That's MR. Ranko to you

2004-02-03T11:08:00.000-05:00

BEST IN FILM 2003

BEST PICTURE
1. The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King
2. In America
3. Lost in Translation / Capturing the Friedmans
4. To Be and To Have
5. Dark Blue
6. Buffalo Soldiers
7. 28 Days Later
8. The Secret Lives of Dentists / The Company
9. Bad Santa / Big Fish
10. The Station Agent / Stone Reader / Spellbound
11. A Mighty Wind / Holes
12. L’Auberge Espagnole / Winged Migration

ALSO WORTH THE TIME
1. All the Real Girls
2. Bad Boys II
3. Below
4. Cabin Fever
5. The Core
6. Dirty Pretty Things
7. Down With Love
8. Duplex
9. Finding Nemo
10. Freaky Friday
11. The Good Thief
12. Hollywood Homicide
13. The Human Stain
14. The Italian Job
15. It Runs in the Family
16. Laurel Canyon
17. Masked and Anonymous
18. Master & Commander: The Far Side of the World
19. Old School
20. Out of Time
21. Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl
22. The Rundown
23. The Triplets of Belleville
24. The School of Rock
25. Seabiscuit
26. Shattered Glass

BEST DIRECTOR
1. Peter Jackson (The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King)
2. Jim Sheridan (In America)
3. Danny Boyle (28 Days Later)
4. Sofia Coppola (Lost in Translation)
5. Ron Shelton (Dark Blue/Hollywood Homicide)
6. Carl Franklin (Out of Time) / Neil Jordan (The Good Thief)

BEST DOCUMENTARY
1. Capturing the Friedmans
2. To Be and To Have
3. Spellbound
4. Stone Reader
5. Winged Migration

WHAAAAAAAAA?
1. In the Cut
2. Gerry & Elephant * Gus Van Sant wins the Soderbergh 2-for-1 award

BEST SCREENPLAY
1. Fran Walsh, Peter Jackson, Phillipa Boyens (The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King)
2. Jim Sheridan, Naomi Sheridan, Kirsten Sheridan (In America)
3. Glenn Ficarra & John Requa (Bad Santa)
4. Billy Ray (Shattered Glass)
5. Craig Lucas (The Secret Lives of Dentists)
6. John August (Big Fish)

BEST ACTOR
1. Ben Kingsley (House of Sand and Fog)
2. Kurt Russell (Dark Blue)
3. Bill Murray (Lost in Translation)
4. Ian McKellen / Viggo Mortensen/Elijah Wood (The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King)
5. Tobey Maguire (Seabiscuit)
6. Paddy Considine (In America)
7. Campbell Scott (The Secret Lives of Dentists)
8. Shia LeBouf (Holes / The Battle of Shaker Heights)

BEST ACTRESS
1. Samantha Morton (In America)
2. Sarah Polley (My Life Without Me) / Jennifer Connolly (House of Sand and Fog)
3. Catherine O’Hara (A Mighty Wind)
4. Naomi Watts (21 Grams) / Hope Davis (The Secret Lives of Dentists)
5. Zooey Deschanel (All the Real Girls)
6. Scarlett Johanson (Lost in Translation) / Frances McDormand (Laurel Canyon)

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR
1. Sean Astin / Andy Serkis (The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King)
2. Bernard Hill / John Noble / Billy Boyd / Dominic Monaghan / David Wenham (The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King)
3. Fred Willard (A Mighty Wind)
4. Peter Saarsgard (Shattered Glass)
5. John Billingsley (Out of Time)
6. Ed Harris (Buffalo Soldiers) / Dulé Hill (Holes)
7. David Hyde Pierce (Down With Love) / Kevin Bacon (Mystic River)
8. Scott Speedman (Dark Blue / My Life Without Me)

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS
1. Jacinda Barrett (The Human Stain)
2. Shohreh Aghdashloo (House of Sand and Fog)
3. Sarah Bolger (In America)
4. Patricia Arquette (Holes)
5. Alison Lohman (Matchstick Men) / Patricia Clarkson (The Station Agent)
6. Natalie Portman (Cold Mountain)

BEST ENSEMBLE
1. The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King
2. A Mighty Wind
3. Holes
4. The Company
5. In America
6. The Core

BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY
1. Andrew Lesnie, A.C.S. (The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King)
2. Phillipe Rousselot, A.S.C., A.F.C. (Big Fish)
3. John Seale, A.S.C., A.C.S. (Cold Mountain)
4. Chris Menges (The Good Thief / Dirty Pretty Things)
5. John Schwartzman, A.S.C. (Seabiscuit) / Nicola Pecorini, A.I.C., A.S.C. (The Order)
6. Jim Denault (City of Ghosts)

BEST EDITING
1. Annie Collins & Jamie Selkirk (The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King)
2. Paul Seydor (Dark Blue / Hollywood Homicide)
3. Francine Sandberg (L’Auberge Espagnole)
4. Richard Hankin (Capturing the Friedmans)
5. Tony Lawson (The Good Thief)

BEST PRODUCTION DESIGN
1. Grant Major (The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King)
2. William Sandell (Master & Commander: The Far Side of the World)
3. Dennis Gassner (Big Fish)
4. Mark Tildesley (28 Days Later)
5. John Paino (The Station Agent)
6. Maher Ahmad (Holes)

2003-12-15T16:41:00.000-05:00

I attended a screening of The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King yesterday, at which the four hobbits--Sean Astin, Elijah Wood, Billy Boyd and Dominic Monaghan--answered audience questions and graciously tolerated the photo-seeking teenyboppers. I'll write more about the movie in a longer post, but for now let it be said that I think it's the best epic ever made. Hell, it's the best movie ever made.

The post-film q&a was the first one I've ever been to that felt like something more that a publicity stunt. Granted, it was a publicity stunt. But it really helped me understand how the four actors were able to muster up such extraordinary performances in the movie, which, I assume, is what people always want figure out at these things.

