Prelude - This post is a review of the movie Gran Torino, which came out last year. Now, if you're interested in the movie, you've had plenty of time to see it. But in deference to anyone who hasn't while secretly harboring the desire to do so, allow me to warn you that this is going to contain spoilers. In fact, now that I think about it, it's more a short essay on the movie than it is a review. Too bad my delete key is broken.
Gran Torino supposedly is Clint Eastwood's swan song, and the movie shows it. Eastwood is present in every scene, dominating the movie with his craggy visage and the rasp that age has left of his voice (He is officially in contemporary Cohen territory at this point). And while the movie itself is fairly good, it winds up seeming a bit self-indulgent as a result of this. Then there's also the fact that the ending is so over-the-top ridiculous that the phrase 'ham-handed' does not even begin to do it justice. But we'll get to that.
Eastwood plays a man at the end of his life. His wife has died, and he has strained to nonexistent relationships with his children and grandchildren. So what's a man to do? Well, why not sit on the porch with his dog at his side, drinking PBR all day, observing the downfall of the neighborhood? This is how he spends his time, using his personal definition of 'downfall of the neighborhood', which can be nicely translated as Asian people moving in. That's right, Clint plays a racist character, obviously still haunted by his experiences in the Korean war and unwilling to attempt to befriend (Or even acknowledge) his new neighbors. That is, until the presence of a totally non-stereotypical Asian gang sets off a chain of events involving Clint slowly coming out of his shell in a fairly predictable, drawn-out fashion. The movie addresses the sensitive topic of racism with a sense of humor, the highlight of this being two seperate scenes set in a local barbershop featuring Eastwood and the barber hurling ethnic slurs at each other (Maybe if more people had a bit of humor about things our society would be less sensitive and angry, and then rather than dying of heart disease, people would die two years later from type-2 diabetes. I have a dream). There's a running dialogue between Clint and the priest at his local Catholic church based around Eastwood's wife's request that this priest gets Eastwood to go to confession. And that's 90% of the movie. It's fun in a slightly offbeat yet predictable way. Now let's get to a very detailed discussion of how it ends.
By this point the gang violence hits a point where it needs to be stopped. Clint being the local war veteran who has gradually stepped up to become pretty much the neighborhood patriarch by this point (As well as having the coveted title of Guy In Every Scene), it is apparent that this will fall to him. So he goes at night to confront the gang. We are now at the point when I am going to be stating massive spoilers left and right. Let's start with one in a parenthetical, all caps (NOTE TO CINDI: HE DIES). There then is a lengthy confrontation on a front lawn between Eastwood and the gang members that ends when he quickly reaches inside his jacket and is shot approximately 5,000,000 times. He dies, with his hand opening to reveal that he was going for his lighter to fire up a cigarette, and was actually unarmed. The gang is arrested, and the neighborhood is saved. Yay! Heavy-handed ending? A bit. But we haven't got to the best part. After Clint is riddled with enough bullets to supply a third-world military coup, he (Totally coincidentally, I'm sure) falls to the ground in the exact shape of the cross (Yes, he took confession earlier). I AM RACIST JESUS is not proclaimed, but would be about the only thing that could make this more ridiculous.
At least, that's what I thought at the time. Little did I know that the ridiculous factor would shortly be turned to 11. After this we have a scene of the reading of his will, which features some more humor in the form of ethnic slurs (It was funny. That sentence makes it sound like it wasn't. Again, stupid delete key). The titular item is given, not to a family member, but to one of the Asian kids from next door who Clint de facto adopted. And then the movie gradually fades into the credits over a minute-long shot of this kid driving the car, listening to a faux lounge-jazz number on the stereo. But what's that? The vocals! Dear god, it's 956-year-old Clint Eastwood rasping out a lounge number (Dear Heather joke goes here)! And cut to black. Yes, that's the ending. I did not think, upon viewing the climax of the film, that the denouement would be able to up the comedic ante. But dear lord, it certainly did. For a film that attempts to take a serious-yet-light approach to a heavy topic, the fact that I have tears of joy in my eyes remembering it probably is a result the production team would be proud of. However, I'm not so sure they'd be happy about the reason.
Showing posts with label He said tit. Show all posts
Showing posts with label He said tit. Show all posts
Friday, October 2, 2009
Tuesday, May 12, 2009
The Pickwick Papers
Ah, 876 pages of Victorian English, the language so dense that only royalty could love it. And yet somehow, far from being the imposing linguistic nightmare that the tome's sheer bulk suggests, The Pickwick Papers is a lighthearted romp through Dickens' England. Who knew that the man who wrote Bleak House (If you are not a fan of completely uncalled-for jabs at that atrocious novel, you probably shouldn't read anything I write) had it in him?
