Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One, Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take 2 1/2, & The Taming of the Shrew

Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One and Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take 2 1/2 are basically William Greaves messing with everyone involved in the film. The first one is filmed entirely in 1968, and features a couple breaking up, and the film crew filming them being filmed and everyone getting testy and confused with everything that's going on. Take 2.5 is about half put together from footage left over from 1968, and the other half in 2004ish. Basically, it's a big mindfreak of a film. It's honestly hard to figure out what the hell is remotely real and what is just Greaves messing with you. It reminds me a lot of F for Fake, although neither is as good, mainly because Welles is one of the masters of cinema. There's a lot of split-screening, watching things from multiple cameras, and multiple people play the same characters. The second one is even more about the artifice of filmmaking than the first, but the first works better. Steve Buscemi usually makes everything better, but in this case, the actual film parts (the scenes that are ostensibly being filmed) are much weaker.

The Taming of the Shrew is/was (depending on when you read this) being performed for free at the Sidney Harman hall in Chinatown. It's a modern-set version, but the problem is that it's an inherently retrograde version of women's role in marriage. I enjoyed the play anyway. Back when I lived in Cincinnati and was watching around six plays a year or more, my favorite game before the performance was to read the cast biographies and see how long it took to get to someone who had been in Law and Order. This time it took four actors. Three if you include the SVU or CI spinoffs. Being so close to Baltimore, though, we got three actors from the Wire (one even gets a bio page on the official Wire website!). Even with that talent, the play belonged to Ian Merrill Peakes (Petruchio) and Louis Butelli (Grumio). Butelli channeled the wacky Brad Pitt perfectly, and really knows how to wield a flower bouquet. Peakes was hilarious, able to make his lying ass abusive husband charming, but even more impressively look good in a wedding dress. Ms. Albright and I had arrived way early, since we had no idea how the whole get a free ticket worked if you had a voucher for a ticket. It turns out we were the first there and so they were kind enough to ask us where we wanted to sit. After first being offered the front row (something I'm loathe to take after my unfortunate closeup at Metamorphoses, let alone having to look up for the entire show), I said I'd prefer something like the fifth or sixth row. We were given the end of the fifth row, and I was actually kinda annoyed because we could have gotten a seat in the middle. The end seats were perfectly fine, though, and I got a little bit of audience participation there. During the first wedding (Act 3, scene 2), Petruchio and Grumio show up late, and in this version, in a wedding gown, matching Katharina's (less train, though). They dance down the aisles towards the front, and, since aisle five has lots of leg room, Petruchio moved right in front of me and continued to dance and flashed me. I was shocked and scandalized and I couldn't stop laughing. The first three acts are really not all that bad from a misogyny standpoint, but man, the taming itself and the final speech are pretty offensive. Even with that, Shakespeare, especially free, is extremely enjoyable.

The X Files: I Want to Believe, Dedication, Romance & Cigarettes, Chess in Concert

The X Files: I Want to Believe was boring. Sally and I both fell asleep before the end. I missed the entire climax of the film, but I did see the kiss at the end. I read the X-Files wiki page on the movie though, so I really didn't feel like I missed anything by sleeping. It was so utterly boring. It would've been ok as a midseason non-sweeps episode of the show, but there was absolutely no tension in the film at all. I did wonder what the hell happened to Annabeth Gish and Robert Patrick's characters, but maybe Chris Carter had the sense to act like most of the last two seasons of the show didn't exist, like I have. Because they were not good. How can Fox have such a huge problem with running some shows into the ground and then cut so many others so short? Sigh. Anyway, I really feel like I should have more to say about the film, but the fact that I fell asleep watching a movie with David Duchovny, Gillian Anderson, Amanda Peet, Billy Connolly, and Callum Keith Rennie says a lot. Also, thanks, Chris Carter for your very subtle point about religion with the whole stem-cell treatment. I knew that there was something missing from the movie, and inept moralizing about how religion can kill hit the spot! There were two priest characters: one was a pedophile and the other wanted to kill a sweet kid because it would have been expensive and against his morals to save him. Ugh. If you aren't able to do so well, all you do is make people who agree with you pissed off. PETA, I want to eat sea kittens even more than I want to eat fish. They will be delicious and adorable as I eat as many as I can. And then I will continue to complain about your frickin' tone-deaf attempts to be the biggest assholes on this planet. At which you are succeeding.