As they tackled the usual, lighthearted fare ("How big were the sets, really?" "What was your favorite scene to film?"), they joshed one another like brothers, often going off on tangents that turned out to be far more interesting than their answers to the aforementioned questions. Cute fact: only Dom Monaghan had read the Tolkien books before the casting process began! They all told stories about the bonds they developed from spending so much time alone with each other, isolated from their families; and we started to understand how their kinship on-set must have paralleled their fellowship in the movies. The devastatingly emotional conclusion to The Return of the King started to sound like it was a cakewalk to film. And the scene we see in the movie is actually take two: the entire sequence had to be re-shot due to a costuming error the continuity coordinator noticed after the celluloid was originally put in the can. If what we see is what they came up with after having to do it at their most vulnerable, the entire crew must have been weeping uncontrollably the first time around.

A girl who stood up in her chair and flailed her arms, trying desperately to set herself apart from the crowd, got the rights to the last question. She wept as she asked the cast members how they felt about the impacts they've had on the personal lives of their fans; she'd just seen the movie with a friend she'd met through Billy Boyd's website (a tidbit he was obviously happy to hear). Dom Monaghan spoke about his inability to comprehend the fact that people are connecting through him, while Elijah Wood heaped mountains of praise on Peter Jackson and the people who worked on LOTR for making it such a communal effort. However, the moment of the night came when Sean Astin got the mic and spoke with startling eloquence about how moved he was when he saw ROTK for the first time. He "sobbed," and lost his ability to talk. He realized how much the movies are about families, and the importance of human contact--our need to form friendships. His words were intelligent, poignant and remarkably humble. Astin was the ideal speaker to end the session: he reminded us of the aura of selflessness that surrounded the production, and showed that there are still talented, generous actors who care about their craft and are able to speak about what their work means in a simple, honest and meaningful way. He made that girl's face look like the face of everyman. Give the guy an Oscar already. He deserves it.

As the actors shuffled offstage, whisked away by security, Sean Astin walked within an arm's length of my party (we lucked out and got seats in the second row). My brother yelled, "Nicely said, Sean," at which point Astin turned to us with a beaming smile and said, "Thanks, guys. Glad you could come." We could see how sincerely happy--and unsentimentally so--he was to be there, which made the movie experience of a lifetime all the more joyous. He knew the value of being an audience member.

2003-12-15T16:35:00.000-05:00

This is a test. My blog is fucked.

2003-12-09T18:00:00.000-05:00

Gigli & Bad Boys II

What better way to pass a heavy snowstorm than catching up with trashy movies you secretly couldn't wait to see earlier in the year? I gave Friedkin's Hunted an honest try, but it's predictable, blunt and dour. Why is Tommy Lee Jones still chasing fugitives through the woods? And why does Benicio Del Toro feel the need to torture himself in every role he takes? It all looks nice (kudos, Caleb Deschanel), but there's no pleasure in it and no choices in the direction. Friedkin is an anti-stylist: he just throws images in front of you with a total disregard for any sort of dramatic thrust. His camera angles don't do anything for the action; he doesn't seem to care where the damn thing is placed.

Gigli, on the other hand....well, it's not a good movie either. But, it's not hard to sit through. It would have higher camp value if Christopher Walken and Al Pacino stayed around to shred the scenery a little longer: they have one scene each, but they do hilariouslessly tasteless riffings on their own oft-parodied styles. It's like they're playing actors playing them on SNL. Is Affleck bad? Yes, he is. He playacts his way through every goomba hitch in the book, while J. Lo. tries her damndest to make something of one of the most ridiculous movie characters in recent memory. (If you didn't know, her character is a lesbian.) It's not that she gives a lousy performance, it's just that...ah fuck it, I don't know what it is. All I know is that she does yoga in spandex while talking about her vagina. You should just see it.

Bad Boys II. Michael Bay must know what a joke he is. He HAS to. As his "directed by Michael Bay" credit rolls, there's a gigantic burning cross in the frame--and nothing else. What kind of prick/genius gives himself a KKK intro? The movie is Commando for an urban audience, with one hundred times the production value and the hottest tits I've ever seen on a dead chick.

2003-09-10T12:41:00.000-04:00

Hey, Time Warner Cable, listen here

Your management, local and corporate, should be ashamed of the way its employees treat its customers. Every Time Warner Cable employee I've spoken to in the last month or so has given me conflicting information about the mishaps I've experienced with my account since moving into my apartment; and the majority of these voracious leeches are discourteous, short-tempered and rude. Example: as I'm sure you know, in order for a customer to process a tenant takeover form without a signed copy of his/her lease, a valid utility bill is (understandably) required. Your people recommend a Verizon phone bill. Again, I understand the logic behind this suggestion, but when I asked a CSR (over the phone) if a Verizon wireless phone bill was acceptable, he immediately replied, "Yes! Of course!" Well, let me tell you what--when I brought a copy of my wireless bill to the TWC offices on 23rd St. in Manhattan, the woman who handled my claim had a serious qualm with the aforementioned CSR's advice. "Well, he shouldn't a' told you that," was all she could offer up as an explanation. In my estimation, it is totally amazing that such a basic guideline obviously has no substantial grounding within your employees' mental file cabinets. What's more, this lack of information creates an unnecessary waste of time for everyone involved in the miserable process of setting up and/or modifying TWC accounts. There is an obviously flagrant lack of communication between your departments, your staff is poorly trained and your customers bear the burden of said negligence. Your entire organization seems aware of its own ineptitude, and you hire some of the worst dunces New York has to offer. Surely there are scores of depressed souls in our city's unemployment offices whose mental capacities dwarf those of the cretons answering your phone lines and wasting away behind your "service" kiosks. My only hope is that someone without a "let me throw my hands up in a 'this ain't my problem' pose" reads this message and decides to alert a TWC figure of authority to its significance. You run a horrid, shoddy operation and you have no concept of how to treat people. I would advise anyone in their right mind looking for cable or high-speed internet services to steer as far clear of your company as possible.

