Journey to the Center

Like most Americans, we enjoy the occasional ridiculous disaster movie. But we'd never seen The Core (2003). That has been remedied.

It starts with a number of weird events: a random set of people in a small area suddenly die. All had pacemakers. Pigeons go mad and start flying into buildings and people. The space shuttle goes off course on landing, forcing co-pilot Hilary Swank to land in the LA river. The government recruits geophysicist Aaron Eckhart and weapons specialist Tcheky Karyo to find out why. Answer: The earth's core has stopped rotating, causing massive EMP and other magnetic anomalies. Yeah, sure.

They recruit Stanley Tucci, a "name: geophysicist and media hound, and Delroy Lindo, a materials scientist who has discovered an impervious metal, called unobtainium, and a rock-destroying ultrasonic laser system for burrowing. They add Swank and space pilot Bruce Greenwood to operate the under-earth craft. Alfre Woodard will act as (above) ground control, and DJ Qualls will be the hacker who keeps a lid on public panic. So - journey to the center of the earth!

The effects here are both awesome and laughable. They develop a magical through rock viewing technology, which is great in the cabin. for exterior shots, they use an effect that looks like a sort of lumpy orange air. It reminded me so much of Fantastic Voyage I expected to See Hilary Swank in a bikini. 

This is not our first Aaron Eckhart movie, but the first one where we really noticed him. He's kind of a big name in the bad-movie podcasts I listen to, and I can see why. He has just the right combination of bland good looks and ability to take this kind of crap seriously. The rest of the cast were seriously slumming it, maybe except Greenwood, who sort of fits the role of redshirt/first to die. 

All in all, a fun, absurd film. A bit too long (2 hours 15 minutes). We really wanted to watch Sunshine (where they had to restart the sun), but it wasn't easy to find. And in conclusion, the movie did not originate the term unobtainium (neither did Avatar), it's an old sci-fi trope.

Mid Midsummer

Here's a film version of my favorite Shakespeare that I hadn't seen yet: A Midsummer Night's Dream (1999). This version has a bunch of late 90s names and a late 19th-century Italian setting.

You know the plot: Duke Theseus (David Straithairn) is marrying Queen Hippolyta (Sophie Marceau), but first must resolve a marriage issue: Demetrius (Christian Bale) wants to marry Hermia (Anna Friel), with her father's blessing, but she wants to marry Lysander (Dominic West). Meanwhile, Callista Flockhart as Helena wants Demetrius. When the king demands marriage or the nunnery, they plan to elope to the forest.

Meanwhile, a group of rude mechanicals are planning a play for the Duke's nuptials. The principal player - or overplayer - is Kevin Klein, ready to perform all the roles. And, as night falls, we meet the fairies: Rupert Everett as Oberon and Michelle Pfeiffer as Titania - and Stanley Tucci as Puck.

The play goes as written - I felt like we were getting about 50% of the lines, about par for movie adaptations, or a little under. The setting is, of course, different, and the director (Michael Hoffman) makes a lot of the new-fangled invention, the bicycle, for some reason. There is also a ton of silent bits that depart from Shakey's script. These are usually low slapstick, like Hermia and Helena getting into a mud fight. I feel like this is true to the spirit of Shakespeare, so I'll allow it. Enjoyed it, actually. 

It's also interesting to see what, for example, Flockhart does with Shakespeare. Since Helena is a bit of a ditz, it works out OK. Everett cuts a rather Terence Stamp-like figure as Oberon. Kein is sort of the standout, doing a fine job as Bottom with the head of an ass. When Pfeiffer kisses him, and they look down to discover what other body parts have become donkey-like, it's a cute little bit. I feel like the Tooch was a little wasted as Puck. His style of humor seems too dry for the manic Robin Goodfellow. "What fools these mortals be," indeed.

The best scene is usually the brief, tedious play. Our favorite clown, Bill Irwin, plays the Wall, but I wish he had more to do. Of course, Sam Rockwell's Thisby finally brings tears to all eyes as the iron hour of midnight approaches. 

All in all, not the best Dream, but a fun one, with much joy and silliness. Lovely music as well, including Mendelssohn and some opera.