Dedication was the first in an unintentional Mandy Moore filmfest. I definitely didn't go through and add movies from Mandy Moore to my queue. This one is a romantic comedy with Billy Crudup being a children's book writer whose longtime collaborator and only friend Tom Wilkinson dies, and so Bob Balaban pays Mandy Moore to illustrate his contractually obligated book. Martin Freeman has a small role as an English author and competitor for Mandy Moore's love. Justin Theroux began his directing career with this. He didn't do badly at all, and he's still one of those guys that you don't know you know. This film is a romantic comedy, but the script is slightly more interesting than others, at least in the details, because the plot is extremely basic romantic comedy tropes.

Romance & Cigarettes has a great cast, and lots of talent. And is terrible. James Gandolfini, Susan Sarandon, Kate Winslet, Steve Buscemi, Bobby Cannavale, Mandy Moore, Mary-Louise Parker, Aida Turturro, Christopher Walken, Elaine Stritch, Eddie Izzard, Amy Sedaris, and even Cady Huffman and John Turturro in small roles were not nearly enough to save this overblown mess. The musical aspects are just poorly done. I can understand wanting to get good actors, but their singing was usually terrible.

Chess in Concert is something I watched because I remembered watching this at Washington University in St. Louis back in... 1995? and hating it. I wondered if it was just the drama students or whether it was the musical itself. One Night in Bangkok is not a particularly good song, lending credence to the latter, so I was not entirely looking forward to this. But it's a musical by Tim Rice and the two male members of ABBA. Basically three people who are talented (seriously, once Tim Rice stopped working with Andrew Lloyd Webber, Andrew truly sucked) were behind it, but it's a musical about two chess matches and the cold war maneuvering behind them. But beh to this, and pretty much the musical as well. I did like seeing Clarke "Lester Freamon" Peters in it, even though he didn't really sing, but that was hardly worth the 2.5 hours of mediocre music.

OSS 117: Cairo, Nest of Spies, King Lear, Be Kind Rewind, Spider-Man 3, & Hostel: Part II

OSS 117: Cairo, Nest of Spies is a French spy spoof, done very straight up, but with many ridiculous touches, like the main spy is completely oblivious. I'm not sure exactly why I thought that I would like it, as it's a very goofy film, but never as funny as it probably should be.

King Lear was the theatre production shown on PBS, and so little Ian was edited out, which was a little disappointing. Otherwise, the cast was amazing, it's my favorite Shakespeare play, and it was overall a fun time. As fun a time as King Lear could possibly be. Thanks, PBS for at least broadcasting almost all of it.

Be Kind Rewind was a little bit of a good movie in a whole bunch of silliness. Gondry can't just slide on his visual talent, which is most evident in the insanely awesome Swede-ing of the movies. Other than that, though, there are some nice visual jokes, but most of it is just silly. Mos Def is the best thing in the film, and Jack Black just got on my nerves.

Spider-Man 3 is stupid. The dancing Parker? No. No to basically everything in this film. I like the idea of Venom, but the Sandman was worthless, the second Green Goblin was worse, and I am a masochistic idiot for watching this. I couldn't turn away.

Hostel: Part II is just ugh. The first one was fun. This one goes too far. Did I need to see this? No, but this just follows in my mini-fest of "stupid sequels that are actually crap and not worth the time it takes to watch them". Hostel didn't go too far, but this one is utterly ridiculous. Although I appreciate the scene of the cat eating the neck of a body, the killing of Lorna in Bathory-esque fashion was gratuitous. The point is not to get to that point. But it never gets scary or anything other than unnecessary (yes, even the decapitated Eli Roth was little more than a giggle for me).