2003-08-29T11:22:00.000-04:00

Lost in Translation

SPOILERS!

Sofia Coppola’s second feature film is a deeply personal and emotionally affecting piece of moviemaking. Her style is more relaxed; it’s toned-down from the hyper, buzzy intensity of The Virgin Suicides. The picture is about a washed-up movie star named Bob Harris (Bill Murray, selfless and staggering), who travels to Tokyo to shoot a whiskey commercial and befriends a newlywed Yale graduate—Charlotte, played in a quiet, star-making performance by Scarlett Johansson—who’s accompanying her photographer husband on a shoot. Bob and Charlotte are unable to sleep, and the time difference is only a minor factor in their shared insomnia. He’s irredeemably jaded and mired in self-loathing; she’s disconnected from her family and any sense of normalcy and is beginning to question her decision to get married young. The movie isn’t really dramatic, yet it has a rhythm and we sense how the week Bob spends with Charlotte changes their lives. Many of the scenes are non-scenes: they aren’t shapely in a conventional sense. We see Bob just playing golf, just passing the time in between work hours. We watch Charlotte wander the hotel’s halls peeking in various rooms. What Coppola is doing with this material is contrasting the beauty of Tokyo’s landscapes and architecture with the emptiness her characters feel: she’s dramatizing our need for human bonding even when we’re somewhere most other people in the world would kill to be. That’s a bold concept coming from someone so hip—the movie’s tasteful soundtrack, jangly, naturalistic camerawork and spaced-out ambience are proof of the filmmaker’s connection to pop culture. Coppola isn’t afraid to suggest that Americans need to seek out other Americans sometimes—that what’s lost in translation when you’re abroad has nothing to do with language barriers, but with an unplaceable sense of belonging together. Bob’s marriage is clearly unstable: his kids are used to communicating with him via fax, and Charlotte catches him sleeping with a hotel lounge singer. But we see that he’s got real wisdom to impart; and the advice he gives Charlotte about her own marriage doesn’t seem silly. It’s incredibly earnest—almost enough to make her fall in love with him. There’s a tense scene where it seems the two of them will kiss, and it’s understandable: the lines between appropriate and inappropriate have become invisible. These characters feel connected to each other in an extremely basic way. When they part ways, their final, shuddering embrace is searingly heartfelt. Bob whispers something inaudible to Charlotte; and the choice to keep the dialogue muffled in the sound mix is a brilliant one. We know what he’s saying to her. We’ve all been there before.

2003-08-12T14:03:00.000-04:00

Masked and Anonymous

There's a weird sort of genius at work in Larry Charles's film, Masked and Anonymous, starring Bob Dylan as Jack Fate, an aged rock star who's called out of imprisonment to perform at a benefit concert in an unplaceably distant, civil-war-torn America. Written--by Dylan and Charles--in the same style as the liner notes to many of Dylan's legendary albums, most noticeably Highway 61 Revisited, every word of dialogue is meant to have some pointed, elusive significance. And most of the cast latches onto the phrasing and cuts loose in a circus of freakish, often embarrassingly awful diatribes, though there are mesmerizing moments: Val Kilmer finds a refreshingly new manner in which to dissolve his own performance in front of our eyes; Ed Harris mugs his pants off, and in blackface nonetheless; Giovanni Ribisi nearly brings things to a stand-still playing a confused revolutionary--or counter-revolutionary--distraught about the state of the war. The exception, of course, is Dylan himself, who's not an actor and seems alarmingly out of place when he goes up against talents like Jeff Bridges and John Goodman. But that seems to be the point: the movie is little more than a paean to Dylan's continuing relevance as one of America's leading critics of pop culture and all things socio-political. However, his utterly bizarre vision of a near-apocalyptic America mirrors the current shape of things so perfectly--a President whose rise to power is mysterious at best, a media that brainwashes the public and attmpts to shred and degrade the very concept of artistic integrity--that you wonder if the movie even needs to make a whole lot of sense. He is Bob Dylan, after all. His awe-inspiring skills as a songwriter and arranger are still as revolutionary as they were in the 1960's: he finds new, jaw-dropping ways to breathe life into "The Times They Are A-Changin'," and "Blowin' in the Wind." True, the proceedings are under-developed and deliberately incoherent: there's little to hold on to, emotionally speaking. But, the film stands as proof that creativity can still encourange people to take refuge in the power and solace of art, even under the most hopelessly repressive regimes. Considering the current state of movies, Dylan's is a fairly novel idea.

*Note Aritcolo 31's rap remix of "Like a Rolling Stone" (with arrangement and writing assistance from Dylan), Sertab's version of "One More Cup of Coffee," and Dylan's re-working of the traditional "Dixie" and "Diamond Joe."

2003-07-22T12:35:00.000-04:00

I haven't posted in a helluva long time. Apologies. Come on, who's reading this anyway?

The new film by Stephen Frears, Dirty Pretty Things, a neo-noir set in the underworld of a London organ smuggling ring, is fashionably directed and grips you for a while. Okwe (Chiwetel Ejiofor), a smart, hard-working African immigrant, drives a cab by day and mans the front desk of a posh hotel by night. When his after-dark employer, Sneaky (Sergi Lopez, in a performance that's all mugging, whistling and hair gel), learns about his tenure as a surgeon in Nigeria, he tries to rope him into a lucrative scheme operating from the hotel's fifth floor: desperate, poverty-stricken hopefuls exchange a kidney for fake European passports and citizenship under a new identity. Okwe's co-worker and roommate, Senay (Audrey Tautou), falls in love with him because of his righteousness, humility and devotion to her; he's a bastion of hope for her in a life that's otherwise miserable. She harbors him illegally--immigrants are not allowed to accept rent or employment during their first six months of residency in the U.K.--and is busted by cops cracking down on these violations. Forced to leave her job at the hotel when the police stake it out, she turns to sweatshop employment and sexual degradation, deciding she'd rather give up her organs and go to New York than endure rape any longer. There's a nifty twist, and it all wraps up nicely, and painlessly, but the picture never builds up much steam. And the teary-eyed farewell between Okwe and Senay feels fake and tacked-on, like most of Tatou's performance. There's not much chemistry between the two lead actors; and Ejiofor--a striking presence, his face wracked with fatigue, pent-up angst and sadness--outperforms his counterpart in every scene they play. Shot by the immensely talented Chris Menges, the picture has a dingy but appealing look: Frears revels in the flourescent caverns where the people who drive society's cars, clean its rooms, and suck its cocks live. Their dreams are simple, and worth working for. The problem is the sentimentality of Senay's fantasy world, Manhattan, where "They put lights on the trees in the winter. You can skate in the parks. The policemen ride white horses." Sure, but they might also shoot you a couple dozen times.