H-Squared

As Buddhists and fans (if not followers) of His Holiness, the 14th Dalai Lama, we were of course interested in Kundun (1997). Strangely, we are more or less neutral on its director Martin Scorcese.

It tells the story of the childhood, recognition, and eventual struggles with China of H-Squared, 14DL. It shows him as a child, son of a farming family, with an older brother who was a monk. He is shown to be a bit of a brat - demanding the seat at the head of the table. He knew his destiny? Or was just a kid? 

Then some wandering monks showed up and he greeted them as friends. Presented with some random objects, he identified those belonging to the previous incarnation. He is confirmed to be the Dalai Lama.

He is sent to Lhasa to grow up. Lonely at first, he makes friends with another monk. He grows up to be interested in gadgets as well as Buddhism, but as a young man, has to become a politician as well. When China threatens Tibet's independence, he tries everything he can, short of violence to stay free. In the end, he must flee to India.

The story is a good one, but not really the focus of the movies. For us, it seemed to be more about the spectacle - the beauty of Tibet (filmed in Morocco) and the pomp and ritual of Tibetan Buddhism. The Philip Glass score supports this - strange and enthralling music. The deep tenets of Buddhism were not so much in evidence, except in contrast to the materialistic (as in dialectic) of China.

So, perhaps not as successful as, say, Little Buddha (how can you beat Keanu Reeves as Prince Siddhartha?), but a pleasant watch, with some tension at the end. And it leaves you with the fervent wish that His Holiness will one day be able to return to Tibet, and that Tibet will be free to follow its own path.

The Plumber and the Professor

Cluny Brown (1946) is kind of strange. It was Ernst Lubitsch's last movie, It is a comedy of manners, but mainly an extended metaphor on plumbing as sex.

It starts with a London bore getting ready for a cocktail party - but his sink is backed up. When Charles Boyer shows up, he mistakes him for the plumber. But he is actually looking for a place to stay and possibly a handout. The actual plumber who shows up is Cluny Brown (Jennifer Jones). She's a lovely daughter of a plumber who just loves working on pipes. Boyer makes her a few martinis, and has her purring like a Persian cat. Then her uncle and guardian (Billy Bevan) shows up, castigates the men for getting her drunk and demands that she learn "her place".

Later, at the cocktail party, we meet Lady Cream (Helen Walker), a fashionable young woman who "never goes to parties". She is being unsuccessfully courted by Peter Lawford and Reginald Gardiner. They stumble upon Boyer, napping in a bedroom, and recognize him as an anti-Nazi Czech author and professor. They profess their loyalty to him and offer to help him hide from his enemies (the setting is between the wars). 

Meanwhile, Jones' uncle has decided to place her in service so she can learn her place. She is sent to a rural mansion - but before she arrives, she meets C. Aubrey Smith, a wealthy resident who brings her to the mansion. Her employers mistake her for a guest, and treat her to tea and scones. When they discover that she is the new maid, they politely but firmly put her in her place and forget her. 

We discover that this is Peter Lawford's home, and these are his parents. He shows up to say that he is sending Boyer to stay with them, and rushes off. There will also be another houseguest, Walker. So we have all the characters in one big house. 

There are a few nice little set pieces here. In one, Boyer comes to Walker's bedroom to convince her that she should be nicer to Lawford. When he won't leave her room, she suspects he has other motives, and he wonders if she may be right. She finally has to scream to get him to leave. 

In another, Jones becomes attached to a local chemist, Richard Haydn. He is a nasal-voiced, self-important, narrow-minded provincial. At a small party, he introduces Jones to his mother, Una O'Connor, who only speaks in throat-clearing harrumphs. But when the drains start making noise, Jones can't resist going to fix them. This embarrasses Haydn and O'Connor, making it clear that Jones is an unsuitable match.

Most of this is plain old Lubitschian comedy - except for Cluny Brown. Jones is so strikingly beautiful, and she plays Brown as so full of life and love, that it almost tips the movie upside down. Her joy over plumbing, over martinis, over Haydn, is overwhelming. To see the love in her eyes at every little thing her chemist lover does, from filling a prescription to singing a sentimental song at the organ, is a little ridiculous. But it shows how much love she has in her heart, and also how hard she's trying to find her place. 

Of course, the rest of the movie is filled with comic servants, silly lovers, political youths and stuffy rich elders. It would have been fine without Jones. But she takes it to a whole other level.

