Truth at 24

Les Steves d'Or

2012-01-24T04:51:00.001-08:00

Presenting...the 2011 Golden Steve Awards.

Far and away the most coveted of motion picture accolades, Golden Steves are frequently described as the Oscars without the politics. Impervious to bribery, unreceptive to ballyhoo, disgusted by sentiment and riddled with integrity, this committee of one might legitimately be termed "fair-mindedness incarnate." Over 170 of the year's most acclaimed features were screened prior to the compilation of this ballot. First, a few caveats:

1) Owing to a lifelong suspicion of prime numbers, each category is comprised of six nominees, not five.

2) The works under scrutiny may have received international distribution before January 1, 2011, but were unavailable to American audiences and thus ineligible for Golden Steve consideration until now.

3) This list is in no way connected with the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences—a fact that should be apparent from its acumen. Please look elsewhere for Oscar predictions.

And now, the worthy honorees:

Best Picture

The Artist

Certified Copy

Margaret

Mysteries of Lisbon

Poetry

The Tree of Life

Best Director

Michel Hazanavicius, The Artist

Abbas Kiarostami, Certified Copy

Chang-dong Lee, Poetry

Kenneth Lonergan, Margaret

Terrence Malick, The Tree of Life

Raoul Ruiz, Mysteries of Lisbon

Best Actor

Jean Dujardin, The Artist

Michael Fassbender, Shame

Brendan Gleeson, The Guard

Woody Harrelson, Rampart

Gary Oldman, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

Michael Shannon, Take Shelter

Best Actress

Juliette Binoche, Certified Copy

Kirsten Dunst, Melancholia

Khomotso Manyaka, Life, Above All

Brit Marling, Another Earth

Elizabeth Olsen, Martha Marcy May Marlene

Jeong-hie Yun, Poetry

Best Supporting Actor

John Hawkes, Martha Marcy May Marlene

Patton Oswalt, Young Adult

Brad Pitt, The Tree of Life

Christopher Plummer, Beginners

John C. Reilly, Terri

David Wenham, Oranges and Sunshine

Best Supporting Actress

Alice Barnole, House of Tolerance

Berenice Bejo, The Artist

Jeannie Berlin, Margaret

Janet McTeer, Albert Nobbs

Vanessa Redgrave, Coriolanus

Shailene Woodley, The Descendants

Best Screenplay--Adapted

The Hedgehog (Mona Achache)

Moneyball (Aaron Sorkin, Steve Zaillian, Stan Chervin)

Mysteries of Lisbon (Carlos Saboga)

The Princess of Montpensier (Jean Cosmos, Francois-Olivier Rousseau, Bertrand Tavernier)

The Skin I Live In (Pedro Almodovar)

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (Bridget O'Connor, Peter Straughan)

Best Screenplay--Original

The Artist (Michel Hazanavicius)

Beginners (Mike Mills)

Certified Copy (Abbas Kiarostami)

Margaret (Kenneth Lonergan)

Poetry (Chang-dong Lee)

A Separation (Asghar Farhadi)

Best Animated Feature

The Adventures of Tintin (Steven Spielberg)

Arthur Christmas (Sarah Smith, Barry Cook)

Chico & Rita (Tono Errando, Javier Mariscal, Fernando Trueba)

Rango (Gore Verbinski)

Rio (Carlos Saldanha)

Winnie the Pooh (Stephen J. Anderson, Don Hall)

Best Non-Fiction Film

The Arbor (Clio Barnard)

Bill Cunningham New York (Richard Press)

Cave of Forgotten Dreams (Werner Herzog)

Nostalgia for the Light (Patricio Guzman)

Project Nim (James Marsh)

We Were Here (David Weissman, Bill Weber)

Best Foreign Language Film

House of Tolerance (Bertrand Bonello)

Mysteries of Lisbon (Raoul Ruiz)

Once Upon a Time in Anatolia (Nuri Bilge Ceylan)

Poetry (Chang-dong Lee)

A Separation (Asghar Farhadi)

The Skin I Live In (Pedro Almodovar)

Best Original Song

"Coeur Volant," Hugo

(Elizabeth Cotnoir, Isabelle Geffroy, Howard Shore)

"Lay Your Head Down," Albert Nobbs

(Brian Byrne, Glenn Close)

"Life's a Happy Song," The Muppets

(Bret McKenzie)

"Pictures in My Head," The Muppets

(Jeannie Lurie, Aris Archontis, Chen Neeman)

"Think You Can Wait," Win Win

(The National)

"Walk Lightly on the World," Jane's Journey

(Katie Melua)

It's that time again!

2011-02-01T05:22:00.000-08:00

Presenting...the 2010 Golden Steve Awards.

See pontification just above...

And now, the worthy honorees:

Best Picture

Animal Kingdom

The Ghost Writer

Of Gods and Men

The Social Network

Toy Story 3

Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives

Best Director

Xavier Beauvois, Of Gods and Men

Sofia Coppola, Somewhere

David Fincher, The Social Network

David Michod, Animal Kingdom

Roman Polanski, The Ghost Writer

Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives

Best Actor

Javier Bardem, Biutiful

Vincent Cassel, Mesrine: Public Enemy No. 1

Jesse Eisenberg, The Social Network

Colin Firth, The King's Speech

Paul Giamatti, Barney's Version

Luis Tosar, Cell 211

Best Actress

Jennifer Lawrence, Winter's Bone

Carey Mulligan, Never Let Me Go

Noomi Rapace, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo

Paprika Steen, Applause

Tilda Swinton, I Am Love

Michelle Williams, Blue Valentine

Best Supporting Actor

Christian Bale, The Fighter

Pierce Brosnan, The Ghost Writer

John Hawkes, Winter's Bone

Michael Lonsdale, Of Gods and Men

Ben Mendelsohn, Animal Kingdom

Geoffrey Rush, The King's Speech

Best Supporting Actress

Anne-Marie Duff, Nowhere Boy

Lesley Manville, Another Year

Rosamund Pike, Barney's Version

Hailee Steinfeld, True Grit

Jacki Weaver, Animal Kingdom

Olivia Williams, The Ghost Writer

Best Screenplay--Adapted

Barney's Version (Michael Konyves)

The Ghost Writer (Robert Harris, Roman Polanski)

The Social Network (Aaron Sorkin)

Tamara Drewe (Moira Buffini)

Toy Story 3 (M. Arndt, J. Lasseter, A. Stanton, L. Unkrich)

True Grit (Joel Coen, Ethan Coen)

Best Screenplay--Original

Animal Kingdom (David Michod)

Another Year (Mike Leigh)

Buried (Chris Sparling)

Greenberg (Noah Baumbach)

The King's Speech (David Seidler)

Please Give (Nicole Holofcener)

Best Animated Feature

How to Train Your Dragon (Dean DeBlois, Chris Sanders)

The Illusionist (Sylvain Chomet)

Megamind (Tom McGrath)

My Dog Tulip (Paul Fierlinger, Sandra Fierlinger)

Tangled (Nathan Greno, Byron Howard)

Toy Story 3 (Lee Unkrich)