2003-06-04T17:05:00.000-04:00

I Can't Get Sam Shepard on the Phone

What was annoying about not being able to get Sam Shepard on the phone was how innocent my business with him was. I wanted to adapt a story he wrote for the screen. It was published in a collection of short narratives and dialogues in October of 2002. My brother gave me the volume for Christmas that year.

For a director, finding a piece of source material you love is an inspirational experience: it can make you think creatively about an idea or concept you might have otherwise considered blase. I had such a revelation when I read this particular tale of Mr. Shepard's, a story about the simple pleasures of two old men living together on the desert and the dissolution of their friendship. I liked the simplicity of it and the way Mr. Shepard wrote about the dynamics of what's unspoken in a relationship between people from a different, more conventional era.

I jotted down some story notes and what I might change about the plot. I made a few rough sketches outlining visual ideas I had for the movie. I even began to work on a draft of the screenplay, when I decided I had to contact Mr. Shepard about obtaining the rights to the piece. Luckily, I had what I considered two good leads in the communication process. An actor friend of mine had been in the New York production of Mr. Shepard's newest play, The Late Henry Moss, and knew him personally from workshopping it. As a backup plan, I thought I'd ask a drama teacher I once knew if she had any way of getting in touch with Mr. Shepard: she had been on Bob Dylan's Rolling Thunder Revue in 1975 and had gotten to know Mr. Shepard when he joined the tour to write a screenplay for Dylan's improvisational film, Renaldo and Clara. If you've seen the film, you know that Mr. Shepard was surely hanging around the performers on the tour: he pops up in a few scenes. But, the last thing he was doing was writing a script.

Both of my contacts turned out to be worthless. The Dylan groupie didn't seem to have many favorable memories of the young Mr. Shepard. She classified him as a "skirt chaser" who tried to fuck every woman on the tour. My actor friend had lovely things to say about Mr. Shepard, and thought he'd be interested to hear about my idea, but he admitted he didn't know how to contact him. But, he said, he did know that Mr. Shepard wouldn't have a fax machine in his house and had to get all his paperwork sent through the local True Value hardware store. If I could find the fax number of that True Value, I could send it there and they'd know who it'd be for. A sensible idea, but we only knew Mr. Shepard lived somewhere in either Minnesota or Virginia. As an extremely generous last resort, my friend offered to phone Ethan Hawke, who had starred alongside him in the play, and ask if he knew how to reach Mr. Shepard. I said that that wasn't necessary, but thanked him for thinking of going out of his way for me.

A few days later, the same actor friend called me with Mr. Shepard's agent's phone number. He said he was a good friend of hers, and that I should call her and explain my situation. I couldn't have been happier. I dialed her up right away and her chipper assistant put me on hold before disconnecting me. I called back. This time her assistant actually wanted to know what I was calling about, so I explained the nature of my inquiry. And she put me on hold again. When she picked up, she said Mr. Shepard's agent would return my call later in the afternoon. I waited, but no call came.

The next morning, I called back. The assistant remembered me and didn't know why my call hadn't been returned. (I now know this was a lie: not returning a phone call is something people in the entertainment business do to make themselves feel good, psychologically assert a sense of superiority over you and prove to you how busy they are. You can picture them sitting at their desks at the end of a day, looking at their lists of unreturned calls, saying, "What a great day." Assistants tell you they don't know why your call wasn't returned because they're scared of losing their jobs.) She asked me if I had faxed over a letter of intent. I told her I hadn't. I wasn't aware that writing a letter was a required step in the process. She said I had to write a letter of intent before I could talk to Mr. Shepard's agent. And she gave me their fax number. I laughed out loud as I pictured Ethan Hawke calling her on my behalf and asking if he had to write a letter of intent to speak to Mr. Shepard's agent. She asked me what was wrong and I told her I had been sick with a cough.

I wrote a gracious letter, explaiing that I was a student of Mr. Shepard's work and a person who admired him greatly. I had no real reason for wanting to adapt the story other than feeling drawn into the lives of the characters, which I assumed was an acceptable reason for a filmmaker to want to work on a given movie. And, of course, I dropped my actor friend's name in one of those introductory line so-and-so-from-the-play-referred-me-and-suggested-I-contact-you-about-my-plight pleas. I faxed it over to Mr. Shepard's assistant and got a reply within an hour. At this point I decided she'd intentionally disconnected me the day before when she heard my name and knew I wasn't anyone important: this time I had a name to back me up, and I was suddenly worthwhile. She told me to expect a call from Mr. Shepard's agent's counterpart in Los Angeles. I thanked her for her efforts and hung up.

Another hour went by, and the phone rang again. And it was the counterpart in L.A. He obviously had a copy of my letter in his hand: he was practically quoting it back to me while we talked. He asked me to send him my resume. Although I didn't quite see the relevance of sending it ~ if he had asked for a videotape of my work I would've understood ~ I emailed it to him while we were on the phone. I thought to myself: Mr. Shepard will never go for this project. If he won't have a fax machine in his house, surely he won't hear a proposal from someone who talks on a cell phone with one hand and emails with the other.

