Month: January 2011 Page 1 of 2

When Posters Attack: The Rite

On January 21, 2011

I have absolutely no interest in seeing The Rite, an exorcism-demon possession horror film dumped in the rear-end of January, but I just needed to subject you all to the poster. Because, I swear, this thing scares the crap out of me at least three times a week as I’m driving around LA and Anthony Hopkins’ eyes emerge from the darkness. The worst is the bus stop just as you crown the hill going from Hollywood to the Valley on Laurel Canyon. It’s a pretty steep rise on both sides, and you just come over the hill and BAM. Anthony Hopkins staring at you creeptastically from the bus stop. The first time I thought it was actual creeptastic person lying in wait there.

Can’t wait until this movie is out of theatres.

Theatre Review: Next to Normal

By Jandy

On January 13, 2011

In Reviews

I don’t get out to much theatre, generally concentrating my time on film and music, but when my theatre buff friend asked if I wanted to check out the touring production of last year’s Pulitzer-prize winning musical Next to Normal, I couldn’t say no. Though it is, in general, a relatively traditional post-Sondheim musical (most of the story told in song), it takes as its unusual subject a woman struggling with bipolar disorder and the long-ranging effects this has on her family.

Besides the ups and down commensurate with bipolar disorder, Diana is also dealing with the loss of her son several years earlier, a character who becomes almost a dark force pulling her toward madness. On the other side, her husband tries to hold her to sanity, while their teenage daughter Natalie only wishes they could all be “normal,” while she tries to manage her own insecurities. Natalie’s subplot is quite substantial, which I thought was great – it provided a wonderful parallel and balance to Diana’s plot, showing quite clearly both how the effects of Diana’s illness trickle through her family and also how each family member is still responsible for their own lives.

I found the plot point with Diana’s delusions about her son powerful and yet also somewhat distracting, as if bipolar weren’t enough to deal with day to day without a more conventional expression of “crazy” that seemed tailor-made to increase the drama and drive the narrative along rather than as a necessary aspect of the character. I much preferred the less dramatically pronounced but still disruptive early scenes showing Diana going through a manic episode (she gets carried away making sandwiches and begins laying them out all over the floor when she runs out of room on the table), or realizing that her stabilizing medication made her feel numb. Later scenes, as she goes into more intensive therapy and electroshock treatment, struck me as less nuanced.

Alice Ripley won a Tony for originating the lead role of Diana, and it was a treat to have her in the touring cast as they came through Los Angeles. It’s a real testament to her acting abilities that even though we were in the last row of the theatre and she was losing her voice a bit towards the end, I was still captivated by her performance – despite not being able to see her face, her movements and physical interactions with the other actors set her apart as a great stage artist. I was also really impressed with Emma Hunton, who made Natalie such a strong counterpoint to Diana – her difficulties dealing with her mother’s situation while navigating her fears that she may end up just as crazy are very moving and the performances make them very real. The moment that got me most in the play was when Diana and Natalie finally have it out and come to terms with their relationship, agreeing that maybe “next to normal” is an okay way to be. It was emotionally devastating and yet, ultimately, opened up a very hopeful dialogue.

I can’t write about a musical without talking about the music – by and large, the music did what it needed to do, conveying the story and fleshing out the characters in a meaningful way. Several of the songs, particularly in the second half (which was stronger overall, thanks to a more thoughtful and emotional tone, as opposed to the rather comedic and rushed first half), are memorable on their own, though watching it for the first time and not knowing the music, they mostly integrated into one long, undifferentiated sung story for me. There were times that the more complex numbers, involving all the characters singing different strains at the same time, came across a bit muddy and difficult to follow, but that could be simply because of where we were sitting; still, I preferred the sections that focused on a single character, or two in dialogue.

Like I said, I don’t get to much theatre, so I can’t make much in the way of comparisons between this and other plays or musicals out right now. I do think it’s great that a musical with this subject has been made, and made so well – it’s a fairly clear and understandable treatment of an illness that isn’t necessarily well-understood, and makes clear the kinds of struggles people with bipolar disorder and their families go through without losing sight of this particular family and their particular struggles. It’s tough to get both the individual and universal right in the same story, and I think for the most part, Next to Normal does a good job with that.

2010 in Music: #1 Jenny and Johnny – I’m Having Fun Now

By Jandy

On January 2, 2011

In Music

Last year when writing about Neko Case in my post about favorite albums of the year, I mentioned Jenny Lewis and how she’d certainly be on the list if she’d had a new album out. Well, this year she does, a duo album with her boyfriend Johnathan Rice, and here it is at the top of my list. Not really surprising for anyone who knows me.

It’s hard for me to resist Jenny Lewis anyway, but I have to say that this album manages to be a step up from her solo work – bringing Johnny in officially (he was a pretty big part of Acid Tongue) was a good move, their voices blending and contrasting nicely throughout all the songs.

At first listen, it seems much like the several other beach poppy albums out this year, but after a few listens the lyrics show Jenny’s signature combination of wit, hope, and ironic unhappiness. Yet despite songs about being broke, in debt, on depression medication, etc., it’s clear that Jenny and Johnny are having fun now, and she’s as happy as she’s ever been. But her depth of understanding that it isn’t always that way gives the album that something extra that, say, Best Coast’s Crazy For You is missing, and reminds that even though Bethany Cosantino is often compared to Jenny, she still can’t match her role model’s lyrical ability.