Best Non-Fiction Film

Exit Through the Gift Shop (Banksy)

Genius Within: The Inner Life of Glenn Gould (M. Hozer, P. Raymont)

Inside Job (Charles Ferguson)

Last Train Home (Lixin Fan)

Marwencol (Jeff Malmberg)

Prodigal Sons (Kimberly Reed)

Best Foreign Language Film

Dogtooth (Giorgos Lanthimos)

Everyone Else (Maren Ade)

I Am Love (Luca Guadagnino)

Of Gods and Men (Xavier Beauvois)

The Strange Case of Angelica (Manoel de Oliveira)

Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (A. Weerasethakul)

Best Original Song

"Darkness Before the Dawn," Holy Rollers

(M.J. Mynarski, Paul Comaskey)

"If I Rise," 127 Hours

(A.R. Rahman, Dido Armstrong and Rolo Armstrong)

"I See the Light," Tangled

(Alan Menken, Glenn Slater)

"Life During Wartime," Life During Wartime

(Marc Shaiman, Todd Solondz)

"The Only One," Hey Hey It's Esther Blueberger

(Paul Mac, Bertie Blackman)

"Le Refuge," Hideaway

(Louis-Ronan Choisy)

Once more unto the breach!

2010-02-20T00:26:00.000-08:00

Presenting...the 2009 Golden Steve Awards.

Scroll up for pontification...

And now, the worthy honorees:

Best Picture

An Education

The Hurt Locker

The Secret in Their Eyes

A Serious Man

Up in the Air

The White Ribbon

Best Director

Kathryn Bigelow, The Hurt Locker

Juan Jose Campanella, The Secret in Their Eyes

Ethan and Joel Coen, A Serious Man

Michael Haneke, The White Ribbon

Spike Jonze, Where the Wild Things Are

Jason Reitman, Up in the Air

Best Actor

Jeff Bridges, Crazy Heart

Colin Firth, A Single Man

John Malkovich, Disgrace

Jeremy Renner, The Hurt Locker

Adam Scott, The Vicious Kind

Toni Servillo, Il Divo

Best Actress

Katie Jarvis, Fish Tank

Hye-ja Kim, Mother

Yolande Moreau, Seraphine

Carey Mulligan, An Education

Gabourey Sidibe, Precious

Tilda Swinton, Julia

Best Supporting Actor

Niels Arestrup, A Prophet

Peter Capaldi, In the Loop

Guillermo Francella, The Secret in Their Eyes

Woody Harrelson, The Messenger

Christian McKay, Me and Orson Welles

Christoph Waltz, Inglourious Basterds

Best Supporting Actress

Vera Farmiga, Up in the Air

Jessica Haines, Disgrace

Anna Kendrick, Up in the Air

Alice Krige, Skin

Melanie Laurent, Inglourious Basterds

Mo'Nique, Precious

Best Screenplay--Adapted

The Damned United (Peter Morgan)

Disgrace (Anna Maria Monticelli)

An Education (Nick Hornby)

In the Loop (J. Armstrong, S. Blackwell, etc.)

The Secret in Their Eyes (Juan Jose Campanella)

Up in the Air (J. Reitman, S. Turner)

Best Screenplay--Original

The Hurt Locker (Mark Boal)

Inglourious Basterds (Quentin Tarantino)

Mother (Joon-ho Bong, Eun-kyo Park)

A Serious Man (Ethan and Joel Coen)

Summer Hours (Olivier Assayas)

The White Ribbon (Michael Haneke)

Best Animated Feature

Coraline (Henry Selick)

Mary and Max (Adam Elliot)

Ponyo (Hayao Miyazaki)

The Secret of Kells (Tomm Moore)

Sita Sings the Blues (Nina Paley)

Up (Pete Docter)

Best Non-Fiction Film

Anvil! The Story of Anvil (Sacha Gervasi)

The Beaches of Agnes (Agnes Varda)

October Country (Donal Mosher, Michael Palmieri)

Of Time and the City (Terence Davies)

Tyson (James Toback)

The Way We Get By (Aron Gaudet)

Best Foreign Language Film

Lorna's Silence (Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne)

Mother (Joon-ho Bong)

A Prophet (Jacques Audiard)

The Secret in Their Eyes (Juan Jose Campanella)

Summer Hours (Olivier Assayas)

The White Ribbon (Michael Haneke)

Best Original Song

"Ayayayay," The Maid (Pedro Piedra)

"Hideaway ," Where the Wild Things Are (Karen O)

"I Can See in Color," Precious (Mary J. Blige)

"Innocent Child," Skin (H. Muddiman, M. Stockley)

"Smoke Without Fire," An Education (Duffy)

"The Weary Kind," Crazy Heart

(R. Bingham, T-Bone Burnett)

Just what civilization needs...

2009-12-07T14:45:00.000-08:00

Another weigh-in on the best films of the decade.

(Some temptations can be resisted. Some should be but cannot. Sometimes reticence is regretted. Sometimes resistance is futile.)

Today: 15 runners-up and the 25th [superlative inflection of positive adjective] motion picture of the decade spanning 2000-2009.
Tomorrow through December 31st, daily: Countdown to #1.

***

Honorable mentions, listed alphabetically:

Before Sunset (Richard Linklater); Children of Men (Alfonso Cuaron); The Death of Mr. Lazarescu (Cristi Piui); Gosford Park (Robert Altman); The Hurt Locker (Kathryn Bigelow); Little Children (Todd Field); Mulholland Dr. (David Lynch); My Winnipeg (Guy Maddin); Pan's Labyrinth (Guillermo del Toro); Safe Conduct (Bertrand Tavernier); The Sea Inside (Alejandro Amenabar); A Serious Man (Ethan Coen, Joel Coen); The Squid and the Whale (Noah Baumbach); 25th Hour (Spike Lee); United 93 (Paul Greengrass)

***

25. Grizzly Man (Werner Herzog)
24. No Country for Old Men (Ethan Coen, Joel Coen)
23. Downfall (Oliver Hirschbiegel)
22. The Fog of War (Errol Morris)
21. Y Tu Mama Tambien (Alfonso Cuaron)
20. You Can Count on Me (Kenneth Lonergan)
19. Adaptation (Spike Jonze)
18. Zodiac (David Fincher)
17. Kings & Queen (Arnaud Desplechin)
16. Capturing the Friedmans (Andrew Jarecki)
15. Amores Perros (Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu)
14. Sideways (Alexander Payne)
13. The Barbarian Invasions (Denys Arcand)
12. 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days (Cristian Mungiu)
11. Junebug (Phil Morrison)
10. The Best of Youth (Marco Tullio Giordana)
9. Talk to Her (Pedro Almodovar)
8. Spirited Away (Hayao Miyazaki)
7. Brokeback Mountain (Ang Lee)
6. The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (Julian Schnabel)
5. The Lives of Others (Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck)
4. Far From Heaven (Todd Haynes)
3. City of God (Fernando Meirelles)
2. There Will Be Blood (Paul Thomas Anderson)
1. Lost in Translation (Sofia Coppola)

"And when it's done, we'll both be free..."