The counterpart blurted out he'd received my resume and was silent for a minute as he examined it. He asked how long I'd been studying Mr. Shepard's work. And I told him: I'd studied Mr. Shepard's work since I started taking theater classes in college. He paused for a moment and said, "Well, that wasn't too long ago, was it?" I knew I was dead. There wasn't anything jocular about his tone. I knew this film would never get made if this was the kind of person who stood in between me and Mr. Shepard. He told me he'd talk it over with Mr. Shepard and see what he could come up with. We said our goodbyes and hung up.

A few days went by, and I received an email from the counterpart with the title of the story in question in the subject line. He said he'd talked it over with his people and they didn't feel it was in Mr. Shepard's best interests to consent to optioning the rights to an independent producer at that time. It was a lie. And it was a badly veiled one, rank with misspellings. I knew there was no way the agent or the counterpart had ever mentioned the matter to Mr. Shepard. All agents want to hear about is money, because they are demons and telling their clients about all the money they're going to make for them makes them feel better about themselves. It's hard to imagine anything more pathetic than an agent who tries to look intelligent. Slaves have been doing what agents do for centuries now. And they've been more courteous about it.

It was too hard for me to get angry with the counterpart. He'd depressed the spirit out of me. Knowing that Mr. Shepard had a team of leeches managing his affairs sapped the allure of his story away. I thought he'd be furious to learn of the way his representation handled the proceedings. And then I thought he might not even care about it at all. At that moment, he was Mr. Shepard to me. He wasn't Sam.

2003-05-29T18:09:00.000-04:00

The Crazy Filipino-Texan Flight Attendant

I got in line after the fastest Manhattan-to-JFK cab ride I'd ever experienced. It lasted twelve minutes and cost me twenty dollars. If you're not from New York, or if you're not used to taking this particular trip, let me assure you: I'm talking about an extremely rare occurrence. It's not a city where things take less time and cost less money than you expect.

Nothing about the people inside the terminal made me feel good, though. Five-thirty on a Monday morning, and every infidel, leper and mass murderer in the five boroughs is waiting in line next to a troop of unfathomably beautiful teenage girls. Isn't it a school day, I thought? And don't these princesses realize they're ripe, sweaty targets for all the maniacs standing around them? It was amazing how little time it took before I started to feel totally insane standing in that line.

Then I remembered I had an electronic ticket. The idea of the electronic ticket is perhaps the best concept of the last ten years. They're available to everyone; and they're incredibly easy to use. Once you make your reservation, you're emailed a receipt, which you print out and take with you to the airport, where e-ticket kiosks are waiting for you to approach and pass your paper's barcode under their laser scanners. You're automatically checked in. There's no waiting in any lines. If you don't use them, it's got to be the result of some deep-seeded arrogance, laziness or stupidity, and you deserve to be subjected to the wrath of the steaming perverts that sludge through the lines, staring into space like they're going to see comets fly in front of their faces.

I ran toward the e-ticket check-in area, knocking over two small children. I was verified as a passenger who's most likely not going to try anything once the plane gets in the air, and I bolted for the security checkpoint. Quickly realizing how any motivated terrorist could've smuggled a red balloon full of anthrax onto an aircraft before September 11th, I put my one bag on the conveyor belt. A guard asked me to take off my shoes and socks, in case the metal detectors hadn't picked up the hunting knife I was concealing in my Converse All-Stars. When he deemed me civilized, I proceeded to my gate and boarded the plane. But, that was only after a brief delay when the man in front of me was stopped for a random luggage screening: he grunted at the inspector, "Look, I'll tell ya right now, I've got a gun in here." I was terrified for a moment before he explained he was in the Army. Then I got on board.

We took off with no commotion to speak of. I have a horrible fear of heights which is only relevant when I can still see the ground after lift-off. If it's a flight with no cloud-cover, I'm clammy the whole time. Seeing New York from the sky is almost unbearable now. I can't help thinking, "This is the last thing all those people saw. And they knew they were going to die." Being in a plane near the city has no lustre for me anymore, but it's impossible to turn away from the sight. When my paranoia and nausea were reaching their respective peaks, a woman who looked moderately Asian leaned toward me and said, "Is that seat taken?" in a languid Southern drawl. I was tempted to act like one of the judgmental brats on the bus in Forrest Gump and reply, "Seat's taken," but it would've only given way to more impressions from the movie, so I decided not to be selfish.

When she spoke for the first time, I disregarded her inquiry about the seat entirely. Something about that face and that voice didn't go together. The she repeated, "Sir, is that seat taken?" That got my attention. I don't like when people refer to me as "Sir." I realize they're just doing their jobs, but they're obeying an asinine social convention. Surely we can be polite without addressing men under the age of thirty as "Sir." We haven't been through enough of life to command the title. Again, I knew it wasn't her fault, but we weren't off to a good start. I finally said, "No. Not as far as I know."

"Would you mind if I sit next to you then? I'm deadheadin' back to Dallas-Forth Worth."

"No. I don't mind. That's fine."

She stowed her suitcase-on-wheels expertly in the overhead compartment and sat down. Her uniform was beautifully pressed and she was wearing an oppressive amount of makeup, which made her face look like it had been wiped with an acid-soaked cloth.

"Where you heading to in the world?" she asked.

"L.A."

"How glamorous. I'm from Dallas and I headin' home," she told me, even though she'd just finsihed saying she was returning to Dallas a minute earlier.

"I just flew in to New York last night from Amsterdam. Been workin' international lately. Flyin' all over the place. A week here, a week there. And I ended up in Amsterdam. You ever been there?" she went on.

"Amsterdam? No. But, I hear it's a crazy town."

"Well let me tell you something. There's no vice you could wish for what Amsterdam couldn't produce. They got everything you could think of just lying out in plain view for you to see. I had to take the rest of the girls around, on account of me not lookin' American - I know I talk like a Texan, but my mommy's Filipino. She's where I got my looks. My daddy met her when he was on a furlough from Vietnam. So anyway, did you know they don't like you in Europe if they think you're American?"

I was flabbergasted by how fast she was spinning this nonsense, but I just said, "I heard something like that, yes."