Anyway, The Pickwick Papers chronicles the adventures of the Pickwick Club as it's members traipse around England (Though almost always by carriage (And, in one memorable incident, wheelbarrow), as they are well-to-do), generally making complete fools of themselves. The group's head is the illustrious Samuel Pickwick, a man who can be described in no other way than to say that he is (To use the Pickwickian sense of the word) a bit of an ass. This man has no idea of how he appears to others, or what he is actually doing, quite frequently (Though he does always seem to know when he is within reach of rum punch). With him are three members of his club, Misters Snodgrass, Tupman and Winkle (Dickens here, as always, never fails to give his characters names that are anything short of spectacular), to be joined partway through by the absolutely scene-stealing character Samuel Weller, Mr. Pickwick's servant, who is always happiest when antagonizing a real or imagined foe of his master using either words or his fists. The novel encapsulates a variety of settings, from the pleasant retreat of Dingley Dell (What, you thought he was only good at naming characters?) to the horrific debtors prison, an institution that Dickens was intent on attacking any chance he got throughout his literary career. The supporting cast is just as large, with five pages before the start of the novel set aside just to list the participatory parties. And a varied cast it is, giving Dickens room to satirize nearly every part of English society, from the outright conmen Jingle and Trotter to the lawyers Dodson and Fogg (Okay, these are kind of the same thing). Even the more poetic elements of society are sent up through Mrs. Leo Hunter, authoress of the noted 'Ode to an Expiring Frog'. All of this is set forth in the name of good clean fun, and is a ball to read, something I never expected to say about Dickens. This was his first work, so perhaps he didn't make the move towards inaccessibility until a bit later (Though the fact that the miserable Oliver Twist was the novel to follow this may blow that theory straight out of the water. Oh well. Too bad my delete key is broken. What?).
And what of it all? Well, there is a bit more than just the capers of four buffoons at work here, as Dickens subtly tweaks the characters throughout the course of the novel, showing that while eveyone certainly has their bad points, there is good to be found in everyone outside the legal profession as well. The reader gets closer to the titular character as the book goes on and finds that, while he's still a bit of a buffoon with a fondness for punch, he's at the least a well-intentioned punch-loving buffoon, and that's certainly better than many people are (Insert joke about royal family here). I've tried not to give away the adventures partaken in by the fictional multitudes, but instead recommend that you personally pick up a copy at your local independent bookseller and join in the merriment. Just make sure you have a free month or so for the undertaking.
Anyway, The Pickwick Papers chronicles the adventures of the Pickwick Club as it's members traipse around England (Though almost always by carriage (And, in one memorable incident, wheelbarrow), as they are well-to-do), generally making complete fools of themselves. The group's head is the illustrious Samuel Pickwick, a man who can be described in no other way than to say that he is (To use the Pickwickian sense of the word) a bit of an ass. This man has no idea of how he appears to others, or what he is actually doing, quite frequently (Though he does always seem to know when he is within reach of rum punch). With him are three members of his club, Misters Snodgrass, Tupman and Winkle (Dickens here, as always, never fails to give his characters names that are anything short of spectacular), to be joined partway through by the absolutely scene-stealing character Samuel Weller, Mr. Pickwick's servant, who is always happiest when antagonizing a real or imagined foe of his master using either words or his fists. The novel encapsulates a variety of settings, from the pleasant retreat of Dingley Dell (What, you thought he was only good at naming characters?) to the horrific debtors prison, an institution that Dickens was intent on attacking any chance he got throughout his literary career. The supporting cast is just as large, with five pages before the start of the novel set aside just to list the participatory parties. And a varied cast it is, giving Dickens room to satirize nearly every part of English society, from the outright conmen Jingle and Trotter to the lawyers Dodson and Fogg (Okay, these are kind of the same thing). Even the more poetic elements of society are sent up through Mrs. Leo Hunter, authoress of the noted 'Ode to an Expiring Frog'. All of this is set forth in the name of good clean fun, and is a ball to read, something I never expected to say about Dickens. This was his first work, so perhaps he didn't make the move towards inaccessibility until a bit later (Though the fact that the miserable Oliver Twist was the novel to follow this may blow that theory straight out of the water. Oh well. Too bad my delete key is broken. What?).
