I thought the documentary (Street Fight) on Newark’s 2002 mayoral race was pretty engaging, largely because its ‘star,’ the rising political bigwig Cory Booker, is as smart and self-effacing and … well, grounded as you’d want a politician to be. I caution: the narrative of the documentary never digs deep into party politics, represents but doesn’t really interrogate or historicize or even explicate the racial tensions which emerged between the two black democrats vying for the job. It shows a collision of corruption, race, poverty, class, politics, and urban realities, but it doesn’t really do much more than make a good showing of such problems. That said, it’s a decent film. And as a complement to the Carcetti/Royce race on The Wire, it was even more compelling to this viewer.
And, sheesh–almost forgot, took the kid to see Flushed Away, Aardman’s bid at the cg- (rather than clay)-mation long-form, and…. well, damn, I enjoyed the hell out of it. I fully expected crap: endless poop and burp jokes, flat visuals as opposed to the depth and texture (in story and composition) found in the previous Aardman ventures. But the film played like a grand Loony Tune, pumped up to 80 minutes. The jokes fly fast and furious and not entirely fecal; my favorite bits were throwaway gags with singing slugs, the albino thug rat (perfectly voiced by Bill Nighy), and a glorious scene involving a miming French hench-frog using a videophone to allow the master-villain Toad to communicate with the protagonists. The voice-work all around is as delightful as the endless puns and gags, particularly Ian McKellen as the royal-obsessed Toad, Jean Reno oozing sarcasm as Le Frog, and the aforementioned Nighy. I don’t know if anyone will rush out who isn’t being dragged by a kid, but–you could do far worse. This is funny stuff, and a delightful surprise.
did the kid like flushed away?
Nope, it has at least two. I’m at the other one. We have a lot of Communication majors. A lot. Lots.
watched tristram shandy tonight. amusing enough but it did not move me to say very much more about it. i thought the funniest bit in the movie was the conversation between coogan and brydon over the end credits, especially their duelling pacinos.
I liked Tristram Shandy well enough, but like you Arnab, I didn’t bother to say a word about it here. Steve Coogan’s fourth wall speeches in 24 Hour Party People were so good (I thought) that I liked watching him do something similar here – talking about the role he was playing (but not the real role, just the role of the film in the film). Coogan is getting good notices for Lies & Alibis, which is just out in L.A. I don’t know much else about it except it has quite a few good AND bad actors in it.
I thought that having the real Tony Wilson interview Coogan in the scope of the film was quite a good turn (And I think Wilson was imitiating Alan Partridge?), though it was by no means easy to know that’s what was going on. I think most people here would like this one.
Rented Herzog’s Cobra Verde. It’s not the best film Kinski and Herzog made together. It seems to borrow to heavily from themes of both Fitzcarraldo and Aguirre. But that’s ok. It was still as much fun as a movie in German about the slave trade can be. And it’s not as depressing as Woyzek.
There is a well done article in the new issue of Harper’s about Herzog – it covers some of the same ground as the excellent profile in the New Yorker several months back, but stands fine on its own.
So many thoughts–
I watched the latest and last Prime Suspect, a series which I love, and I know Gio has expressed her love, too. The first of the two-part mini was outstanding; our hero DCI Jane Tennison (the astonishing Helen Mirren) is weeks before retirement and deep, deep, deep in her cups, wracked and wrecked by years of isolating struggle in the police department. There’s a scene where she leaves her father’s hospital bed and heads to his house, her childhood home, puts on a record and drinks a bottle of (I think) bourbon while listening to great ‘sixties English pop–she does this remarkable, unselfconscious, revealing dance that was heartbreaking because it was so open–and Tennison was all alone. Unfortunately, part two of the series assumes we need an actual mystery, and it retreats into suspicions about not one, not two, but three hyperbolic stereotypes (an angry poor black kid, a twisted pathetic pedophile, and a crazed sociopathic adolescent girl–a hat-trick of contemporary demons). Mirren never less than dazzles, but the show is alas a bit anti-climactic. Still.
And Wordplay, about crosswords and crossword nuts, is pleasant and often quite clever–its cuts and transitions echo and enact the kinds of associative punning that the Times puzzle can be so good at. I like crosswords, and I enjoyed the movie. But it won’t blow anyone’s mind. (For that, back to the first rec, above: see News.)
we watched the first half of tennison 7 last night, and i enthusiastically endorse mike’s observations. i was pleased by the grey texture of the film, and the solid backdrop of white noise. tennison lives in a drab and noisy world. helen mirren playing tennison is intensely moving. her desolation on losing her very loving father, who still sees her as his little girl while she looks nothing like a little girl, hardbitten and wasted as she is, is very tender. as it is the way in which she’s drawn to a young schoolgirl, seeking in her apparent purity and innocence and, above all, in the star-struck attention the girl give her, some measure of freshness. tennison goes to AA meetings with very little conviction, shows up in the interrogation room with a good four shots under her belt, but still believes there is some good she can do in the world, and that’s her reason for keeping at it.
meta-question: is it a good idea to keep comments on new movies tucked deep into comments rather than giving them their righteous first level space? borat, for instance, could have used its own thread, no?
i agree. lots of substantive discussions hidden away inside comments. i am guilty today myself with the gimme shelter discussion. perhaps i’ll do some behind the scenes snipping.
and i have snipped: borat and forest for the trees have their own top level posts now. will go do the same with gimme shelter in a bit.