In conclusion, Cluny's method of fixing plumbing is to whang on the pipes with a big spanner. With plumbing as a metaphor for sex, I don't know what that means.

Demon Haunted Film

Now that Netflix's DVD service is winding down, I'm looking for oddities that we haven't gotten around to. Like Ashura (2005).

It is set in old Edo. Demons are infesting the city, with a beautiful demon named Bizan behind it, trying to become manifest. The demons are opposed by the demon hunting squad. Against this background, we have Ichikawa Somegoro VII, a real-life kabuki actor playing a kabuki actor. He used to hunt demons, but almost killed a young girl (who turned out to be a demon?) and quit. He meets up with an acrobat and thief, Rie Miyazawa, and they begin a relationship. But she has a strange mark or brand on her shoulder - the sign of Bizan.

This sounds pretty promising, but there were some problems. The main one is that it looked remarkably cheap. It may have been shot digitally with early equipment, or perhaps it was just poor decisions. The effects were very primitive, but even the sets and costumes looked cheap. 

This is a shame, because 1. The premise was promising and 2. There's some good stuff here. For one thing, Ichikawa doing kabuki was fun. You got to see his aragoto style close up - the fierce expressions, crossed eyes, etc. The acrobatic/thief troupe had a few good moments as well. 

Final comment: I admit we fell asleep for parts of this - maybe what we missed would have redeemed it. Or maybe we didn't have our mind in the right place. We've enjoyed plenty of cheap-looking productions, usually because they were outrageous enough to win us over. But this just didn't click. 

Movie of the Year

We weren't sure we were going to watch 1917 (2019). We have skipped all the recent war films, and were prepared to skip this. I was intrigued by the One Cut style - the movie is edited to appear to be a single take. Then when Mr. Schprock invited us to watch with him, well, that settled it. 

It starts with two British soldiers in the trenches of France, ordered to report to a general. The general has a message to send to the front: The German retreat is a trap, and the planned attack must be called off. These two, George MacKay and Dean-Charles Chapman, must walk ~20 km through the battlefield to deliver this message. 

I don't think I'll detail the story. It includes great bravery and random death, as well as moments of beauty, humor and stupidity. In the end, they didn't quite succeed, didn't quite fail. But it did have an angelic soldier singing "Poor Wayfaring Stranger".

I do think I'll say a few words about the One Cut style: I thought it didn't quite succeed, definitely didn't fail. It could be completely immersive, but I had two problems. One is that you often found yourself following our actors, looking at the back of their heads. I mentioned tis in my post on Birdman: acting with your shoulders. 

The other is that the lens choice for some scenes seemed a little too fish-eyed. That caused some distortion at the edges of the screen that might not have been noticeable in a static shot, but the camera was in constant motion. It was very distracting to me. I wonder how the movie would have looked with more classic shots, with a stiller camera or more sedate tracking shots, with pans or whatever to tie them together.

Still, that's a different movie than the one Sam Mendes wanted to make. What he did make was a hell of an action movie and a technical achievement.

Somebody Fade Me!

We spent part of our recent vacation with our friend Mr. Schprock. We watched 1917 with him - I may or may not blog. But he did give us his extra copy of Guys and Dolls (1955) to take home. We put it on the day we got back but fell asleep due to jet lag. So we restarted it the next time we were well rested. It's a fave. 

I will not retail to you the plot of this famous musical, except to say that Nathan Detroit (Frank Sinatra) bets Sky Masterson (Marlon Brando) that he can't take Salvation Army girl Jean Simmons on a date to Havana. That, to us, is the least important part of the film. What, you ask, is the most important part?

We would respond, Stubby Kaye as Nicely-Nicely Johnson. Stubby Kaye singing "Sit Down You're Rocking the Boat". Vivian Blane singing "Adelaide's Lament". Sheldon Leonard playing Harry the Horse. The ensemble singing "The Oldest Established Permanent Floating Crap Game in New York". Sinatra singing "Sue Me". And all the grandiloquent, contraction-free Runyonesque dialog. 