Cyrano de Bergerac, Protocols of Zion, & Palindromes

Cyrano de Bergerac is a filmed version of the 2007 stage play and stars Kevin Kline as the titular character, Jennifer Garner as Roxane, Chris Sarandon as De Guiche, and Daniel Sunjata as Christian. It's highly enjoyable, due to the always enjoyable Kevin Kline and Chris Sarandon. It took me a while before I recognized him. I'm a big fan of the play, having seen Roxanne many times, along with reading the play back in high school, and seeing Kevin Kline just become him was worth the 2.5 hour long run time. If you have a chance to see it (it was on Great Performances on PBS a couple weeks ago and is on DVD now), I highly recommend it.

Protocols of Zion is a documentary, and I thought it was actually going to be about the history of the Protocols of the Elder of Zion. Which I guess I have to wait for some other movie, or maybe just buy the Will Eisner comic version. This was just a fitfully interesting documentary, rarely insightful, and frequently frustrating in its inability to go anywhere other than the surface. Eh.

Palindromes is Todd Solondz's film. And all that means, for better or worse. Pedophilia, abortion, Christian fundamentalism, shooting abortion doctors, and, above all, utter pretension. Seriously, there's a reason no one else would fund this film. Because it's not good. I liked Welcome to the Dollhouse, and Happiness and Storytelling were at least interesting. This was just bad, with eight different actresses playing the lead, ranging from Jennifer Jason Leigh to thirteen-year-olds to a fat black woman. The thing that pissed me off the most was the Christian fundamentalists were taking in people with birth defects, and they sing terrible Christian music. Just ugh.

Blades of Glory, John Adams, Fear & Trembling, Michael Clayton, & Richard III

Blades of Glory has a great comedic cast, full of people who are very funny in general, and it also has Will Ferrell and Jon Heder (and Coach, who is not funny). Just about everyone with a speaking part was someone I recognized, which made it all the more painful when Will Ferrell and Jon Heder got so much screen time and were so not funny. Anytime that Will Arnett and Amy Poehler were on screen, there was funny. And even the few scenes with Jenna Fischer and either Ferrell or Heder were funny, but put Ferrell and Heder together, and you get not funny. Plus, the homophobia in these films really bothers me. Maybe if someone made it funny, it would be less offensive, but haha, people might think they're gay just isn't cutting it comedically.

John Adams was long. And it was also great, Paul Giamatti and Laura Linney (who wasn't bad at all) along with the rest of the cast, including Tom Wilkinson, Steven Dillane, David Morse, and Sarah Polley, were all very strong. Famous people agree: it's worth your time.

Fear & Trembling is based on a memoir of a Belgian, born in Japan, who goes back to Japan to work for a large company as a translator and is put through a brutal lesson in Japanese culture. It's quite a terrible job, and apparently she stays there to prove them all wrong and to stare at her supervisor, an attractive Japanese woman, who is 29 and not married. Amelie starts out with actual jobs, then is broken down to an accountant, fails miserably at that (and ends up going crazy and doing naked gymnastics around her office late at night, with the help of a body double for Sylvie Testud), and then spends the rest of her contract year cleaning the bathrooms. It's insane that anyone would keep that job, but it did inspire her to write, which I can only assume is a good thing (I haven't read any of her before). I did have some problems with how someone is that incapable of typing numbers into a calculator, but who knows, maybe she was a little incompetant. And her debasement at the hands of her supervisor... horrible.