i would like to add something about the second half of prime suspect 7. i agree with mike about the stereotypes, though honestly they didn’t bother me as much as they did him, apart from the psycho girl (thanks for the spoiler, mike!). but i was astounded by the totally wrong and totally messy relationship between the girl and jane tennison, mirren’s character. i was astounded because it is not frequent to see show’s heroes go unredeemed till the very end. [SPOILER] basically, mirren gets a crush on the girl. she’s forteen and jane tennison sees something in her that reminds her of her lost childhood, of a purity and wonder that have long gone out of her life. the girl is clearly beholden to tennison, and that contributes not a little to this infatuation. the show is very naked in showing tennison pursue the kid at every possible occasion in a cringingly needy way. in the second half, she gets the kid to her own dead father’s flat and they get drunk together (well, not quite, though that is never totally clear)! if you are used to american television, this is pretty intense. and then the girl turns out to be the killer, and jane cannot fucking believe it. this is her kid. she loves this kid. and now the kid goes and betrays her. not only that, but she’s screwed, right, because she’s not really supposed to hang out with suspects and get them drunk, especially if they are, uhm, underage?
so this should be the time for tennison to start acting like an adult. but the shocking thing is that she doesn’t. she’s bitter as hell at the girl, who, of course, in the meantime, with her game up, has become totally distraught and wants tennison’s love back. well, tennison doesn’t give it to her. she could throw the kid a candy, but no. she’s cold as hell, even as the girl cries and screams. she goes so far as to offer the girl a rope, a little way out, suggesting that maybe the girl didn’t mean to kill her friend. no, the girl says, she totally did mean it. there’s nothing left for tennison to love, and the kid is taken away.
wow. never mind that the kid’s father had been screwing the victim, who also happened to be the kid’s best friend. and that the father was the school’s principal. never mind that he had made her pregrant, and that, we are led to believe, the kid knew about it. i mean, this is a pretty messed up kid, who has all the reasons in the world to behave like a psycho.
and, if you’ve seen previous prime suspect, you know tennison is quite capable of sympathy… granted, this time she’s wasted and bitter, but still…
this is one of those screen examples of woman on woman transferance and counter-transferance. they don’t typically get dealt with very sympathetically. i wish i could think of another one… still, pretty damn interesting, especially in this seemingly feminist-leaning movie.
That’s a great reading–smart, and generous. I absolutely buy what you’re arguing about Tennison’s development, and this notion of transference/counter-transference. But I thought they sold out JT by surrounding her with plot devices rather than characters, the young girl in particular, who in episode 1 is quite moving and startling and suddenly in 2 becomes this … well, this cliche, and not much more. The actress playing her is fine, but the role turns flat.
Your point about transference–offhand, Single White Female comes to mind, with a too-literal iteration of such a female-female dynamic between Bridget Fonda and the creepy (and effective) Jennifer Jason Leigh. But the film (also) falls prey to cheap plot dynamics, after an opening hour (ish) that is pretty engaging. As a classic, All About Eve also seems like an interesting version….
i knew you’d come up with some titles. i wanted to say “something with bette davis,” but i wasn’t sure i remembered correctly…
talking about transferance and counter-transferance, i am still thinking about leonardo di caprio loving vera formiga in the departed, having sex with her, and her loving him back. making-love-with-your-therapist is always something that intrigues me, because i had my own crushes on therapists, and have a keen sense of the devastating potential of consuming them. so whenever movies consume this specific fantasy i wonder what’s going on. therapists, in movies and in real life, are captive listeners, kind and attentive by job description, providers of a dedicated, intense, unjudgemental listening that it’s hard to find in the real world. so when vera formiga tells leonardo di caprio that it’s okay for them to hang out because she’s not his therapist any longer, she’s addressing this anxiety we all have when we get infatuated with fictions and projections and are standing at the threshold of making them real. that in this scene the therapist is a beautifully sexy woman only heightens this tension. when therapists are women, the i-want-your-love-to-be-real-for-me dynamics become so nakedly sexual…
whereas in primse suspect 7 the decision is made to ground the fantasy to a brutal halt, in the departed we run with it. i wonder what that means. at the very least, it confirms a certain idea of womanhood as all loving and all accepting, which, of course, plays rather well with that giant tit.
i mean “grind,” grind the fantasy.
talladega nights: some funny bits, mostly involving sacha baron cohen, but mostly crap.
just saw prime suspect 6, in which jane tennison is bitter as hell but not as addicted to the bottle and, frankly, as totally unmored as in PS7. the film addresses immigration in an unadorned, brutal way that i found to my taste. the victims are two muslim bosnian sisters who escaped a massacre in their war-torn homeland and are clearly heavily traumatized, even while living in that supposed safe haven that is racist england. since they are women, and the perps (of the massacre, and then the murders) are men, and since there isn’t a prime suspect in which JT’s femininity is not at issue, this ends up being a film in which the plight of women, the fact that they get it all the time, from all sides, is very much at the forefront.
this is intelligently complicated by the fact that tennison herself is not particularly sympathetic towards a black female subordinate who cannot put in extra hours because she has two small kids at home. i like the way in which these films — and mirren’s presence — present harrowing situations without even trying to propose a solution. there is race, and there is war, and there is religion, and there is the fact of femaleness, and there isn’t much any of us can do to make any of these things even minimally better. the best intentioned among us simply spin their wheels, feeling somewhat better for the effort. so i like the way mirren sticks to her guns, puts herself through the portrayal of a character who is beaten from the start, and, at the same time, as tough as they come. definitely better that PS7, which, psychoanalytical interpretations aside, was a bit too far fetched, and a bit too crazy. this is not to say that i didn’t love it, cuz i did.