Everyone Knows It's Windy

After watching Spinal Tap II, we had an urge to watch A Mighty Wind (2003). We mainly wanted to refresh our memory and then watch the commentary track.

This is a Christopher Guest mockumentaty, much in the style of Spinal Tap. A great manager of folk acts has died, and his son (Bob Balaban) wants to put on a memorial concert with his biggest bands: The Folksmen, The Main Street Singers, and of course, Mitch and Mickey. 

The Folksmen are Harry Shearer, Michael McKean, and Christoper Guest (same lineup as Spinal Tap). They are basically the Kingston Trio, three preppy guys singing train songs, phony calypso and of course, songs of the Spanish Civil War. 

The New Main Street Singers are basically the New Christie Minstrels, and have a similar complicated back story. The original band was a neuf-tet, a combo of a quartet and a quintet. The reformed around the one surviving member, and the new group includes a long-time fan, an ex-porn star, now witch, and Parker Posey, daughter of a founding member, taken in off the streets. Their sound is peppy and polished. 

Then there's Mitch (Eugene Levy) and Mickey (Catherine O'Hara), a romantic duet who had broken up years ago. I'm reminded of Richard and Linda Thompson, but more so to Ian and Sylvia. My reason: Mickey and Silvia (Love is Strange) x Ian and Silvia (Four Strong Winds) = Mitch and Mickey. After the breakup, Mickey settled down, married an catheter salesman and model train enthusiast. Mitch went insane - but he's doing much better now. He can koind of talk coherently and everything. 

Their big song, A Kiss at the End of the Rainbow, has them kiss at the last chorus. But will they on the night, or will they leave the audience hanging? Or will Mitch even show up?

Now, I was alive and a fan during the big Folk Music Scare of the 60s. I have continued to be, and it's plain that these guys love the milieu as much as me, or anyone. They get so many little details right. For example, when they are interviewing O'Hara as Mickey, the camera holds on her twisting the clunky rings on her hands. This could just be a character beat, but it also reminded me of Joan Baez, whose partnership with Bob Dylan was famously fraught. Just adding another layer. 

The music, by the way, was great - and the actors played their instruments and sang their own songs. In fact, they sang them live on film, and according to the commentary, some scenes used the first take. The members practiced alone, then came together to play the song, and that's what was used. Mitch and Mickey's Next to You is a particularly sweet song. 

This isn't even to mention Fred Willard as a lame ex-kid star, or Jennifer Coolidge as ... it's hard to say what she is. And many more great improvisors in tiny scenes.

A mighty good film. 

You Know, For Kids

The Blank Check podcast did their Coen Brothers series a while ago. But I still hadn't rewatched The Hudsucker Proxy (1994), and had the urge, so pulled it out.

It is set in New York, 1958. Tim Robbins is a recent college graduate from Muncie, Indiana. He has come to New York to find work, but everything on offer requires experience. But fate, and the city wind, blows an ad for a mailroom job at Hudsucker Industries. He is hired and introduced to the chaotic, rule-bound, cut-throat world of the Hudsucker mailroom. 

Meanwhile, in the boardroom at the top of the Hudsucker Building, the annual report shows that the company is thriving in all areas. But the chairman and founder takes this opportunity to climb up on the conference table, take a long running start, and jump through the window to his death. 

One of the directors, Paul Newman, realizes that the founders shares will be sold to the public in a months time. The board will lose control of the company - unless they can depress the stock price by enough so that they can buy up the shares. All they need is a patsy - a figurehead so dopey it will scare off investors.

While the board is brainstorming nincompoops, Robbins is tasked with delivering a Blue Letter - a top-priority communication between board members to be delivered directly into Mr. Newman's hand. But when he gets to see Newman, instead of delivering the letter, he shows him his big idea: a sketch of a circle. "You know, for the kids." Newman has found his patsy, or proxy. 

So Robbins becomes the President of Hudsucker Industries. The press is puzzled - girl reporter Jennifer Jason Leigh thinks he's a phony, just pretending to be an idiot. She goes undercover as another Muncie girl, looking for a chance to get ahead. It's right out of Mr. Deeds Goes to Town. 