Michael Clayton is an extremely well-made film, with absolutely nothing wrong with it at all. The cast, George Clooney, Tilda Swinton, Sydney Pollock, and Tom Wilkinson, all turned in immaculate performances. In fact, the technical brilliance of it is somewhat distracting, as there wasn't much heart there, SPOILER until the final scene, where it completely kicked ass and made the film far better than a techically great thriller had any right to be. END SPOILER. Still, it does fit better in the "Best Picture" category than did Juno, even if I liked Juno more. That said, I have now seen four of the five from last year, and this is the first time this decade where I haven't had some serious problems with one of the five. I should be seeing Atonement sometime very soon, to see if that holds up. Usually there's a couple films I don't like, but I'm still missing two films from last years awards as well. And as long as no more movies like Crash win, I might actually stop complaining about them. Fat chance.

Richard III is famous for Laurence Olivier's performance, parodied many times over the years (I'm sort of a fan of Blackadder, but that may just be me). He is quite good, and Richard III is my favorite of the Histories, easily the worst of the three sections of Shakespeare's plays. In case you were wondering, it's Tragedies (King Lear, then Hamlet), Comedies (A Midsummer Night's Dream, then Much Ado about Nothing), and then Histories (Richard III, then Henry V). Richard III is just such a delightfully happy romp. Of a scheming hunchback who murders anyone who gets in his way. And has some good soliloquies.

Company, The Bitter Tears of Petra Von Kant, & Justice League: The New Frontier

Company was a filmed performance of the revival of the Steven Sondheim musical starring Raul Esparza, who's been in a couple Pushing Daisies episodes (and makes me want them to burst into song even more on that show). It's about a 35 year old single guy in New York and 10 of his friends, all couples, and how he tries to come to terms with his life. It's full of the typical lyrically and musically complex Sondheim songs, although this is far less about plot than most of the others. It's very much a series of scenes that illuminate character rather than plot. It's an interesting way to go about it, even if it isn't as good as Into the Woods or Sunday in the Park with George (two Sondheim musical posts and two gratuitous swipes at Andrew Lloyd Sewer... three posts and three gratuitous swipes), but maybe I'll need to watch it in a few years when I'm a lonely 35 year old.

The Bitter Tears of Petra Von Kant is a gay man's view of fashion. And since it's in mid-70s Germany, it's hideous. And boring. And I hated it. Don't know why I keep thinking that Fassbinder will be not annoying. I just don't like long gay films. Sorry all for even writing this. I should have known better.

Justice League: The New Frontier made me scoff too much. But since I'm reading The Right Stuff, the talk of test pilots and the pyramid and driving crazily in the middle of the desert just made me think of that. The cast was impressive, even if some were not particularly good (I hated Sisto as Batman, and I don't like this Batman very much, although the slight suggestion that he's having sex with Robin made me happy), but the main thing was just how much I had picked up from reading comics in the last year. I still haven't read any of the big superhero comics, but I've read things like The Watchmen and The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, so I had some familiarity with the basic history of comics. But the bonus features on the disc more than made up for the short running time of the movie, a history of the Justice League over the various ages of comics. The movie itself had some good ideas, but was pretty hokey. What you'd expect in a big budget direct to video animated superhero movie.

Grudge Song, Sympathy for the Devil, As You Like It, & Bob Saget: That Ain't Right

Grudge Song, the fourth and last in the Female Prisoner Scorpion series, wasn't directed by Shunya Ito, the director of the earlier ones, and had a clearly lower budget. The first wasn't particularly impressive, but the second and third were quite excellent J-sexploitation flicks, with great visuals and a strong performance from Meiko Kaji. This one misses most of the impressive visuals, except for the final scene (with the black coat), and though it keeps the theme song, there's little else to recommend it. Unless you want gratuitous Asian nudity.

Sympathy for the Devil is a very interesting look at the creation of the best Stones song, starting from the much less complicated and building up. Unfortunately (or fortunately), the scenes about black power and the fascist porno shop can be skipped very easily. The other issue is the narration of a pornographic novel that frequently obscures the soundtrack. Also, pretty much every shot is extremely long with lots of camera movement and crane moves. But the non-Stones scenes were like Week-End without making any sense. I felt like I was in a Marxist lecture and had serious problems paying attention. Possibly had something to do with my warm apartment and my comfortable couch. May also have had something to do with its extreme boringness whenever the Stones aren't on screen.