I am afraid that I am not much of a Brando fan, and I do not see much chemistry between him and Simmons. So we like the first half of the movie more than the second (which might be why we dropped off watching it the first time around). But he does all right as the fabled Masterson. Sinatra I like better as Detroit, since he can easily play a skunk. But the smaller roles, the Big Jule, the Benny Southstreet, they are what does it for me. And you can take that to the bank. 

The Mist

We put Play Misty for Me (1971) on the queue as a potential horror watch, even though it's more of a stalker/slasher. We got around to it in the end, just to see what it's all about.

Clint Eastwood plays a mellow jazz DJ for a Carmel CA radio station. It's a regular night - a listener with a sexy voice calls in to ask him to "play Misty for me", as she often does. After his show, he stops into The Sardine Factory for a drink, served by director Don Siegel. He notices a cute girl at the other end of the bar, Jessica Walker. He and Siegel lure her into a conversation by playing a nonsense game of Fizbin, and he takes her home - and finds out that she's the caller who likes Misty.

Although they agreed that this is just for laughs, she shows up at his place the next morning with breakfast fixings. His black fellow DJ, James McEachin, gets to witness this - I only mention because - SPOILER - he doesn't get killed first.

So Walker stalks Eastwood, but always either backs off just about when he's at his limit, or just sexes him up. Meanwhile, Eastwood's old girlfriend, artist Donna Mills, is back in town. SPOILER - she doesn't get killed first either. 

But Walker keeps pushing - attempting suicide and later attacking (REDACTED - she doesn't get killed first either). So she's finally instituionalized. Eastwood gets to have sexy time with Mills to the tune of The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face. They even gets to go to the Monterey Jazz Fest and hear Johnny Otis and Cannonball Adderly. Frankly, once we saw how things were going, we only stayed for this scene - then figured we might as well watch the rest.

There first and only real kill is a hilarious, out-of-nowhere, boom and done. Nobody shows any situational awareness or instinct for self-preservation. It all ends in a very "Tom Stewart killed me!" kind of way. 

But I have to say, I liked this movie. Although the jazz is pretty mellow, the soundtrack is pleasant and the Jazz Fest scene is very cool. The setting of Carmel/Monterey was lovely. And some of Eastwood's shots, his long moving takes, close up of his craggy face cross-fading to Carmel's craggy landscape, and slow zooms to eyes, are quite artistic. And there's surprisingly little slashing, and when there is, the blood looks ridiculous (which we prefer to realistic violence).

In conclusion, for a movie made on the California coast, not enough mist.

In semi-related news, my sister recently watched The Sand Piper and thought it was trash. But it was filmed in Big Sur. Should we watch it just for that?

Take Me to the River

Back after our little vacation, I need to write a bit about The River (1951), which we watched before we left. But, after all this time, I don't have much to say, except that it was beautiful, sad and sweet. 

It is narrated by Patricia Walters. As a girl, say 14, she lived in India on the river with her upper class family - her father ran the jute factory. She had four younger sisters and a younger brother. She was friends with Adrienne Corri, an older (17?) girl from a slightly richer family. She lived next door to Arthur Shields, a trader whose Indian wife has died, leaving him to rise their mixed race daughter, Radha Burnier (20). 

Shields has a cousin from America, Thomas E. Breen. Breen has been in the War, and lost a leg. He is moody and handsome and all three girls are infatuated with him. Walters, the youngest, wants to share her dreams of being a writer with him, and tells a story of Indian peasants and gods. Corri, convinced that she is a worldly adult woman, flirts with him, sitting on his lap whenever she can. Breen indulges them in a friendly but distant way. He is more interested in Bernier, a beauty of a more appropriate age. But she is informally engaged to a wealthy Indian boy, who lovers her. This is important, because she is a bit of an outcaste, by the Indian and English societies. She shares her unhappiness with her lot with Breen as he shares his with her.

There are events like a Diwali dance, stolen kisses and an encounter with a cobra. In the end, Breen can't be satisfied to stay in India, and leaves, searching for peace. The three girls, each in their way, mourns his going.

The story flows and meanders like a river - except more in fits and starts. There are longish sections of jute being unloaded and processed, of Indian festivals and markets, and just life. Director Jean Renoir fills the movies with brilliant colors and Indian music. It's also a bit of a documentary on India in the 40s. But mostly a sweet coming-of-age story, from the novel by Rumer Godden.