"Well it is tru-ue." She replied. "I don't understand it. I think it's 'cause they're jealous of us. You could always say you're Canadian. That helps. Why're they so hot on Canada? What the hell did Canada ever do for them?"

"Well, -"

"I mean. I understand the looks we get when we go over to the Middle East. Not to say I agree with the way we get treated there, you understand. But I understand it. I mean, I don't look American. I got it easy. It ain't like that for the other girls. Take for instance, we were in Quatar a few weeks back. The rest of the girls were afraid to go around without the burquas on. But not me. I went right on out there and I didn't back down from nobody. I saw the way the women there were sneering at me, But, it's on account of the way I look, you understand, that they didn't say nothing to me. If it had been another girl, why, they might've accosted her right in the street there. It's crazy. George W. Bush has done more for those people than their own heads a' state, and look at the gratitude we get."

At first, I thought I had misheard her. "I'm sorry. What did you just say?"

"George Bush has just re-formed that whole area. No more Taliban. No more Sadaam Hussein. And all they can do is go around burnin' him in effigy and shoutin' 'Death to America!' in the streets. Whaddya call that? Arrogance is what I call it. We Texans, we just think that George Bush is the greatest man alive. You wanna know why we think that?"

Regrettably, I answered, "Yes."

"Well, it's all on account a' his stance on taxation. Take for instance, me. I been a stewardess -"

I stopped feeling bad about thinking of her as a stewardess and not a flight attendant at this point: if she was content with the old-fashioned nomenclature, I was too.

" - ever since I graduated from Texas Tech. The pay's good. I get to travel the world. And I have a great schedule. And the land in Texas is cheee-eap. I'm tellin' you. I'm thirty-five years old. I make sixty thousand dollars a year. And I own a three story condo all to myself. That's plenty a' room for me when I'm home, but it spoils me. I just can't take being cramped up anywhere. So I decided to rent myself a one bedroom apartment in Queens, on account of me being laid over in New York so much. And since I'm from Texas, I don't have to pay the state of New York no taxes on that property. That's a rule. If you're a citizen of Texas, you don't have to pay property taxes nowhere. And other states can't make you pay 'em either. How old are you anyway?"

As I was trying to figure out how the legality of what she just explained to me was possible, she asked again.

"How old are you anyway?"

"Oh, sorry. I'm twenty-four."

"TWENTY-FOUR? My God. I thought you were the same age as me. Man alive would I have felt like a silly cake if I had gone ahead and asked you what I was about to ask you."

"That's odd. I usually have people tell me I look younger than I am. What were you going to ask me?" I was mildly intrigued. She was acceptably good-looking. And we were on a plane.

"I was gonna ask you if you ever thought about moving to Texas."

"No. I never really thought about that."

"Well why not? No property taxes," she hummed.

"I need to be in New York. My work is there."

"What do you do?"

"I'm unemployed at the moment."

She cackled with laughter, which made me feel hollow, until I realized it was only because she thought I was trying to make a joke.

"What're you going to Los Angeles for? Are you an actor or something?"

"I wish."

"Awwwww, honey. You hold on to that dream and don't never let it go."

I felt chastised and became enraged. But, the earnest sweetness in her voice calmed me and let me know she meant what she'd just said. There wasn't an ounce of irony in her body, which scared me and made me feel wonderful at the same time. A few minutes later, the captain annunced that Maid in Manhattan would be shown for our viewing pleasure, and my companion tuned out so she could watch Jennifer Lopez fake her way through another high-concept role she's all wrong for.

When I woke up, the plane was skidding down the runway at Dallas-Forth Worth international airport. As I looked around, the crazy Filipino-Texan stewardess made a little gesture, indicating I had some drool on the corner of my mouth. I thanked her and realized she'd been crying. Her face was puffy and her mascara was streaking down her face in chunks. I wondered what was wrong, and then I remembered she'd just watched that movie.

As I hiked up the ramp towards the terminal with my carry-on bag over my shoulder, I spotted her again. She was saying hello to some people she obviously knew at the Delta counter just inside the waiting area. She saw me and waved. Then she ran toward me.

"How long's your layover?" she asked.

"Only forty-five minutes," I said as I let my bag down on a seat next to a fat child eating a cinnamon bun and playing a portable video game system.

"Damn. I was gonna offer to show you around Dallas a bit. Maybe show you my place so you can see the value you're missing out there in New York."

Although I was getting very uncomfortable with her advances, I couldn't help myself from talking to her. Her sincerity was quite charming.

"Well, thanks a lot," I said. "But, I think I'm just going to get some coffee and try to wake up a bit. I have a meeting right when I get to L.A."

"Oooooh. Is it about a movie you're going to be in?"

"If all goes according to plan, it is."

"Well that is just fabulous. I just know you're going to get that role. You gotta tell me your name now, so's I can watch for you on the silver screen."

I'd never heard anyone use the term "silver screen" with so much gusto before, but it was incredibly satisfying. For an instant, this woman made me remember why I wanted to become an actor.

"David Albright. Nice to meet you."

"Well, David Albright from New York, I'm Darlene Clark. Ms. Darlene Clark. And I wish you the very best of luck out there. Feel free to look me up if you're ever back in the Dallas-Foth Worth area. Toodle-oooh."

And she walked away, towing her suitcase at a brisk pace through the cavernous, linoleum hallway. I'd never met a Darlene before, but she was definitely a Darlene. By New York standards, she was clearly disturbed. But I couldn't remember the last time anyone had made me feel so welcomed.

2003-05-29T17:31:00.000-04:00

You know what makes me really happy?

The fact that the TV version of My Big Fat Greek Wedding is a miserable failure. I hope everyone involved with that piece of shit gets hit by a car ASAP. And if you thought that movie was "cute," or "adorable," or "authentic," fuck you and the gyro you rode in on.

Dick has spoken.