As You Like It is seriously designed for me to love it. Except for Love's Labor's Lost, Kenneth Branagh's Shakespearean adaptations are quite possibly my favorite versions of those filmed. Much Ado about Nothing is the first of those I saw when I knew what the hell was going on (an early watching of Henry V was before I knew what was up), but Henry V, Hamlet, and even In the Bleak Midwinter (about the production of Hamlet) are all quite excellent. As You Like It is not a play I was particularly familiar with before watching, having only read it, and that back in high school, and I have never liked his comedies as much as his tragedies. I saw A Midsummer Night's Dream (in a park in England at the age of 8 which has forever colored my opinion as his best comedy) and Twelfth Night (the movie by Trever Nunn), and I find that this is fairly similar to the latter, due to the crossdressing. Of course, in this case, it was a red-headed Bryce Dallas Howard as Rosalind, who was about the only good thing in The Village. And she was absolutely gorgeous in this performance. Far stronger than Romola Garai (although with a far better character to work from), she was perfect, and enough for me to almost not notice the lack of Asians in the film (with the notable exception of Jade Jefferies, who has never done another film, but has done many plays). The conclusion was a little rushed, without making explicit the agreement of Phoebe to marry Sylvius if she couldn't marry Ganymede. Everyone in the film is quite good, especially Alfred Molina, Kevin Kline, and David Oyelowo. Certainly a highly recommended film, and I thank Branagh for making them, even if he did misstep with LLL as a 30s musical. The forest scenes were gorgeous, and the choice to film the epilogue, even with a woman playing Rosalind, was great, with Bryce wandering through the set and the trailers, and the final word from Branagh himself. I loved it, and it's a frakin' shame that this great film couldn't get theatrical distribution in this country when far worse "arty" films make it there. And I love that Branagh doesn't seem to be bothered by interracial relationships on film, but could that have had anything to do with it not being picked up for theatrical distribution here?

Bob Saget: That Ain't Right is a new standup special from him, and when he's actually capable of not going off on multiple tangents within a single joke, is quite funny. And some of his tangents are quite funny. But the problem is that much of his humor is about finger banging various people and having sex with animals. Funny the first couple times, but it kept going. Even the songs were constantly interrupted by tangents. And his constant harping on an audience member just got on my nerves.

Buffy Singalong, The Wonderful, Horrible Life of Leni Riefenstahl, & The Human Beast

Friday night I went with friends to see Once More, with Feeling on the big screen. And sing along to it. The Washington Post has a write up, but somehow I don't think I had any pictures taken of me anywhere. Just imagine me as Giles in I've Got a Theory/Bunnies/If We're Together. And it'd probably be slightly better than my actual costume. There were not nearly enough costumes for my liking, as I didn't see any, and only a few Sunnydale t-shirts. The District is a boring place of people unwilling to have fun. I am including myself in that. I was also extremely disappointed that my popper didn't pop. I wonder about what that means. But the show was immensely fun, bunnies are awesome, it was nice to see that there were a lot of Buffy fans in DC (although the one time I was walking around DC with Firefly, I did discuss it with a stranger), I sang along to every song, spoke along to my favorite lines, and I now have vampire fangs that taste terrible. I think I might need to soak them in something minty because ew. At least before the next screening in November.

The Wonderful, Horrible Life of Leni Riefenstahl is a sort of revisionist look at her, but I question whether anyone could possibly have thought that Hitler wasn't evil, or at least horribly anti-Semitic. Then again, most Germans were anti-Semitic then. It's disappointing that she just sort of shrugs off any problems with book burnings or anti-Semitism. That she is so intent on trying to minimize her culpability for all of it is so obvious that her claims lost quite a bit of their effectiveness. Having seen Triumph of the Will, there is no doubt that it's a masterful work of propaganda, but it's also an utterly repulsive film. But at least this 3 hour long documentary has an intermission. Plus, nudity! Dead Jew nudity! African nudity! Floppy Nazi nudity! Master race, my ass! Note the very important comma. I'd only seen bits and pieces of Olympia before, but that one really is an impressive film. And only a little racist.