And what of it all? Well, there is a bit more than just the capers of four buffoons at work here, as Dickens subtly tweaks the characters throughout the course of the novel, showing that while eveyone certainly has their bad points, there is good to be found in everyone outside the legal profession as well. The reader gets closer to the titular character as the book goes on and finds that, while he's still a bit of a buffoon with a fondness for punch, he's at the least a well-intentioned punch-loving buffoon, and that's certainly better than many people are (Insert joke about royal family here). I've tried not to give away the adventures partaken in by the fictional multitudes, but instead recommend that you personally pick up a copy at your local independent bookseller and join in the merriment. Just make sure you have a free month or so for the undertaking.
Sunday, March 29, 2009
The Broom of the System
There's been a lot of reading going on in these parts lately, so there's a decent chance this turns into Mike's Literature and Baseball Emporium for a bit. You've been warned. Anyway, let's move onto some thoughts about the titular book, which are not intended to be a review of any kind. The best review I can give this book is that I am (re-)reading it at the moment because I recently went to The Most Dangerous Store In The World (The Strand used book store) to buy a copy of Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World by Haruki Murakami (This one will probably get its own post sometime soon), and wound up leaving with four books in a bag. The reason why I included The Broom of the System in this pile is that both copies I have owned previously have not returned from being 'borrowed'. If that's not a ringing endorsement, then I want the two miscreants responsible to give me my book(s) back. You know who you are.
So let's begin. The book in question was written by The Man (David Foster Wallace (Sidenote: Apparently this is a new printing of the book. Before the book itself begins, there is a page of gratuitous praise from noted publications such as the New York Times Book Review and the Cleveland Plains Dealer (I just lost the lucrative Cleveland market, didn't I?). This is followed by a paragraph about the author, which in this case is complete with an end date for him. Sad)) when he was 24. Which is fairly impressive in and of itself (Fun game: Think about the meaning of the words in and of that expression). But even moreso if you look at the content of the book (Which I am thinking of doing any time now. And yes, I wrote that terrible sentence just so I could put this parenthetical here. I'm not proud). The book is set in (Primarily) East Corinth, Ohio, a city shaped like a profile of Jayne Mansfield when viewed from the air. It borders the Great Ohio Desert (Whose acronym is so blatantly obvious that even I feel it is beneath me to mention it in the main text), and centers around Lenore Beadsman, a young woman who fears that she is just a character in a story, brought to life solely by someone else's words. She works at a publishing company answering the phone lines and is dating the firm's editor. One of the main ways they relate is via him telling her stories he has received, which I believe to be made up by him. Occasional excerpts from things he is writing are found in the book. The style of the novel often changes inside the individual chapters, as certain characters have various specific forms taken by the words used to create them. These shifts are easy to accomplish, as each chapter is splt up into multiple subdivisions, fracturing the book more and more. What it is in the end is an attempt to split the atom, miming the day job of one of the book's characters, Norman Bombardini ("No one had ever been able to give butter life either, but..." "What was that?" "Nothing. To be ignored. A slip of the tongue."). Oh yes, and did I mention it's a comedy? And a very funny one at that. This combination of ambition and achievement at such a young age is just another reason that one of our pre-eminent literary talents will be missed. Pick it up and give it a go. Read it with an open mind. But most importantly, think.
So let's begin. The book in question was written by The Man (David Foster Wallace (Sidenote: Apparently this is a new printing of the book. Before the book itself begins, there is a page of gratuitous praise from noted publications such as the New York Times Book Review and the Cleveland Plains Dealer (I just lost the lucrative Cleveland market, didn't I?). This is followed by a paragraph about the author, which in this case is complete with an end date for him. Sad)) when he was 24. Which is fairly impressive in and of itself (Fun game: Think about the meaning of the words in and of that expression). But even moreso if you look at the content of the book (Which I am thinking of doing any time now. And yes, I wrote that terrible sentence just so I could put this parenthetical here. I'm not proud). The book is set in (Primarily) East Corinth, Ohio, a city shaped like a profile of Jayne Mansfield when viewed from the air. It borders the Great Ohio Desert (Whose acronym is so blatantly obvious that even I feel it is beneath me to mention it in the main text), and centers around Lenore Beadsman, a young woman who fears that she is just a character in a story, brought to life solely by someone else's words. She works at a publishing company answering the phone lines and is dating the firm's editor. One of the main ways they relate is via him telling her stories he has received, which I believe to be made up by him. Occasional excerpts from things he is writing are found in the book. The style of the novel often changes inside the individual chapters, as certain characters have various specific forms taken by the words used to create them. These shifts are easy to accomplish, as each chapter is splt up into multiple subdivisions, fracturing the book more and more. What it is in the end is an attempt to split the atom, miming the day job of one of the book's characters, Norman Bombardini ("No one had ever been able to give butter life either, but..." "What was that?" "Nothing. To be ignored. A slip of the tongue."). Oh yes, and did I mention it's a comedy? And a very funny one at that. This combination of ambition and achievement at such a young age is just another reason that one of our pre-eminent literary talents will be missed. Pick it up and give it a go. Read it with an open mind. But most importantly, think.