2009-05-01T17:06:00.000-07:00

Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo—I’m sure I’ve seen the film 20 times. It inspired the longest, thorniest paper of my academic career. And though I chafe at perfunctory rankings of art, my perennial fascination with the Master’s most self-expressive work assures its place on that desert island for which connoisseurs prepare in itemized fashion.

Outshining its palpable wonderments, in my view, is its capacity to reveal uncharted pockets of genius on each viewing. Sometimes it’s a quick shot, sometimes an extended set piece; regardless, you always come away with newfound reverence for Hitchcock’s twisted virtuosity. I had occasion to watch it recently in a venue that did full justice to its grandeur, and this time my attention was seized by a quiet interlude which before then seemed like little more than connective tissue. (This is where I urge you to stop reading if you’ve never seen Vertigo—and let your artistic compasses know they've failed you.)

I refer to the ten-minute sequence which begins after the inquest into Madeleine’s death, and ends with Scottie’s compulsion to enter Judy’s apartment. The parenthesis comprises the saddest, tenderest, most genuine treatment of grief and refusal to unfasten the shackles of lost love I have ever seen on film. Scottie drifts through days as though trapped in a lucid dream, unresponsive to stimuli except those that fuel his need to believe Madeleine is not really gone from him. He returns to familiar locales—the Elsters’ old residence, the bar at Ernie’s, the gallery where Carlotta’s portrait emblematizes past forfeitures to love—almost as if he believes Madeleine is hiding from him, teasingly and in plain sight. The faintest validation of his faith reengages him with the world, but the sting of each setback pushes him further into withdrawal. How tenaciously he questions the woman who would presume to drive Madeleine’s distinctive green car; how thoroughly he retreats upon learning she is the new owner.

The frenzied nightmare that triggers Scottie's breakdown is vintage Hitchcock—the specters of Gavin and Carlotta, the wary but purposeful march to the empty grave, the crime scene-esque silhouette of Scottie plummeting downward into worse things than death. But the compositions that follow are anomalous in the extreme, especially for a filmmaker often linked with sensation over emotion, with economy before patience. The long, slow pan across San Francisco’s skyline attests that all machinations, even Hitchcock’s, must sometimes cede their urgency, and Bernard Herrmann’s soaring soundscape, marked by a literalization of heartstrings, has the curious effect of rendering the passions on display even more shrouded and internalized.

I don’t mean to give the impression of narrative stasis within these scenes. Hitchcock uses the interval to prepare his canvas for the imminent sublimation of helplessness into tyranny; when the time comes, he has subtly groomed us to be revulsed but not confounded. He also exhibits his deft command of parallelism, as the fateful premonitions of Scottie’s dream remind us of Madeleine’s self-fulfilling prophesy, as dire interrogations prefigure unyielding demands, as Midge’s micromanagement of Scottie’s recovery anticipates the exactitude of Judy’s reinvention. But what registers most pronouncedly is the study of a shattered soul—of bereavement in something close to real time. Many handlings of the predicament hasten us through numbness into primal rage, sensual surrender and release. By lingering on the bargaining stage, Hitchcock reveals himself as the master of a different kind of suspense—the suspended animation of the lovelorn survivor.

Only a poor, corrupt official, but an irreplaceable actor

2009-04-30T02:10:00.000-07:00

Indulge me in a thought experiment. We all take for granted (I hope) that a Casablanca remake would be inauspicious, ill-fated and impossible. Right, now let’s break that down. Inauspicious is an opinion, widely supported but indemonstrable. Ill-fated is a projection, backed by enough common sense to overtake the highest hill of beans, but premature until the commodity hits the marketplace. That leaves impossible. Clearly a refashioning of any work, even the most iconic, is not impossible. With legal rights procured, a Casablanca cover would require only labor and equipment. But let’s pay heed to the fourth listed and most pragmatic definition of “impossible”:

Not to be done, endured, etc., with any degree of reason or propriety: an impossible situation.

Now we’re in murky waters, like the ones that brought Rick to Casablanca. This explication implies a vanishing point at which “unreasonable” becomes “unendurable”—whereupon “shouldn’t” becomes “mustn’t.” And here’s the upshot of my tangled hypothetical: It’s beyond reason to expect next-gen Rick to fill Bogart’s shoes, but without Claude Rains as Renault, the whole enterprise is beyond endurance.

Despite his supporting-actor billing, Rains is the film’s least transmutable component. Casablanca’s formation owes to a fabled chronology of happy accidents—unrepeatable at any other time, in any other climate, by any other studio. And I believe Warner Brothers’ grandest coup of all was having Rains under contract and propitiously available when shooting commenced. I will not ask you to picture another actress in the Ilsa role, but perhaps you’ll entertain the notion that other stars operate in the Ingrid Bergman vein. (Consider her daughter, the ethereal Isabella Rossellini.) Yet you can think from now until moonlight and love songs surpass their shelf lives—you’ll never arrive at a Rains surrogate, or a featured player who approximates his function in movies. I concede that my favorite aspect of Alfonso Cuaron’s laudable Children of Men was the way in which the Owen/Caine dynamic recalled the interplay between Bogart and Rains—bruised nobility meets affable decadence, to put it archetypically. But even that pedigreed pairing lacks the enchantment of cinema’s most enduringly beautiful friendship. Gone is the musicality of discourse, the absolute reciprocal understanding and acceptance that views character flaws as colloquial plums—never again have solipsism and hedonism melded so impeccably.

Even the most resolute contrarians who indict the film for objectification and untoward flag-waving, to say nothing of repugnant achromatism, are bound to revel in Rains’ blithe etching of the opportunistic Renault. All his actorly gifts are beheld in bountiful bloom: The cunning delivery of sardonic dialogue, exuding such fulsome delight that one believes it was improvised by a man whose own cleverness could keep him enthralled for hours at a stretch. The sporadic bursts of professionalism, jarring until one notes that when his personal and vocational motives form a right angle, he finds a way to move crosswise to the axis he appears to be tracing. And, of course, the award-worthy calisthenics of his left eyebrow—itself one of the best character actors in Hollywood.

The absence of latter-day Rainses might appear to stem from a gradual diminution of second bananas in the Tinseltown ranks. A valid hypothesis and a woefully accurate observation on the whole, but I daresay even a complete inversion of the structures in place would not solve our problem. The uniqueness of the Rains presence cannot be overstated. Bemused and beguiling, silky and sophisticated, he was the Cheshire cat of cinema. Twentieth-century culture would be unthinkable without his velvet purr.

Contemplation Row

2009-04-29T23:39:00.000-07:00

Emerging from I’m Not There, Todd Haynes’s kaleidoscopic portrait of Bob Dylan in all his mutability of image, one emphatic gentleman proclaimed it “a totally unnecessary movie.” More than a brusque dismissal, this observation doubtless typifies the majority response to the work. Haynes’s film audaciously renders a chameleonic character, making no attempt to reconcile his disparate facades, and further clouding the point by dividing the Dylan role among six actors with no clear commonalities.