Leigh is the hero of this movie for me. She does a brilliant Katherine Hepburn mid-Atlantic accent, while talking thirteen to the dozen in snappy patter. The newsroom scenes with buddy Bruce Campbell and editor John Mahoney are very faithful to the screwball comedies this is clearly referencing. I've mentioned Mr. Deeds, but you get plenty of His Girl Friday, and even a touch of The Lady Eve. I've heard that the Coens' direction was mostly, "Faster."

So this was a lot of fun, although maybe Robbins could have been a little less clueless. I'd call it lesser Coen, which just shows how good their films are. 

Chin Chin

As I mentioned, Ms. Spenser visited Ischia, Italy, which inspired us to watch The Talented Mr. Ripley. The movie was filmed partly in Ischia, which they called "Mongibella". Coincidentally, a local shop had an sale on some Italian blood orange juice, brand name Mongibella. So I bought some, and made a simple cocktail:

Mongibella

3-4 oz. blood orange juice

2 oz. gin

Mix in a highball glass with ice. Add

1 dollop of pomegranate molasses (can sub grenadine)

Top with sparkling water

Wrong Way

I've mentioned the Goes Wrong Show before, but it was only on a trip to NYC that I found there's a Broadway verion. 

And we just found Peter Pan Goes Wrong (2016).

The concept is pretty simple. An amateur theatrical troupe puts on a play and it goes wrong. In this case, a Christmas presentation of Peter pan, David Suchet narrating. But it isn't a pantomime ("Oh, yes it is!", "Oh, no it isn't!") Some of the things going wrong are obvious: the flight harnesses, for example. Everyone plays several parts, and the costume changes don't always work. Props fail. One actor is tongue tied, and one has a large headset so he can be fed lines. 

Some are more unexpected. Tinkerbell gets electrocuted by her light costume (the audience believes in fairies, so she gets better). Also, the actor playing Pan is put out of commission by a harness failure, leading to almost everyone taking a turn. 

But Pan lives, and so does the girl crushed in a prop. And the kid playing the crocodile, who no one likes, gets to save the day. And when David Suchet is crushed, the tongue tied girl reads the final monologue successfully. It's a Christmas miracle. 

Next time we're in NYC, we'll try for tickets. 

Believe It or Not

Some family news: Ms. Spenser (DOCTOR Ms. Spenser) just got back from leading a study abroad trip to Ischia, Italy. So she requested The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999) when she got back, because parts were filmed in Ischia. It's a beautify island. It's a beautiful and terrifying movie. 

It starts with Matt Damon, the titular talented, playing piano for an opera recital at a fancy New York party, ca. 1950. James Rebhorn, the rich man throwing the party, sees that he is wearing a Princeton jacket and asks if he knows his son, Dickie Greenleaf. When Damon says that he does, he offers him a thousand dollars to go to Italy and retrieve Dickie, who is spending his time and his father's money lazing around and digging jazz. 

What Rebhorn doesn't realize is that the Princeton jacket was borrowed, Damon has never been to Princeton, and is a washroom attendant living in a barely furnished basement (although he can play piano). But Damon likes the money and the idea of a trip to Italy. He meets a rich girl at customs in Italy (Cate Blanchett), and claims to be Dickie Greenleaf. But he surely won't meet her again...

In "Mongibella" (actually Ischia), Damon arranges to come across Dickie Greenleaf on the beach. Greenleaf is played by Jude Law and his girlfriend, Margie, is Gweneth Paltrow. Damon claims to have known Law at Princeton, although Law doesn't recognize him. Soon, he has worked his way into Law's rich circle. 

When Law asks him if he has a talent, he replies that he is a liar, can impersonate anyone, and is good at forging documents. When Law asks for an impersonation, he does Law's father, freaking him out. Then he imitates Rebhorn offering him money to bring Law back to New York - putting his cards on the table. 

And so begins a three-way friendship between Law, Paltrow and Damon, living la dolce vita. Paltrow is attracted to Damon's seeming sweet naivete but Damon seems to be more interested in Law. Of course, everyone is interested in Law. He's a beautiful man who makes you feel like the most important person in the room - until he drops you. But maybe Damon doesn't just want to sleep with Law. Maybe he wants to be him.

An interesting thing about this movie is how Damon plays Tom Ripley. Although he is good looking and claims to have been to Princeton, he nonetheless plays him as naive and socially a bit clumsy. It's partly because Ripley is naive - doesn't even know how to ski, for goodness sake. But also because he knows it's endearing. It's a manipulative technique. Law is the golden god, unruffled by anything and ready for anything for a thrill. I had expected the roles to be reversed - possibly based on what I have heard of Purple Noon, with Alain Delon in the role. I guess director Mike Minghella made this version closer to the original Patricia Highsmith novel.