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button
Warning: This is going to contain spoilers. Probably quite a few of them (I don't really know. I'm writing this disclaimer before the actual review). You should still read it, because it's WAY shorter than the movie. Also better.
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button has been nominated for something along the lines of 968,000 Academy Awards this year. It is also not technically a good movie. Don't get me wrong. It tries hard, and has a very interesting premise (If you really haven't been paying attention (Not to what I've written so far. To other sources. Which pale in comparison to me), said premise is that the titular character is born at the end of his life and ages backwards). Unfortunately, it fails to translate these into an entertaining (Or thought-provoking) film. And unlike the film, I will start at the beginning. Maybe (Probably not).
As has been pointed out to me, it is hard to encapsulate an entire life in a film, which is the ambitious undertaking David Fincher (Director of Fight Club and Seven, among others) has tried here. However, he totally undercuts his efforts in this regard with the framework he gives the story. Rather than just telling the story straight-up, he has chosen to have it related through a diary (That of the titular character), being read to a dying elderly woman in the hospital by her daughter. This adds absolutely nothing to the film, and wastes at least a half-hour that could have been better-spent with relevant characters. Anytime the film cuts back to the hospital it is jarring, as this breaks up the storyline and returns the viewer to two characters whom there is absolutely nothing to care about. Sooner or later you inevitably begin to root for the death of the older woman, as that might end these scenes forever. And did I mention that these are set in a hospital in New Orleans as Hurricane Katrina bears down? No? Well, it's okay because this setting is never used for anything at all and is completely irrelevant. The only possible reason for choosing it is a thought process resembling that is the following: "Hmmmmmm. Hurricane Katrina was sad. Many people died, and/or lost their homes and possessions. We're making a sad, serious film. Maybe if we tie it to Katrina in some thoroughly irrelevant way, we'll get some kind of spillover sadness. Brilliant!" And the having it set up around an older woman's memories? Yeah, Titanic won lots of Oscars. Therefore we shall ape it's style. This is absolutely atrocious filmmaking, and nearly unforgivable. And we haven't even gotten to the film itself yet (I refuse to consider this extraneous garbage a part of the film, even though it takes up nearly 20% of the running time (All numbers based solely on personal estimates/guesses))! Oh boy (This is such an officially-written review right here. I tell you)!
Moving on to the actual central narrative of the film (Ideally without giving away all that much), we find that it centers around two characters who, conveniently enough, are love interests for each other. And the movie attempts to use the fact that they are aging in seperate directions to make the point that nothing stays the same (It gets rather heavy-handed in trying to hammer this home occasionally), but the joke here that Fincher isn't in on is that he does not really characterize either Blanchett or Pitt, meaning that we are stuck staring at these static, unchanging people as the backgrounds spin around them. The only real interesting possibility that we are left with, as the film plods along toward the conclusion, is that we have a chance to see someone offer up their answer to the eternal question posed so well through music at the end of (Certainly not this film) Rushmore; namely, I wish that I knew what I know now when I was younger. However, determined to not even leave us on this potentially minimally-satisfyling result, Fincher cheats the audience one final time by giving Pitt's character approximately 3 minutes of screen time for the last 20 years of his life, during most of which he has been struck with Alzheimer's.
So what are we left with? The movie itself seems to think it is dealing with deep, eternal questions, but instead it leaves the viewer with more than they started with. By way of example, throughout the film, set primarily in the city of New Orleans, some of the characters often go to sit and watch the sun rise outside a house next to a large body of water out in the country, with no other dwellings in sight. No one ever mentions this place when they are not there. Where is it, and where did it come from? Who knows? Certainly not the moviegoer, left fighting various limbs falling asleep by this point of the movie. There is no real style to the movie. Fincher often attempts to portray it as a period piece, and in large part succeeds visually. As the decades pass, the film follows the general style of Hollywood portrayal of each. However, touching on everything really does not count as coming up with something distinctive, and it feels like a mess of a stylistic mish-mash/mismatch. The actors and actresses seem like they are trying, but the static characters offer nothing to care about. The script tries to provoke thought, but only arouses ire. For a movie that tries so hard to be Important, what Benjamin Button achieves in the end is only to be both interminable and intolerable.
