say that right? In other words, five minutes in a dream equals one hour in the real world, something like that, and the deeper nested you are in dreams, the more the time dilation is magnified. Not a minor plot point — crucial, in fact.
A renowned sleep and dream researcher named William Dement determined something like 40 years ago that time passes at the same rate in dreams as it does in the real world. He did this by waking subjects up at a specified time following the onset of REM sleep and asking them to recount what they had experienced. Repeatedly, five minutes of dream time contained about five minutes worth of stuff, ten minutes encompassed ten minutes, and so forth.
But don’t let that spoil your enjoyment of the movie.
5. One thing I really, really liked: you know how in caper movies (think Raiders of the Lost Ark, for example), the premise and the characters are set up in the beginning with an action-packed caper holding plenty of near-disasters, but the final result is oh so slick? Well in Inception, the initial caper goes to hell and then gets worse. So refreshing. Also refreshing: it’s a movie about dreams, and yet Nolan avoided scenes with gratuitous sex and nudity.
That’s it for now . . . what did you think?
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Am enjoying . . .
True Grit by Charles Portis. The movie with John Wayne was a faithful adaptation, although Wikipedia lists the differences, if you’re curious. Oh, and the Coen brothers are doing a remake, with Jeff Bridges as Rooster Cogburn and Matt Damon as LaBouef (the Glenn Campbell role). Newcomer Hailee Steinfeld plays Mattie Ross (the Kim Darby role). Hard to see how they could improve or even rival the John Wayne version, but I suspect the Coen brothers might make a fair show of it.
You writers: take a look at True Grit (the novel) if you get the chance. Masterful characterization.
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