The Human Beast is another Jean Renoir film. I think I'll just go take the rest of the Renoir films out of my Netflix queue. Ah, there. Much better. It's one of those films that's only really known by its original name, not the translation, which is why I'm referring to it as its translation. Also, he's pretty bad in his role in the film. Beh.

Proof

Proof is one of those plays that was so freakin' incredible when I saw it back in 2003. It's an amazing play, maybe more so for someone who has an interest in theoretical math (even if said person doesn't entirely understand, say, theoretical math), and somewhat reminiscent of Arcadia, which I saw (and was completely frakin' blown away by it off-Broadway, I mean, just look at the cast of the 1995 performance: Billy Crudup, Blair Brown, Victor Garber, Robert Sean Leonard, Paul Giamatti, Havilland Morris (in both Sixteen Candles and Gremlins 2!)). That said, the play is incredible, but the opening-up of the play into the movie doesn't work nearly as well as it should have. The actual dialogue directly from the play is quite good, but the band scene was completely unneeded, as were the scenes outside of the house and yard. I know very few plays that get significantly expanded from their stage origins and work well. Or at least the expansions feel remotely right. Good plays have good dialogue and good acting. Same thing with movies. Just because you usually don't have that many sets doesn't make expanding the film into many different sets more cinematic. Proof is one of my favorite plays I've ever seen, so even if the film isn't nearly as good, that so much of it was kept means it's still quite a worthwhile film. Scarily, it almost makes me want to see The Lake House. And then I come to my senses.

Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins.

So this past weekend, I was reading a little Lolita (I've been doing so for quite longer than I feel entirely comfortable discussing, but it's been a while, due to the wordplay and endnotes, and that I rarely read unless I'm on the metro), but I got Maria stuck in my head (the Sound of Music one, not the West Side Story or Blondie or Green Day ones), and I just couldn't get it out, which led to me singing Maria in my head while reading Lolita. In case you happen to be familiar with the Sound of Music, sing along to the parts that I decided were somewhat appropriate to my version of Lolita. Which is even funnier if you imagine nuns singing it. The first couple verses didn't work well for my version, but I'm actually fairly happy with the parts that are there. And I'm not a pedophile. Repeat, I am not a pedophile.

I'd like to say a word on her behalf:
Lolita makes me laugh.

How do you rate a novel like Lolita?
How do you read the book and pin her down?
How do you write a description of Lolita?
A flibbertigibbet! A will-o'-the-wisp! A clown!

Many a thing I know I'd like to tell you.
Many a thing you ought to understand.
But how do I make you stay,
And listen to me all day,
How don't you keep the book in your hand?

Oh, how do you rate a novel like Lolita?
How do you hold the nymphet in your hand?

When I read her, I'm confused,
Read the endnotes then amused,
And I then know exactly where I am.
Unpredictable as weather,
She's as flighty as a feather!
She's a darling! She's a demon! She's a lamb!

She'd out-pester any pest.
Drive a hornet from its nest.
She could throw a whirling dervish out of whirl.
She is gentle! She is wild!
She's a riddle! She's a child!
She's a headache! She's an angel!
She's a girl!

How do you rate a novel like Lolita?
How do you read the book and pin her down?
How do you write a description of Lolita?
A flibbertigibbet! A will-o'-the-wisp! A clown!

Many a thing I know I'd like to tell you.
Many a thing you ought to understand.
But how do I make you stay,
And listen to me all day,
How don't you keep the book in your hand?

Oh, how do you rate a novel like Lolita?
How do you hold the nymphet in your hand?

If you weren't lucky enough to know me in college, you wouldn't know just how much I love writing bad poetry, and coming up with slightly altered lyrics to bad songs for my own edification goes hand in hand with that. But now you're the one with that song in your head, not me!