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button has been nominated for something along the lines of 968,000 Academy Awards this year. It is also not technically a good movie. Don't get me wrong. It tries hard, and has a very interesting premise (If you really haven't been paying attention (Not to what I've written so far. To other sources. Which pale in comparison to me), said premise is that the titular character is born at the end of his life and ages backwards). Unfortunately, it fails to translate these into an entertaining (Or thought-provoking) film. And unlike the film, I will start at the beginning. Maybe (Probably not).
As has been pointed out to me, it is hard to encapsulate an entire life in a film, which is the ambitious undertaking David Fincher (Director of Fight Club and Seven, among others) has tried here. However, he totally undercuts his efforts in this regard with the framework he gives the story. Rather than just telling the story straight-up, he has chosen to have it related through a diary (That of the titular character), being read to a dying elderly woman in the hospital by her daughter. This adds absolutely nothing to the film, and wastes at least a half-hour that could have been better-spent with relevant characters. Anytime the film cuts back to the hospital it is jarring, as this breaks up the storyline and returns the viewer to two characters whom there is absolutely nothing to care about. Sooner or later you inevitably begin to root for the death of the older woman, as that might end these scenes forever. And did I mention that these are set in a hospital in New Orleans as Hurricane Katrina bears down? No? Well, it's okay because this setting is never used for anything at all and is completely irrelevant. The only possible reason for choosing it is a thought process resembling that is the following: "Hmmmmmm. Hurricane Katrina was sad. Many people died, and/or lost their homes and possessions. We're making a sad, serious film. Maybe if we tie it to Katrina in some thoroughly irrelevant way, we'll get some kind of spillover sadness. Brilliant!" And the having it set up around an older woman's memories? Yeah, Titanic won lots of Oscars. Therefore we shall ape it's style. This is absolutely atrocious filmmaking, and nearly unforgivable. And we haven't even gotten to the film itself yet (I refuse to consider this extraneous garbage a part of the film, even though it takes up nearly 20% of the running time (All numbers based solely on personal estimates/guesses))! Oh boy (This is such an officially-written review right here. I tell you)!
Moving on to the actual central narrative of the film (Ideally without giving away all that much), we find that it centers around two characters who, conveniently enough, are love interests for each other. And the movie attempts to use the fact that they are aging in seperate directions to make the point that nothing stays the same (It gets rather heavy-handed in trying to hammer this home occasionally), but the joke here that Fincher isn't in on is that he does not really characterize either Blanchett or Pitt, meaning that we are stuck staring at these static, unchanging people as the backgrounds spin around them. The only real interesting possibility that we are left with, as the film plods along toward the conclusion, is that we have a chance to see someone offer up their answer to the eternal question posed so well through music at the end of (Certainly not this film) Rushmore; namely, I wish that I knew what I know now when I was younger. However, determined to not even leave us on this potentially minimally-satisfyling result, Fincher cheats the audience one final time by giving Pitt's character approximately 3 minutes of screen time for the last 20 years of his life, during most of which he has been struck with Alzheimer's.
So what are we left with? The movie itself seems to think it is dealing with deep, eternal questions, but instead it leaves the viewer with more than they started with. By way of example, throughout the film, set primarily in the city of New Orleans, some of the characters often go to sit and watch the sun rise outside a house next to a large body of water out in the country, with no other dwellings in sight. No one ever mentions this place when they are not there. Where is it, and where did it come from? Who knows? Certainly not the moviegoer, left fighting various limbs falling asleep by this point of the movie. There is no real style to the movie. Fincher often attempts to portray it as a period piece, and in large part succeeds visually. As the decades pass, the film follows the general style of Hollywood portrayal of each. However, touching on everything really does not count as coming up with something distinctive, and it feels like a mess of a stylistic mish-mash/mismatch. The actors and actresses seem like they are trying, but the static characters offer nothing to care about. The script tries to provoke thought, but only arouses ire. For a movie that tries so hard to be Important, what Benjamin Button achieves in the end is only to be both interminable and intolerable.
Thursday, January 22, 2009
Tit For Tat
As any of you who enjoy baseball already know, Keith Law is one of the lead baseball analysts for ESPN. However, beyond this he also has a personal blog on which he writes about (primarily) literature and food/cooking. Putting this all together, he's kind of like me. But successful. Anyway, his list of the top 100 prospects in baseball came out today, and is pretty much a must-read here in the dark days until Spring Training. So get on that.
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