For a middle-of-the-road moviegoer, this approach breeds chaos and confusion. What good is biography that sheds no light on its subject? That uses technique to augment his obscurity—to pronounce him unknowable without aiming for a semblance of understanding?

As Louis Armstrong said of jazz, if you have to ask you’ll never know. All Dylanites, and I count myself as one, admit that their hero defies definition. True disciples know it would indeed take a half dozen performers including a black boy and a woman to capture his myriad personae.

As with Man on the Moon, the like-minded but less flamboyant Andy Kaufman head-scratcher, I’m Not There presumes the futility of seeking closure. Dylan is enigma incarnate, a figure who concurrently shaped and reflected a cultural moment; to ask for precision and unity is a fool's errand. Haynes is more concerned with ambiance than cohesion, so escapists are advised to look elsewhere.

Among the six incarnations of the artist, not one bears the name Bob Dylan. That’s fitting, as the stage name is no more authentic to Robert Zimmerman than any of the monikers assumed by his surrogates in the film, most of which harbor nonetheless some connection to the man as well as the myth. We get Woody Guthrie and Arthur Rimbaud, named for creative influences. We meet Jude Quinn, perhaps an homage to “Quinn the Eskimo”—a folk rock piece composed by Dylan during the interval that character bridges. At last we encounter Cowboy Billy, whose presence calls to mind the film Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, for which Dylan composed his quixotic ballad “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door.”

Woody (Marcus Carl Franklin) is presented as a twelve-year-old African American, riding the rails and plucking populist tunes on his guitar like his namesake, despite the fact that Guthrie’s time had long since passed. The episode dates to 1959, and in a scene of great power and significance, Woody is rebuked for glamorizing the Depression-era plight of the hobo while civil rights crusades hover on the horizon. “Live your own time,” he is told, as if to quell the anachronism of the early Dylan recordings.

Having reinvented himself—in the first of many such instances—as a mouthpiece of the folk movement, Woody is replaced by Arthur (Ben Whishaw), a pastiche of anterior talents. The look of the picture changes accordingly. From the richly saturated hues of the wunderkind’s westward travels (echoing the palette employed by cinematographer Haskell Wexler in the 1976 Guthrie bio Bound for Glory), Haynes shifts to a gritty black and white—then back to less stylized color with the introduction of Jack (Christian Bale), a romantic Greenwich Village prodigy, and tinted green for our sojourn with Robbie (Heath Ledger), a Hollywood actor playing Jack in a meta-biopic.

The differentiation of texture between each sequence accomplishes a good deal more than helping us keep the stories straight. It evokes an array of memories (or impressions, for those of us too young to remember) of the media we associate with Dylan—the means of disseminating the man into the culture. This is most chillingly manifest in scenes depicting the embodiment called Jude (Cate Blanchett), culled directly from the touchstone of popular Dylan perception, D.A. Pennebaker’s 1967 documentary Don’t Look Back.

It’s within these scenes that lightning strikes. The remarkable Blanchett propels us through the legendary tour of England, the combative press junkets, and the infamous Newport Folk Festival where Dylan unleashed his new electric sound to the inestimable horror of his fan base. Here we see him at his most insufferable—cocky, dismissive, occasionally cruel, and reliant on chemicals to fulfill promises his body was ill-equipped to keep.

The miracle of Blanchett’s portrayal is her ability to capture both sides of the coin. We bristle as we recognize the narcissistic man-child who greets fans and biographers with abstract contempt. This is the Dylan recorded by Pennebaker four decades ago, from whom many fans remain alienated to this day. But we also glimpse the beleaguered, inexperienced songwriter from Minnesota who resented being dubbed the voice of his generation at an age when most people are assumed to know none of the answers. This more sympathetic Dylan was proffered by Martin Scorsese in his recent documentary No Direction Home.

Rounding out the collage—though in fact blurring its focus—is Billy (Richard Gere), hermitlike inhabitant of a folkloric town self-consciously named Riddle. As Billy rides his horse to the town square, all the villagers he passes are cloaked in Halloween attire and seem to be fortifying themselves for disaster. The elements of paranoia, camouflage and individualism suggest Dylan’s period of withdrawal after his mysterious motorcycle accident, followed by the release of his western-themed album John Wesley Harding. But the connection is shaky at best.

Ultimately these scenes are the film’s least successful. Shapeless and baffling, they supply unfortunate ammunition to critics of Haynes’s intrepid stylings. The word “pretentious,” while broadly applied to any feature aiming to sell ideas instead of popcorn, serves in its primary usage to critique works which “pretend” to function in ways they do not, or pretend to know what they’re doing when the opposite is plainly true. Whatever the Billy episode sought to achieve, it falls short, and must be classified as a pretentious supplement to a piece otherwise marked by assurance, not indulgence.

True, I’m Not There strikes the occasional false note. Verbal asides inspired by (or meant to inspire) Dylan lyrics, like Jude’s off-the-cuff utterance “That’s just like a woman,” land with the thud of Forrest Gumpist contrivance. Insertions of pop cultural icons range in their effectiveness—Julianne Moore channels Joan Baez note-perfectly in her few scenes, but Allen Ginsberg, Norman Mailer and others not bothering with pseudonyms feel shoehorned in.

Nevertheless, Haynes leaves us with a fascinating proposition: that an identity as fluid as Dylan’s couldn’t possibly be pinned down by a single actor or mise-en-scene. And in thrusting us headlong through clashing compositions, feeding us prodigal imagery to make our heads spin, he tenders perhaps the only viable agency for grasping the man and his time—as a raging, roving, psychedelic whirlwind.

"Two Old Fashioneds. For two old-fashioned people."

2009-04-12T08:47:00.000-07:00

What if I asked you which swath of the populace is most grievously neglected on film? Think it over. Consider quality of depiction as well as frequency. There’s no right answer, of course, but I’ll bet my answer differs from yours. And if that’s the case, I’ll wager it’s not because you think my party gets a fair shake, but because conditions are so inequitable it was never on the table to begin with.

I'm thinking of the elderly.

Meaning no offense, I believe that of all the “-isms” that fracture our society, ageism meets with the most unperturbed indifference. Nowhere on earth is this truer than in Hollywood, which (breaking news, I’m well aware) places such premiums on youth, frenetic life and glamorous death that people failing to evince those qualities are regarded as dead weight.

Maybe you’re thinking: Wait, I can name lots of actors in their seventies and they’re still going strong! Have you forgotten Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman? No, but I wish I could forget The Bucket List. Only the latest submission to an endless cycle of pernicious fairy tales (let’s call them Cocooners, after Ron Howard’s execrable prototype), the film purports that loneliness can be cured and vitality regained by jumping out of airplanes with newfound friends. Oh, but the two leads have terminal cancer. Do you imagine people with that prognosis are more apt to spend their last days: a) knocking around the Pyramids with formulaically mismatched sidekicks, or b) trying to stabilize their anesthesia so they’re lucid enough to enjoy the company of loved ones for as long as their escalating pain will permit?