Being based on Highsmith, this movie is very gay, and rather closeted about it. And that leads to bad places. But by the end, it kind of looks like he gets away with it. 

Copping a Plea

Once again, JustWatch.com promised me a good action movie, and it turned out to be available as a free trial for some stupid marginal service. So I grabbed the first silly Michael Jai White I came across: Cops and Robbers (2017).

White plays a weary policeman caught up in a bank robbery/hostage situation. It starts with him facing off against the robber, played by MMA fighter Rampage Jackson, in a small house. The police outside listen to their argument over the open walkie-talkie. Then we go back to the start of all this.

Jackson rolls into a bank with a gang of mooks, takes hostages and generally acts crazy. Even his gang wants to know how he plans to get out. But he's confident he can do it. 

The usual hostage negotiator is held up by a suicide jumper. She is also White's psychiatrist - he's been on leave and just getting back. His hard-ass captain is Tom Berenger, who is willing to let him work this situation - especially when Jackson demands that White act as negotiator. And that's because they are brothers. Jackson went to prison while White went into the police. Now Jackson wants to humiliate White and the police in general. 

The action in this movie is mostly psychological, with a little bit of gunplay and almost no hand-to-hand. The filming has a hard digital quality that makes it look kind of cheap. Not that bad, though. I've seen complaints about the acting, but I didn't mind that either. I actually thought the whole brother vs. brother thing worked pretty well. The main problem is that it isn't as tense or clever as it probably wants to be. 

Want to hear a SPOILER? The twist is that the brothers were in it together all along. The bank robbery was to retrieve some information on police corruption. The psychiatrist was lured away by a phony jumper, because she knew that the brothers had recently reconciled. The fight in the house was staged, and there was a tunnel out. OK, that was pretty good, and it explained some of the rest of the movie, including, maybe, the bad acting. 

But it wasn't enough. The first two acts just weren't enough to make it worth it. A similar movie, Man on a Ledge, worked a lot better. And I don't think White is getting too old for a few fight scenes. 

TEOTWAWKI: AI

Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die (2025) - sounds pretty goofy, huh? It's a sort-of time loop sci-fi comedy about the evils of AI, directed by Gore Verbinski. 

A strange man Sam Rockwell) bursts into an LA diner. He is bearded, disheveled and dressed in rags. He announces that he is from the future to save the world from the evils of AI. Nobody looks up from their phones - they've seen nuts like him before. So he reveals that he is wearing a suicide vests, and asks for volunteers, or he'll start drafting people. He knows that some combination of people from this diner can succeed in the quest, but he doesn't know which combination. He's tried this before, and failed all hundred-odd times. 

He finally decides on a small group, and we get to see some of their stories. Michael Pena is a substitute teacher in the same school as his wife Zazie Beetz. He tries to take away a kid's phone, and an app alerts all students that he is the Enemy, and the whole school starts chasing them. They retreat to the diner.

Juno Temple's son died in a school shooting. Her insurance paid to have a clone of him grown, but it wasn't very convincing. But an AI construct of his personality is so close, she gets addicted to the app. That app tells her to go to the diner.

Haley Jo Richardson is a girl in a princess dress with messy makeup. She was employed as a princess for little girls' birthday parties. She is very allergic to electronics, and little children are relatively electronics free - for now. Her boyfriend is a rebel who destains electronics, until one day he tries a VR headset sent to them "by accident". Now he is addicted, and she runs away to cry at the diner.

With this group and a few others, Rockwell will attempt to get to a nearby address, where a young boy is about to develop the super-intelligence that will destroy mankind. But first, they need to get around the police blockade, because of the whole suicide vest/hostage situation. They will also face mysterious pro-AI warriors, and a monster or two.

This starts out as fun, but a little lame. Oh, yeah, AI will kill us all. Smart phones are destroying our minds. This movie started life as a proposed TV series, which explains the three character backstory episodes. There is a little bit of time-loopishness, but although Rockwell has done this many times, it's never the same twice. So even he is winging it. At least he gets to go back and try again. Everybody else just dies when they are killed. 

I'm not sure the end really worked for me, although it had a nice scope. And did they save the world? SPOILER - no. But maybe next time.