There aren’t any official videos from the album yet, and somehow the duo doesn’t come across as well on concert videos as they do live, but here are a few of the better ones I could find. The third one is actually not on this album, but a duet they did on Johnathan’s 2007 solo album. They’ve been doing it at their shows in a much slower arrangement, and it’s gorgeous live.

My 2010 in Film: Three by Robert Altman

By Jandy

On January 2, 2011

In Film

[My list of favorite films released in 2010 will be going up on Row Three in mid-January, so I want to do something a bit different here. This series will include any films I saw for the first time this year and loved, regardless of release date. It may also include films from this year.]

Director Robert Altman was easily my favorite “discovery” of the New Hollywood marathon I did throughout this year. Discovered isn’t quite the right word; of course, I knew about Robert Altman and had seen a few of his films, but this year I saw several more that I ended up loving completely.

Nashville

I went into Nashville expecting to just put up with it, a begrudging viewing based solely on the film’s reputation and not any real interest in it on my part. I’m not into country music or politics, and I figured it’d just be a sprawling, overlong, not particularly interesting look at those things. Well, it is set in Nashville among a bunch of country musicians during the build-up to a political rally, but it is anything but uninteresting.

Altman is pretty well-known for his ensemble films, and this one proves why as much or more than any other (though he has plenty of other great examples). Loosely built around a coincidentally timed country music festival and a political rally for the fictional Replacement Party, the film is made up of a bunch of interweaving characters, each of whom has a well-developed and interesting arc. Often films like this suffer from not having time to develop any of the characters, or develops one or two at the expense of the others, making the film unbalanced, but Nashville contains at least ten or twelve characters that all feel real, that all seem to have back stories and arcs, and none of whom steals the spotlight from the others.

There’s the star vocalist recovering from a nervous breakdown, and maybe not quite ready to return to the stage, the waitress who wants to be a singer but doesn’t have the chops, the established trio whose interpersonal strife threatens the group, the gospel singer who feels more and more disconnected from her husband, the determined wannabe who overcomes all odds to get to the rally stage, the overeager reporter who’s equal parts naive enthusiasm and unwitting insensitivity, and several others – stereotypes in a way, perhaps, but they do not feel that way when you’re watching the movie. Everything just feels right and even though it is long, it’s perfectly paced and when the end credits rolled, I was actually sad the experience was over.

McCabe and Mrs. Miller

This film snuck up on me while I was watching it. It takes a little while to get going, it’s a little low-key and quiet about getting there (reportedly there were sound problems on set that Altman never bothered to fix), and it’s tough at first to identify with anyone. But by the end, it got under my skin something fierce.

It’s truly a revisionist western in the sense that the main character McCabe (Warren Beatty) isn’t a classic western white-hat hero, but he’s not even really a morally complicated hero or anti-hero; he’s almost an a-hero. This is a world in which heroism basically doesn’t exist. The major conflict is purely commercial, and the major shootout isn’t fought in the open streets with the town watching, but sneaking around deserted buildings and through barns while the town is totally unaware.

It’s also not a typical love story, though McCabe and Mrs. Miller (the local brothel owner, played by Julie Christie) are one of those couples that are so clearly meant to be together and yet utterly not as well – they need each other, but for many reasons it wouldn’t work for them to be more to each other than they are. Their interactions with each other somehow carry the weight of tragedy. It’s a sad movie in many ways, but a great one that I can easily see myself revisiting over and over for years to come.

The Long Goodbye

I’m pretty sure I saw at least some of this movie in an undergrad film course I took, and didn’t care too much for the part I saw. Clearly there was something wrong with me then, because when I watched/rewatched it this year, I loved every bit of it. It’s a take on Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe character that somehow manages to be irreverent, unique, and poke fun at the hard-boiled detective genre while also being loving and true to it.

The homages to classic detective films from the 1940s are peppered throughout, but with a sense of ironic world-weariness that is perfectly ’70s. Elliott Gould’s Marlow is a lackadaisical fellow whose catchphrase is “it’s okay with me,” a statement of bemused apathy that nonetheless is belied by his casual yet dogged pursuit of the truth about a friend of his accused of murder.

The film contains recognizable references to specific classic noir films, but also the detached style of European cinema of the 1960s, making it a quintessential New Hollywood film and perfectly poised to hit all of my buttons, and so it did. This time around at least, it was perfection.

2010 in Music: #2 Belle and Sebastian – Write About Love

By Jandy

On January 2, 2011

In Music

A new Belle and Sebastian album is something to celebrate, especially when it’s been some five years since the last one. At the same time, any new album of theirs has a lot to live up to, and I couldn’t be happier with this one. I might not put it right up with some of their earlier stuff, but it has certainly meant an awful lot to me this year, in more ways than one.

It’s poppy and retro, with several songs (including the title track, with Carey Mulligan guesting) that would be perfectly at home in a 1960s film, but also with a melancholic undertone on other songs that gives the album as a whole a nicely balanced feel. Every song on here just makes me feel happy, comfortable, and safe.