Who wants to watch a film about torturous decline, you might ask—surely not old people! Well, who wants to watch a film about teenage prostitution, gang warfare or meth addiction? Lots of people! The key difference is that those movies end with deceptive catharses, whereas life in twilight can only end in death—and as heartfelt as that may be, it’s also messy, humiliating and sad. Sadder still in many cases are the preceding years, marked by solitude and degradation (not confined to the physical strain). Should you ever question your capacity to empathize with fellow human beings, watch the first twenty minutes of Bryan Forbes’s The Whisperers; they will serve as your litmus test. An Englishwoman of about eighty trudges to the welfare office to claim her subsistence check, then to church where she’s compelled to sing hymns for nourishment, then to the public library to warm her feet on the pipes. That act of indignity gets her expelled from the premises. In his initial review, Roger Ebert posed a question that society is too content to read as rhetorical: “What is it about the Puritan culture, in England and in this country, that makes it necessary for the old and the hungry to shame themselves in order to get the necessities of life?”

To further his inquiry, what is it about the commercial culture, in this country above all, that makes it necessary for the old and the weak to occupy positions of marginality? Death is everywhere in movies and we’re fine with it, just as long as it’s unplanned and unnatural. “Because we’ve come to see death as a failure to keep living, normal death is stripped of meaning, which renders it terrifying,” observes Pomona Prof. Lauri Mullens. But why should something as universal and inescapable as human mortality be terrifying?

Australia-based filmmaker Paul Cox understands that it needn’t be. His exquisite productions, Innocence and A Woman’s Tale, explore the jubilation of life and the weary, wistful sorrow of its passing. The greatest of all films on seniority—and among the greatest of all films—is Yasujiro Ozu’s Tokyo Story, a trenchant reflection on the unwillingness of young people hurriedly leading their lives to make room for old people still (inconveniently) living theirs. Depressing in its allegations but exhilarating in its candor, Ozu’s masterpiece is brave enough to conclude with a casual expression of life’s disappointments, arriving in a manner both startling and overdue.

The U.S. Census Board reports that 13% of our population is 65 or above. What can that demographic expect from Hollywood? As I see it they’re dropped into three basic pigeonholes. First and foremost, the Cocooners—insidious works that mine the aged for pith and vinegar, shuffling them off-screen when it's time for the youngsters to Be Affected. We note a minor uptick of integrity in the second group, films that respect the elderly but can only envision them in conventional frameworks. These include whimsical human interest yarns like The Straight Story, geriatric buddy pictures (shall we say “crony pictures”) such as Wrestling Ernest Hemingway, and episodic character sketches like the undeniably charming Harry and Tonto.

As expected, the third array concerns treatment of corporeal/neurological failure. Unsentimental works of this type are rare enough, but they’re a dime a dozen compared to the paltry contingent of honest meditations on the emotional cost of longevity. Surviving your life partner or feeling ill at ease with technology and estranged from the younger generations tap into deep-seated cultural anxieties. If we fear one thing more than death, it’s obsolescence. There’s vicious irony in the volume of movies devoted to quarter-life turmoil. Restlessness we embrace, uselessness we scorn.

At last we reach the eternal argument for visibility at all costs. Yes, I prefer twinkly, garbage-mouthed Alan Arkin to no Arkin at all, but there should be a third avenue—one that confronts the winter of life with compassion, fidelity and truth. Is life disappointing? Undeniably. Can the plight be acknowledged? Why else do movies exist?

Short and Sweet

2009-03-08T05:46:00.000-07:00

So how ‘bout them Oscars, eh?

There you have seven more syllables of coverage than I planned to impart. Mindful of those hallowed, hollowed words, “If you can’t say something nice, say nothing at all,” I’ve said precious little on the subject of Hollywood’s preeminent circle jerk. Ah, but if forcibly induced to praise one element of the voters’ conduct, I would point to their uncommonly equitable extraction of two performances that, from a timechecker’s standpoint, lie somewhere between “cameo” and “sub-supporting role.” Doubt’s Viola Davis and Revolutionary Road’s Michael Shannon had roughly a dozen minutes apiece—the length of time it takes Hugh Grant to clear his throat—yet they managed to generate two of the year’s most galvanizing creations. Davis’s single scene in Doubt was a Big Scene, and was lamentably edited as such, but the volcanic brunt of her talent reaches the screen with near-negligible dilution. Denied the luxury of a character arc, she handily and unfussily does without one, arriving on cue fully formed and formidably layered. For all the sturm and drang over alleged misconduct, the party whose reactions resonate most is neither assailant nor exponent, but attestant. Her scene is a movie in miniature, and it proves to be far richer than the one encasing it.

Shannon’s project is perhaps even more formidable. With two short scenes and no histrionics, he’s required to personify candor in a landscape of self-deception. If the Joker was an agent of chaos, John Givings is an agent of authenticity—a man whose penchant for truth casts him out of the order that aches for his vision. In the same way Givings renounces any compulsion to play a role in life, Shannon eschews crazy-sane mannerisms and extrudes dialogue with the precision and impact of heat-seeking missiles. We believe in the “hopeless emptiness” of postwar suburbia not because the screenwriter spells out its ubiquity, but because Shannon points an impassioned finger in its direction and chillingly asserts his pity for its heirs.

Would these turns have forged deeper impressions if they'd been granted more time in the spotlight? Hardly so; I might even argue the opposite. Sometimes one or two-scene roles reverberate on the grounds of their brevity. Just look at the record. In mere minutes they can be iconic (Alec Baldwin’s corporate motivator in Glengarry Glen Ross) or ironic (Christopher Walken, name your poison), sublime (Gene Hackman’s blind Samaritan in Young Frankenstein) or ridiculous (John Wayne, claiming the last word as the Roman centurion in The Greatest Story Ever Told). I confess to a special fondness for Dean Stockwell’s “Ben” in Blue Velvet, a performance that covers all bases in equal measure. Introduced as “suave,” perhaps the one adjective simultaneously vague and redolent enough to convey a sense of his bearing, he delivers an outrageous pantomime to Roy Orbison’s “In Dreams,” projecting the zonked-out vacancy of a man whose delights extend well beyond the drugs he procures from Frank (Dennis Hopper), but also the urgency of one who’s oddly equipped to preside over a moveable feast of debasement. He may look like a clown, but it’s his circus. Brother, suave ain’t the half of it.

So again I open the floor to debate: Which portrayals of limited scope have struck the most clangorous chords?

As the world holds its breath...

2009-01-28T05:11:00.000-08:00

Presenting...the 2008 Golden Steve Awards.

Far and away the most coveted of motion picture accolades, Golden Steves are frequently described as the Oscars without the politics. Impervious to bribery, unreceptive to ballyhoo, disgusted by sentiment and riddled with integrity, this committee of one might legitimately be termed “fair-mindedness incarnate.” Over 100 of the year’s most acclaimed features were screened prior to the compilation of this ballot. First, a few caveats:

1) Owing to a lifelong suspicion of prime numbers, each category (save Best Animated Feature) is comprised of six nominees, not five.

2) Several of the works under scrutiny received international distribution before January 1, 2008. However, they were unavailable to American audiences and thus ineligible for Golden Steve consideration until now.