2003-05-29T13:56:00.000-04:00

Down With Love

A certain somebody is back on my good side due to his comments about Bring it On helmer Peyton Reed's homage to Technicolor nonsex movies, Down With Love. It's hard to understand the clubbing Reed's picture is receiving: granted, some of the easier hump jokes are stiff, but the movie is joyous to look at, and it's got a giddy, celebratory tone that most romantic comedies wouldn't recognize if it slapped them in the ass. The actors breeze through the frames as if they were in a musical, shedding gorgeous costume after gorgeous costume and cracking the witty lines of dialogue off each other like whips.

The casting of Ewan McGregor and Renee Zelleweger is perfect (David Hyde Pierce is also brilliant); and big ups to both of them for getting involved with the project. They're both dripping with sex appeal, but they've each got an odd, almost adolescent goofiness about them. The playfulness they posses helps Reed's movie extend beyond the realm of academia (i.e. Far From Heaven) into something a helluva lot more watchable; and it also highlights the reason those Day-Hudson movies seem so ridiculous. It's just not any fun to pretend you're something you're not.

2003-05-28T11:42:00.000-04:00

The Matrixload: Foraging Ahead

An esteemed colleague of mine disagrees with my thoughts about The Matrix: Reloaded. What's worse, he seems to think I missed something about the movie, or that I should've understood it but didn't. He claims I wasn't paying attention to what was on the screen in front of me because I was overwhelmed by my own expecatations of what the movie was going to be. The only thing I anticipated was a lucidly-directed sequel, made with perhaps a smidgen of the gusto that's in The Matrix. What I got was a soulless piece of filmmaking that was obviously influenced by pressure exerted on the Wachowskis to make something big. And I don't think it's unfair to say TMR is jumbled and painfully slow. The twist in the plot is slipshod and isn't clearly dramatized.

I don't think TMR is a compelling film because the human element of the franchise has been removed. Everyone in the movie industry is miffed: the new Matrix installment isn't doing as well as it was expected to do. It didn't top Spider-Man ~ a movie in which the characters' hearts are always the biggest part of the story and the special effects are decidedly underwhelming. I guess more people would be going to see Reloaded again if they were in the mood for a sludgy, two-hour-and-forty-five-minute drag that no one really understands.

2003-05-20T14:42:00.000-04:00

The Matrix v 2.0/matrix.html/whatthefuck?

The second installment in The Wachowski Brothers' Matrix trilogy, The Matrix Reloaded, has some astounding CGI and several action sequences that would make Hitchcock say, "Wha' happened?" But the movie is dim-looking and plodding, and none of the stars have enough to do in it. The Bros. W riff on other sci-fi blockbusters like the Superman and Star Wars films, but unlike the best installments from those sagas, which coincidentally were Superman 2 and The Empire Strikes Back, The Matrix Reloaded suffers unendingly from sophomore outing blues and the pressure to live up to the hype created by the studio marketing machine.

The first act of MR is a tedious exposition festival wherein we're treated to ten-minute bouts of terse dialogue exchanges dressed up in faux important-sounding computer jargon. The matrix has us, yeah, yeah, yeah. The oracle. Right. Mkay. But the machines are digging, bearing towards Zion in an attempt to wipe out the humans forever. Time for Morpheus (Laurence Fishburne) to rev up the Nebuchadnezzar and plunge back into the 'trix so Neo (Keanu Reeves) can find the Keymaker (a leftover character Ivan Reitman cut out of Ghostbusters when he decided he didn't need a Gatekeeper and a Keymaker, because presumably the Gatekeeper wouldn't need keys to his/her own gates) who will open the door to the Architect, the creator of Matrixland and holder of all impenetrable intergers.

The movie plunges headfirst off the diving board of sanity when Morpheus addresses the citizens of Zion, pumping them up for the inevitable onslaught. Although Fishburne is convincing delivering his "we-will-not-be-terrorized" ode to John Ashcroft, the crowd erupts into a frenzy of greasy-assed bumpin' n' grindin' as the cameras dolly around the underground caverns filming the hootinany in slow motion. We half expect Nelly's "Hot in Herre" to thunder across the speakers as the Wachowskis cut to Neo and Trinity (Carrie-Anne Moss) rubbing crotches in a candlelit hallway somewhere else, but apparently human beings will never lose their ability to produce bad electronica and remix it for six-channel DTS-EX surround sound, even when relegated to eating swill and gruel and living a few blocks from the center of the Earth.

Before going back to work, Neo pauses to look at the machines running Zion's support systems and wonder if we live at thier mercy. The central concept of The Matrix - Do we control the machines? Do they control us? - is a fascinating one, but it's only explored briefly here, because it's a sequel and it's time to get on to the fighting. And that's fine, because by the time we've been watching MR for an hour, we're ready for something to snap us out of the boredom. What ensues is an impressive display of fight choreography, virtual and literal, that dramatizes the question of who's got control in the matrix better than anything in the movie. Answering to no one but themselves, the Wachowskis go completely over the top in a scene where Neo fights a hundred or so clones of Agent Smith (Hugo Weaving). Most of the toy soldiering was put together in a computer, and it looks it. There's not an ounce of the humanity the combat in the first Matrix held. The big chase sequnce, which features lots of great real destruction, is the best part of the movie and results in a terrific climax that utilizes the newfound tools of digital moviemaking to produce an otherwise unfilmable payoff. When they finally bring us around to something watchable, the Wachowskis have us wondering who's dictating the content of their film, them or the machines.

It's almost as if the unthinkable pressure to deliver two blockbusters six months apart is completely taking over the creative process of the Matrix franchise. The story arc has been compromised by the necessity to go bigger and gawkier with the special effects wizardry. By the time Neo confronts the Architect, we've lost track of what's going on, so we get another lecture about computers and programming and a bunch of other gobbledygook that makes no sense. And our connection to the characters is all but dissolved by the time Neo rescues Trinity from the peril foreshadowed in a dream sequence that opens the movie. The scene seems contrived, thrown-together and cheap, as does the twist that comes in the final shot. We can't even remember how we're supposed to be relating one thing to another. And the worst part of it all is that the legions of people who adore the mythology of it all will defend it: we've got to understand the philosophy behind the Matrix built up on the Internet and other Wachowski-branded mixed media. Since when do we have to take a prep course in anything before going to the movies?