Sword of the Beast, The Day of the Locust, & Inserts

Sword of the Beast is another anti-Samurai film like Harakiri, although this doesn't work nearly as well. I was pretty confused during part of it, because I thought one guy was another. I think I probably should have just given up and tried rewatching it from the beginning, but I didn't enjoy it enough to do so. But it could just have been that the film itself doesn't tell you what the hell is going on until pretty far in, and it's only 85 minutes long, so it's just sort of confusing for more than half, and then it starts tossing a bunch of rapes in there. Oh, wait, there are rapes all over this film. I think every female character gets raped or sexually assaulted in some way. Maybe that had something to do with my disliking of the film. Sorry, Criterion, I didn't like your choice of this film.

The Day of the Locust would have worked better without Karen Black in it. I just got so annoyed by everything she did. And I didn't really care for any of the characters besides William Atherton, but that's mainly because he's the only relatively sensible person in the entire film. Plus, it was long and Donald Sutherland played a character named Homer Simpson who was a religious nut. And the use of songs also grated on my nerves. I had this feeling that the last scene would have some type of effect on my ability to sleep, but nope, creepy people in white masks just aren't scary. You hear me, Michael Myers? I'm not afraid of you.

Inserts allows me to add a new actress to the list of Good Actresses Whose Labia I've Seen: Veronica Cartwright. Well, at least I think I saw it, it was pretty hairy, you know, down there. So that makes it four: Veronica Cartwright, Holly Hunter, Jenny Agutter, and Toni Collette. And, this made these two films into a mini-Golden age of Hollywood as seen through the filter of the decadent 70s (with references to Clark Gable) minifest. I foresee quite a few more of these little links in weeks to come. Inserts felt just like a play, with an establishing shot of the only actual set (besides the screening of the stag film that opens the film), but infinitely dirtier than anything I saw on stage. Well, actually I did see Metamorphoses in Cincinnati, and that included full frontal male nudity (which shocked the audience, but really, it wasn't like it was enormous or anything), and an actress who, unfortunately, ended up wearing a very short skirt (but panties) and facing in my direction quite often. I felt fairly uncomfortable, because I was basically at her crotch height for most of it, and if it wasn't eye contact, it was panty contact. Which is a lot funnier if you misinterpret that. It was a good play, though, as I'm a total mythology nerd. Anyway, Dreyfuss, Cartwright, Hoskins, and Harper were all quite good, but Stephen Davies just was eh. And the story itself was also eh, as it was about a former great director who couldn't make the transition to sound films, and then starts to make porn in his house with a heroin addict and a completely naive guy with Hoskins as the money behind it all, and Harper as the wanna-be starlet who doesn't know what inserts are. But the nudity was extensive and pretty much constant. And how can you go wrong with that? I'm still not sure if it was artish porn or pornish art, but either way, I've seen Veronica Cartwright's hoo-ha.

An Inconvenient Truth, The Idiot, Harakiri, & Sunday in the Park with George

An Inconvenient Truth was quite good, not that it presented all that much new information. I mean, except that we're all pretty much doomed to have to learn how to swim. The little bit of Futurama just reminded me of how great that show was. Man, that show was consistently the best cartoon ever. Mainly because it wasn't allowed to go far too long. But it also rewards intelligence, nerdiness, scientific and mathematical knowledge. The couple digressions about Gore's life don't entirely add that much to the story, except to show that the science around smoking was against it, and industry didn't want to accept those truths either. It's clearly an important film, and the message is essential enough that the Oscar win cannot be begrudged it, unless you don't believe in climate change. Which, if you do, shows a distinct lack of intelligence. I do want to point out what most people don't seem to understand: Al Gore didn't win an Oscar. Davis Guggenheim did. Al Gore is not an Oscar winner. Then again, he was elected president and people took that away from him.