3) This list is in no way connected with the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences—a fact that should be apparent from its acumen. Please look elsewhere for Oscar predictions.

And now, the worthy honorees:

Best Picture

The Edge of Heaven

Gomorra

Happy-Go-Lucky

Let the Right One In

My Winnipeg

The Wrestler

Best Director

Fatih Akin, The Edge of Heaven

Tomas Alfredson, Let the Right One In

Darren Aronofsky, The Wrestler

Matteo Garrone, Gomorra

Mike Leigh, Happy-Go-Lucky

Guy Maddin, My Winnipeg

Best Actor

Michael Fassbender, Hunger

Brendan Gleeson, In Bruges

Richard Jenkins, The Visitor

Frank Langella, Frost/Nixon

Sean Penn, Milk

Mickey Rourke, The Wrestler

Best Actress

Sally Hawkins, Happy-Go-Lucky

Maria Heiskanen, Everlasting Moments

Melissa Leo, Frozen River

Kristin Scott Thomas, I’ve Loved You So Long

Galina Vishnevskaya, Alexandra

Michelle Williams, Wendy and Lucy

Best Supporting Actor

Michel Blanc, The Witnesses

Robert Downey Jr., Tropic Thunder

Ralph Fiennes, The Duchess

Heath Ledger, The Dark Knight

Eddie Marsan, Happy-Go-Lucky

Michael Shannon, Revolutionary Road

Best Supporting Actress

Penelope Cruz, Vicki Cristina Barcelona

Viola Davis, Doubt

Martina Gedeck, The Baader Meinhof Complex

Ann Savage, My Winnipeg

Hanna Schygulla, The Edge of Heaven

Marisa Tomei, The Wrestler

Best Screenplay--Adapted

The Class (Francois Begaudeau, Robin Campillo)

Everlasting Moments (Niklas Radstrom)

Frost/Nixon (Peter Morgan)

Gomorra (Maurizio Braucci, Ugo Chiti, et al)

Let the Right One In (John Ajvide Lindqvist)

Tell No One (Guillaume Canet and Philippe Lefebvre)

Best Screenplay--Original

The Edge of Heaven (Fatih Akin)

Happy-Go-Lucky (Mike Leigh)

Milk (Dustin Lance Black)

My Winnipeg (Guy Maddin and George Toles)

Revanche (Gotz Spielmann)

The Wrestler (Robert D. Siegel)

Best Animated Feature

Chicago 10 (Brett Morgen)

$9.99 (Tatia Rosenthal)

WALL-E (Andrew Stanton)

Waltz With Bashir (Ari Folman)

Best Non-Fiction Film

Bigger, Stronger, Faster (Chris Bell)

Chris & Don: A Love Story (Tina Mascara and Guido Santi)

Dear Zachary: A Letter to a Son About His Father (Kurt Kuenne)

Encounters at the End of the World (Werner Herzog)

Trouble the Water (Carl Deal and Tia Lessin)

Up the Yangtze (Yung Chang)

Best Foreign Language Film

The Edge of Heaven (Fatih Akin)

Everlasting Moments (Jan Troell)

Gomorra (Matteo Garrone)

Let the Right One In (Tomas Alfredson)

Revanche (Gotz Spielmann)

Waltz With Bashir (Ari Folman)

Best Original Song

"Dracula's Lament," Forgetting Sarah Marshall

(music and lyrics by Jason Segel)

"Jai Ho," Slumdog Millionaire

(music by A.R. Rahman, lyrics by Gulzar)

"Little Person," Synecdoche, New York

(music and lyrics by Charlie Kaufman and Jon Brion)

"Once in a Lifetime," Cadillac Records

(music and lyrics by Beyonce Knowles, et al)

"Trouble the Water," Trouble the Water

(music and lyrics by Kimberly Rivers Roberts)

"The Wrestler," The Wrestler

(music and lyrics by Bruce Springsteen)

What good are critics, anyway?

2008-12-07T22:42:00.000-08:00

Jean-Luc Godard once claimed the best way to criticize a movie was to make another movie. Decades later, with criticism comprising its own flawed industry, Godard’s quote could use a little broadening: The best way to denounce any practice in media production, distribution or consumption is to supply an imitable opposing model (alas, we’ve lost most of Godard’s lyricism). I created this site as a rejoinder to the irresponsible, misdirected prose that threatens the integrity of modern film reviewing—to censure criticism itself, through fierce antipathetic commentary. Whether or not that’s viable, it’s reached my attention that these aims should be made more explicit; that a manifesto of sorts would help explicate my position in the critical community. And though I’m hardly qualified (and scarcely interested) in compiling a list of “thou shalt not”s for critics everywhere, a few musings on the role of the evaluator would do no one serious harm.

The toughest truth any practiced reviewer must face is this: Bad movies are critic-proof. People will see what they want to see. Last week’s box office champ was deemed unworthy of attention by five in six major critics (i.e., its “Cream of the Crop” score was 18). Popular franchises have built-in audiences, impervious to case-by-case reckoning. If Chris Nolan’s next Batman installment consists of penguins hurling Wiffle balls at a CGI Calvin Coolidge, it will recoup its budget in a week and Halloween parties will be dominated by our thirtieth president. (In fairness, Peter Travers will proclaim, “There’s magic in it!”) While it’s true that many disparaged movies fail, critics would be amiss to claim these as victories. Some concepts will simply never connect with sentient viewers (here’s looking at you, Baby Geniuses!) Others perish by word of mouth, which is reasonable; for all their wisdom and expertise, critics can only impart a sense of their own experience, not the customized briefing you get from a friend.

The bottom line is, we’ve lost our veto power. That’s not categorically a bad thing. In the recent past a myopic old fogey like Bosley Crowther could get a film blackballed with a few caustic phrases (Bonnie and Clyde: “as pointless as it is lacking in taste”). Viewers are more individualistic these days; a bad review is something to be chuckled over while standing in line to buy a ticket. So here’s my manifesto: Let’s expend our energy where it can do some real good. Certainly we should not soften our assaults on the mindless, the artless, the gratuitous; but come on, Rex Reed! We all know you’ve worn out your thesaurus dredging up synonyms for “awful.” Don’t dignify those movies with your (dubious) wit. Push beyond them. Write a hundred words on The Incredible Hulk and a thousand on My Winnipeg, a film to remind people why they pay to sit in the dark with strangers. Roger Ebert, for all his latter-day lenience, has never lost his alacrity or his willingness to take a movie on its own terms. Why did I drag my poor father across state lines on a weeknight to see a curio like My Winnipeg? Because Ebert recommended it “to anyone who loves movies in the very sinews of their imagination.” Indeed. Mission accomplished.

A few more points while I have your ear, concerning the unprincipled strain I hope to counteract. Professional reviews are not made to order like private ones, but they should be serviceable for more substantive impressions. Pedantic plot synopses conjoined with cut-and-dried binary verdicts are what we expect from our buddies, from our uncles, from Regis Philbin. Quite fine if you haven’t turned pro. Critics should ruminate on aesthetics, dynamics, ideologies and motifs. No movie is an island; why, then, do we omit all acknowledgment of influence—of films or filmmakers outside the purview of direct scrutiny? This implies artistic products stand alone, unburdened by technical or thematic debt. The sooner we concede the fallacy of that tacit assumption, the sooner we can start thinking about cinema as the cyclical, collaborative, polyvalent medium it has always been.