2003-05-13T14:12:00.000-04:00

The Band: American Music's McCabe and Mrs. Miller

A friend of mine once remarked that The Band's sound reminded him of Robert Altman's movie, McCabe and Mrs. Miller. I think that's a very astute description of The Band's musicality and importance: their songs are the results of collaborations among a pool of creators, crafted the way films are put together, and their impact on American popular music legitimized the influence of what people condescendingly referred to as "the Hillbilly sound," an amalgamation of bluegrass and traditional country-flavored rock that's currently enjoying somewhat of a revival due to the commercial and critical success of the O, Brother Where Art Thou? soundtrack. Indeed, many of The Band's contemporaries enjoyed and rearranged traditional mountain music as well. Bob Dylan, who is largely credited as the man responsible for bringing The Band to international stardom, recorded a version of "Man of Constant Sorrow" on his first album for Columbia. And Jerry Garcia was a founding member of mandolinist David Grisman's bluegrass outfit, Old and In the Gray, who were heavily influenced by the pioneers of the genre, including Bill Monroe and Flatt & Scruggs.

What differentiated The Band from other groups riffing on the American roots influences was their love for '50's soul and rhythm n' blues, particularly the music of Sam Cooke and Ray Charles. Band members Richard Manuel and Rick Danko admittedly tried to emulate the voices of those two singers, respectively. Manuel also reportedly picked up his piano chops from American R & B radio stations in his native Canada, and was never properly trained until Garth Hudson joined The Band on organ under the proviso he be paid ten dollars a week to give the rest of the guys music lessons. On a song like "Rockin' Chair," from The Band's self-titled second album, the influence of Charles and Cooke is especially evident and transforms what would otherwise be a more conventional, croony number into an intensely moving tale of the imminence of death. (The track features Robbie Robertson on acoustic guitar, Levon Helm on mandolin, Garth Hudson on accordion, Rick Danko on bass and Richard Manuel on piano.) The lyrics deal with a mariner who's been away at sea and is anxious to spend his waning years back in "Ol' Virginny" with his best friend, Willy; the two men have been separated by work. As Manuel sings, "Hear the sound, Willy boy/The Flyin' Dutchman's on the reef/It's my belief we used up all our time/And this hill's too steep to climb/And the days that remain ain't worth a dime," in the song's third verse, the anguish and strain in his voice change the song into a pained acceptance of what's to come. There's no trace of the trademark optimism found in most of The Band's country-blues influences, or a more up-tempo song like "Up on Cripple Creek," in which Arkansas-born drummer Levon Helm playfully laments his lover's irritating habits while confessing his undying attraction to her. In "Rockin' Chair," there's only heartache.

Similarly, Altman's reactionary sensibilities colored his genre films in a way that boiled away conventionality and brought a new sense of emotional rawness to his work. McCabe and Mrs. Miller's tone becomes increasingly bleak as the lovers (Julie Christie and Warren Beatty) realize the seriousness of the threat marked by the businessmen who travel to their little town of Presbetyrian Church in order to strongarm Beatty's John McCabe out of his land. In a heartbreaking scene where McCabe confesses his sense of helplessness to Christie's Constance Miller, we lose the sense we're watching a Western. Beatty's unabashed tenderness and Christie's acceptance of it don't resemble anything we've seen from other leading couples in the genre. The next morning, as McCabe is gunned down in the snow, Constance medicates herself by getting high. The ambery warmth of the opium den suggests Altman doesn't see anything wrong with masking the truth to make life less painless, a concept that's starkly in contrast to the brute realism of other Westerns of the Peckinpah era. Perhaps it's because Altman knows confronting demons doesn't always make them go away.

But the most important aspect of the relationship between The Band and McCabe is something more abstract. The way The Band's music, particularly The Band album, and McCabe and Mrs. Miller embrace the seriousness of American folklore calls certain images and colors to mind. There's none of the stereotypical smugness associated with much of the "let's-look-at-these-morons-and-laugh" work produced about the back woods of America, such as Deliverance. (True, it's about psychotic rapists, but the dueling banjo-plunking "Yankee Doodle" scene is pretty ludicrous.) Think of the sequence in McCabe where Warren Beatty rides into town atop his horse and Altman gives us those long-lens closeups; the entire frame is out of focus except for McCabe's face. The nervousness and desperation visible in McCabe's gait recalls the voice of the farmer in "King Harvest Has Surely Come," a man whose life depends on a risk he's taken in a foreign land. It's this method of joyfully re-creating the hard times in our past that makes us think of the colors of the opium den -- browns, greys, blacks, and that chocolatey amber tint Vilmos Zsigmond uses on his lights -- and The Band's work, subconciously. (Zsigmond was also one of the cameramen on Martin Socrsese's film about The Band's final concert, The Last Waltz.) It's a connection these artists feel to the land, in some modern Chekhovian sense, that brings these colors swirling out of a haze when we think of McCabe or listen to "Whispering Pines." In an American context, the laments of McCabe and Mrs. Miller and The Band are no less moving than The Cherry Orchard.

2003-05-13T13:43:00.000-04:00

Come on in, Dickheads

Hello, friends. Welcome to my inaugural address. I'm Dick ~ please refrain from addressing me by my first name. And I know what you're all thinking, so get your juvenile giggles out now. Better? OK. I'm glad you took that moment for yourselves. When you've calmed down, feel free to have a peek around and agree or disagree with any of my thoughts about movies, music, life, why you're sometimes compelled to knock pretentious New York hipsters out of their velcro-induced comas, etc., etc.

Now to tell you a little bit about me. I'm a -- wait, you don't need to know anything about me. I'd rather keep it that way if it's all the same to you. Who am I kidding. If you're here, you already know me. Thanks for understanding. Here we go.

Warmest Regards,

Dick