The Idiot is Akira Kurosawa's love letter to Fyodor Dostoevsky, and it is outstanding. Depressing as hell, but that's to be expected. It was also, apparently, almost two hours longer in the original version. I've never read any Dostoevsky, but I have seen The Brothers Karamazov on the stage, and I saw Crime and Punishment in Suburbia (that's sort of a joke... well, the movie was). He always seemed like one of those depressing Russian writers discussing being depressed and horrible things happening for hundreds of pages. Weird how that is. Especially since I was right. There are only so many days in my life I can read utterly depressing Russian works of literature. There are many more hours I can watch great films of depressing Russian works of literature, so I was quite happy to watch this. Well, I liked that I was able to watch this, not that I was at any point happy watching this. Because all movies like this do is remind me of things I have messed up in relationships. I'm not quite sure whether that makes me associate more with Kameda or with Ayako. Either would be depressing enough. And I'm not suggesting that anyone I was attracted to was a kept woman. I don't think so, at least.

Harakiri is Masaki Kobayashi's denunciation of the Samurai culture. I'd only seen Kwaidan, but man, he's very talented. The facade of samurai culture needed to be poked, and mocked, and more. Committing seppuku because it's honorable is a joke. Man, suicide is stupid. Ritualized suicide is even stupider. The script, by Shinobu Hashimoto, who did pretty much every great Kurosawa film of the 50s, is excellent, and Tatsuya Nakadai is suitably anguished and threatening as the vengeance seeking father. The scene of seppuku by bamboo sword was horribly painful. It's always nice to be reminded that bamboo can't cut very well.

Sunday in the Park with George is a Sondheim musical, so some of the songs are far too complicated. However, if you ever needed to be reminded of how talented Mandy Patinkin is, just watch this, as he's excellent as Georges Seurat, and Bernadette Peters is also quite good. The musical wasn't nearly as good as Sweeney Todd, A Little Night Music, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, or Into the Woods. Better than Pacific Overtures, though. Maybe I should see that one again, because I saw that one a long time ago, and the first time I saw Sweeney Todd, I didn't care for it at all. Sondheim is definitely not the easiest to appreciate, although I'd take him in an instant over Andrew Lloyd Sucker. Man, I hate him. Yes, I do. I love that there are options to watch the original Broadway cast performances of these musicals.

Into the Woods & How To Steal a Million

Into the Woods is a Sondheim musical, and as such, has very complicated and well-structured music. I first saw it, I think, 12 years ago, in Manchester with my family. As a much younger person, I didn't realize what Sondheim and James Lapine were trying to do, and while I vastly enjoyed the first act, I didn't care for the second. Now that I've had enough time to become extremely cynical, I realize that they were pointing out how even the "good" people in fairy tales don't always think through their actions and are selfish. And Sondheim has, what I believe to be, his best score ever. Vastly better than the badness that was Pacific Overtures, and better than Sweeney Todd, A Little Night Music, and A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum. I certainly remembered Into the Woods, but I had forgotten Children Will Listen and No One Is Alone, the two best songs in the musical. And some of the best Sondheim ever did. The entire cast was very good, but Bernadette Peters as the witch and, especially, Joanna Gleason as the baker's wife were standouts. It's too bad that this was such a weak DVD, with no subtitles, which are occasionally needed with Sondheim's music, since he puts a lot of very important words in not that much space. At least he's a hell of a lot better than Andrew Lloyd Crapper.

How To Steal a Million is Audrey Hepburn and Peter O'Toole as a pair of art thieves. Well, sort of, but to say much more about it would spoil the fun. It's delightfully flufftactular. There's a nice Hitchcock reference early on, but all that does it heighten the fact that the movie would have been vastly better had it been done by Hitchcock instead. That's not to say that Wyler isn't talented, even though he made Jezebel, a movie so horrible I can't begin to describe how much I hate it, but it feels like To Catch a Thief, but not nearly as good. About the only real reason to watch it is to see Peter O'Toole and Audrey Hepburn together. Although Hugh Griffith is also good. The movie just never coheres like it should.