***

Oh, and critics who waste valuable column space on box office forecasting, awards speculation and trivia should be forced to run a three-legged race with Ben Lyons across a field of burning cash and molten Britannium. I’m just saying.

Talk to me.

2008-11-18T06:30:00.000-08:00

Unlike its architect, this site always aspires to be interactive and user-friendly. So why don't we open the floor to debate by considering a recent comment. In reply to my claim that the great actor-movie star is all but extinct, 3NT posits,

Five words: Ryan Gosling and Amy Ryan.

A) Intriguing submissions. In fact I had Gosling specifically in mind when I wrote this bit:

"Some can inhabit both realms, but almost never at the same time."

Was he complex, eccentric or inspired in his matinee idol roles, Fracture and The Notebook? Not his fault, but no. Did his showcase efforts, The Believer and Half Nelson, produce even a blip on Hollywood accountants' radar screens? They took $5 million between them, and that's after the Oscar nod. It would be comforting to blame this on the distributors, but one must sigh and remind oneself that Napoleon Dynamite opened on six screens and grossed $46 million by the end of its run; don't even get me started on Juno. Yes, I yearn to see Gosling pick up where Newman left off (and not just with acting...Gosling's Own Balsamic Vinaigrette, whaddaya think?) But until we witness major cinematic climate change, it looks like he's doomed to the parallel careers.

While Truth at 24's esteem for Ms. Ryan verges on idolatry, I can only envision her as a niche market. She'll go on stealing scenes from Casey Affleck and Angelina Jolie, picking up critics' prizes like the entrails of a piñata, and someday she'll cop an Emmy for a Showtime Original Movie about a serial murderess who seemed so normal to the neighbors. If she ever plays the lead in a feature, it'll be the kind of thing people make a mental note to see, and you know what comes of that. I'm just hoping by next year her name will elicit a slightly more affirmative response than "Oh, she was adorable in Enchanted! Or, wait, that was the other one..."

Any more takers?

The lost year?

2008-11-09T06:46:00.000-08:00

The other night, perched on my regular stool at Heroes, two Guinnesses deep in my effort to forget that Will Smith films took a billion dollars this year, I caught myself outlining my ambitions to a gregarious barfly. “Movies, yeah!” he roared—an impressive exhibition of gusto from a man already hoisting 32 ounces of Bud Lite. “I go to movies all the time!”

Piqued as I always am by that confession, I inquired what he’s seen lately of interest. He pondered, squirmed a bit, ordered another round, and apologized for his failure to produce even a single title. He’d already had a bottle and a half of wine, you see. No problem, I assured him, but just for conversation’s sake, what’s the last movie to leave an impression? Feel free to go back four, five years if need be. More pondering. A trip to the bathroom. Finally, at long last: “I really liked The Graduate.”

The Graduate. Drunks are funny. I mean, obviously a clearheaded, well-informed person could have cited ten or twelve masterpieces from last year alone, right?

Now that you mention it, I sort of want to watch The Graduate right now.

Ask yourself the same question. See what I mean? Was 2008 the worst year of all time for moviegoing? Well, it’s only 85% over; a half dozen or so promising efforts are still in the can. But now that submissions by sure-thing directors like Spike Lee, Ridley Scott and Clint Eastwood have fizzled and at least two Oscar hopefuls have been pushed back to the spring, how will this calendar year be remembered? Will The Dark Knight snare Best Picture by default? Where have all the treasures gone?

Fallen through the cracks, that’s where. Reviewing my catalog of 75-plus trips to the theater since last January, I arrive at two conclusions: 1) This year wasn’t such a wash after all, and 2) The gap between the meaningful and the popular has never been more apparent.

Take, for instance, Happy-Go-Lucky, the richest character study in recent memory. What a vibrant, layered, humanistic and utterly satisfying piece—a triumph for director Mike Leigh, who in forty years of distilling poetry from the plight of the British proletariat has never once stepped wrong. Its outlook is sunnier than we might expect from Leigh, but its incurably cheerful heroine (Sally Hawkins, in the breakout performance of the year) is no storybook fabrication like Amélie. Her buoyancy is less a neurosis than an ideology, cultivated that she might withstand encounters with raving drunks, classroom bullies, property thefts, morose relations, and one apoplectic, self-disgusted driving coach (the brilliant Eddie Marsan). And while the premise may invite Pollyannic glad-handing on the contagion of positive thinking, Leigh has something altogether different in mind. Each of us navigates the world strategically, he seems to suggest; we couldn’t get halfway down the block without a viable coping device. Optimism is just one alternative; many others are represented (and embraced) herein, some of them simpatico, others cacophonous. To Leigh’s credit, the locus of scrutiny could shift to any minor character (and indeed Scott the driving instructor aches for his own movie) without disrupting the ecological balance on display. The pluperfect finale imparts the sense of an ending without the false impression of closure—we joined the story in progress, and so we leave it. The interim has been our profound privilege.

Adventurous filmgoers would be loath to miss My Winnipeg, the latest tone poem from Guy Maddin, whose sensibility is as rapturous and beautiful as any in the pantheon. Using the lo-fi aesthetic of early narrative films in tandem with his distinctly postmodern infusion of surreal compositions, Maddin constructs a singular ode to the metaphysical tension between belonging and estrangement. Renouncing the city he’s never managed to escape, the narrator (Maddin) vows to “film” his way out, purging himself of crippling ties to local and familial lore by emblazoning them on celluloid. His film is a captivatingly unique yet universally relatable treatise on the love/hate dynamics we share with our hometowns. Featuring ‘40s noir icon Ann Savage in a lacerating turn as Maddin’s mother (“as perennial as the winter, as ancient as the bison…”), My Winnipeg surfeits the senses and massages the mind.

At this moment in cinema, are there two brands more debased than vampire movies and adolescent love stories? (I speak even as one who’s never experienced Buffy.) Did anyone expect the salvation to hail from Sweden? Has the year produced a more revitalizing hybrid than Tomas Alfredson’s Let the Right One In? As the only webmaster west of the Pecos, I’m empowered to rule “no” on all counts. See it even if you deplore both genres. See it especially if you deplore both genres.

As quirky hitman-buddy films go (How quickly a conceit becomes a category!), the erratic In Bruges falls appreciably short of Pulp Fiction or any given episode of The Sopranos, but it’s still required viewing for Brendan Gleeson’s superlative performance. The eternal mentor/sidekick whose countenance shifts subliminally from puckish to doleful, and whose beguiling presence has bolstered many a mediocrity, reaches a career pinnacle as the sadder but wiser of two mismatched assassins taking cover in the title locale. More or less Gleeson’s Yankee analogue, the invaluable character actor Richard Jenkins takes center stage in The Visitor and offers an object lesson in film acting. He registers change microscopically from scene to scene, but by the end has limned a bone-deep existential overhaul. If I knew how he did it I probably wouldn’t tell, but anyway, the point is moot. Students of subtlety are further directed to Melissa Leo’s guileless inhabitation of Frozen River and Kristin Scott Thomas’ French-language mastery in Tell No One and—most unforgettably—I’ve Loved You So Long.

So how many have you seen? No apologies necessary, no excuses accepted. Get thee to a Netflix queue, your entire world will change. And more to the point, you won’t look foolish in the corner pub on a Friday night.

Gone are the Days...

2008-10-27T08:52:00.000-07:00

Whenever a star of Paul Newman’s rank and goodwill passes on, the words “end of an era” can be expected to ricochet from corner to bereaved corner—a bromide to stave off the challenge of articulating loss in a meaningful way. But in this case the platitude carries rather more weight, because Newman’s departure sounds the death knell for that endangered species, the great actor-movie star. For over half a century Newman occupied the center of a Venn diagram whose overlap has grown sliver-thin, until at last he appeared to be the linchpin holding the two circles together.

Perhaps not in the strictest literal sense—we still have Peter O’Toole, Kirk Douglas, and a handful of holdovers, not forgetting the movie stars who’ve long since relinquished their great actor status (De Niro, Dustin Hoffman, etc). But mostly when discussing great actors and movie stars, we’re contrasting general practitioners and specialists. They have different qualifications, different customers. Some can inhabit both realms, but almost never at the same time.

A movie star is, of course, a performer who connects with a mass audience, and whose vehicles (as they tend to be called) generate consistently high returns at the box office. “Great actor” is harder to characterize, so I bow to two examples of the species. Michael Caine frequently points out a difference in approach: Movie stars tailor their parts to fit their personalities, while actors undergo image modification to suit the demands of each role. George C. Scott, one of cinema’s finest actors, looked for “a joy of performing,” which I take to mean a euphoric immersion in the skin and psyche of another person, regardless of that person’s temperament. By these and any other standards, then, Newman was a great actor.

Yet all the time he was eschewing vanity and altering his image, he was working in the mainstream and grossing bloody fortunes. How did he pull it off? Can it be ascribed to universal viewer identification, or to an arsenal of allegiance and good faith so vast that audiences would follow him anywhere? Frankly I reject both propositions. Looking over his body of work, I’m hard pressed to cite one character with whom I “identify.” Outlaws, hustlers and alcoholics are not generically relatable types. Like Cool Hand Luke, Newman never pandered for acceptance; that he secured it even in these roles signals a spellbinding internal commitment, an absolute authenticity. But moreover, it owes to an intricacy of construction underscored by an avowal of weakness. (This, if anywhere, is where recognition comes into play.) Despite our tendency to conflate pop cultural icons, Luke is not Dirty Harry, and the crucial difference lies in Luke’s vulnerability. A sublime scene with his mother (Jo Van Fleet) resonates with muted acknowledgment of failure and forgiveness, and his subsequent response to her death consolidates audience sympathy through sheer refusal to solicit it.

If The Verdict contains Newman’s finest performance, as I believe it does, it’s because Frank Galvin stands as his richest reservoir of flawed humanity. A scene where he consoles a client by phone, his tranquil tones facilitated by the liquor without which he’d lack the stability to speak, is a master sketch of desperation channeled into reassurance. His portrayal is so delicately mounted that the unknown contents of his cup in the last scene make no real difference. If it holds whiskey he’s still earned his redemption; if it’s coffee he’s no less prone to relapse. Which of today’s stars could project such equivocality?

My aim is not to disparage the cluster of contemporary headliners. But as I write these words the supreme movie star (in terms of bankability) is Will Smith, and the divergence there is marked. Each July moviegoers line up to watch Smith battle aliens or robots, and come December they pay to see him grapple with poverty and despair. But what’s really at stake here? A working definition of the movie star as proffered by Caine, Smith exhibits overriding confidence in the face of inevitably outmatched adversity. Clooney and the rest of the latter-day Rat Pack, irrespective of forays into Oscar country, offer viewers the same thing John Wayne once guaranteed: Affirmation that no hardships are too messy to work themselves out in roughly the time it takes the human bladder to process a large soda from the snack bar.

I find myself especially rankled by the recurring submission of Tom Hanks as Newman’s heir apparent—the matinee idol with the stroke of genius. There’s no denying the man’s talent, but at the same time, his much-lauded humility confounds any hope of transcendence. Old Tom is always there, peeking out from behind his character to remind us he loves his wife and kids. His potentially image-altering turn as the contract killer in Road to Perdition was hamstrung by unseemly decorum. One need only witness his scenes with a blood-chilling Newman to note the disparity. And Hanks’s rollicking Charlie Wilson is drunk under the table by his obvious antecedent, Newman’s debauched governor Earl Long in Blaze. Newman cavorts with wild abandon, convinces you of his insatiable, innumerable hungers; Hanks’s portrayal suggests that Forrest has fallen in with a bad crowd and forgotten everything Mama used to tell him.

Great actors still exist, make no mistake. Daniel Day-Lewis, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Jeff Bridges and a few other stalwarts keep moviegoing bearable, and once in a while a riveting turn seeps into the homogenous Hollywood harvest, like Heath Ledger’s Brando-esque tour de force in The Dark Knight. But, Paul, you natural born world-shaker, when you left you took the current from the mainstream. “End of an era” has never seemed more apt.

Acknowledgments

2008-10-14T01:59:00.000-07:00

This website owes its existence to the ingenuity of Anne Shulock, without whose counsel I'd be facing the quagmire of a conventional thesis. Perish the thought. By now my plan to contribute to the academic discourse on Hitchcock would've run headlong into the discovery that Hitchcock scholarship warrants its own library call number (PN1998.3.H58). This would effectuate panic, despair, regrouping, withdrawal, disgrace, and ultimately my old Blockbuster job (and hours, and wages). The rest of the story would resemble a Bukowski novel, a Springsteen song, or some inconceivable hybrid of the two. Thanks, Anne. Seriously.

Thanks also to the eccentric and mostly delightful mélange of inmates and parolees of Pomona Penitentiary, especially Ash, Laura, Kiel, and a handful of others I can thank in person. Special mention to Dave Curtis, Lil Coyne, Wendy & Ed Gaither, Fred & Betty Mears, Dave Mears, Ron "Harvey" Stoops, Manfred Becerra, Edward P. Jones, Jerry Coyne (aka Uncle Scrooge), and the extraordinary Prof. James Morrison.

Not forgetting Maestros Hitchcock, Welles, Truffaut, Herzog, Wilder, Lean, and all their colleagues who've made cinephilia not merely defensible but imperative.

And an incalculable debt of gratitude to my parents and best friends, Bob and Susan Mears, whose acts of thoughtfulness across the years defy enumeration. Love you guys. You too, Mr. Gills.

This site is dedicated to the memory of my great-uncles, Bernie and Morley Frank, and especially to my grandfather and soulmate, Floyd P. Coyne (1918-2003).

"Death ends a life. But it does not end a relationship."

Miss you every day, Toadie.