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Dark Shadows: Edward Scissorfangs

To understand Dark Shadows, you have to understand the source material: it's not the fact that it was made on the cheap, or that it was campy, or that it was about vampires and witches and such. It's that Dark Shadows was, first and foremost, a soap opera. A weird soap opera with witches and vampires made on the cheap that became high camp... but soap opera, nevertheless.

If something failed in transferring Dark Shadows to the screen, it appears to be the marketing department of Warner Brothers; which decided, probably out of nervousness, to sell the film as a Tim Burton dark comedy, anchored by yet another campy performance by our currnt superstar chameleon, Johnny Depp. As it turns out, that marketing error may well be costly for the WB, since Dark Shadows turns out to be one of a number of Depp-Burton combinations where a sweet, sad oddball strives to find a place of acceptance in an otherwise cruel world. Start with Edward Scissorhands... and work forward from there.

The amazing thing about Dark Shadows is how Burton manages to put his usual idiosyncratic stamp on the source material, without losing sight of what makes soap operas fundamentally work: the melodrama, the romances, the plight of characters stuck in personal dilemmas of their own making. Ultimately charming and generally satisfying, Dark Shadows is, in many ways, better than what its most ardent fans could have hoped to receive (and I, quite frankly, am not one of them). But people expecting a hoot-y campfest of seventies kitsch and vampy silliness may well be somewhat disappointed.

Dark Shadows opens with a long "origins" sequence for Barnabas Collins, a callow young man from England who travels with his family to Maine in the 1700's, becomes heir to a fishery fortune, and winds up becoming a vampire in his mid-twenties because of an angry witch, eventually hunted down and chained up in an iron casket. That casket is dug up in the early seventies by a contruction crew, and Barnabas hurtles back to life and back to Collinwood, his family's now rundown estate, to resume some semblance of a life. Or an afterlife.

At Collinwood he meets his descendants, Elizabeth and her brother Roger, and their children, along with a spooky new governess and a boozy psychiatrist, both on hand to help the Roger's son David, a weird child who has lost his mother. The governess, Victoria Winters, reminds Barnabas of his long lost fiancee, haunting him as he tries to rejuvenate the family's fortunes.

Barnabas is thwarted in his attempts by Anjelique, the witch who made him, who harbors a stalker-like attraction to him (that could never be fulfilled in the 1700s because she was the maid's daughter and he was lord of the manor), who now runs a competing fishery. The two struggle through various twists and turns until an over the top battle ensues at Collinwood, where many secrets are finally revealed.

Burton handles most of this with his usual wit, and sure handed storytelling, though there's a built-in "summer blockbuster"-ness that eventually overwhelms whatever remains of plausibility and good sense (much of the final fight sequence is just too much, and Barnabas and Anjelique's otherwordly coupling to "My First, My Last, My Everything" is largely trite and obvious).  But even so, the grand guignol touches do hark back to the original show too, which tried too hard, often, to do too much on limited resources and limited good sense. And in spite of itself, as with the original, Dark Shadows works best because it is, often, genuinely moving, a reminder that Burton, aided by Depp's layered acting, can illuminate the sensitive side of even the oddest of oddballs.

Depp's Barnabas is every bit what he claimed: a loving nod to Jonathan Frid, the original Barnabas, a lost soul (literally) who mourns the loss of his humanity and finds vampirism bewildering and often sad. Depp's homage is occasionally knocked off balance by dialogue that's pushing too hard for saucy irony (a riff on "balls" is just deadly weak), but he never loses sight of the character's base gentleness and remaining shreds of human decency. A number of current vampire players (Robert Pattinson, surely, and even Paul Wesley on Vampire Diaries) could stand to take note.

Burton has also surrounded Depp with a string of strong players doing some remarkably good work. I'd forgotten the range and subtlety of Michelle Pfeiffer, but her strong good looks (especially now as she's aged into them) and sensitive acting were made for a soap lead actress, and she gives Elizabeth class and panache. Helena Bonham-Carter, too, rediscovers some of her own subtle skills that seemed absent in recent turns (especially Harry Potter and the Red Queen in Alice), giving "Boozy Jaded Bitch" a fresh spin and an underlying sense of unfulfillment. The kids are charming. Bella Heathcote as Victoria Winters may not be quite as charismatic as the original role (a memorable soap heroine), but there's a lot going on in her performance, still. And Eva Green manages to keep Anjelique from devolving into a one note shrill siren song, at least until the final ten minutes. Even Jackie Earle Hailey has a nice turn as the family servant, and poor Jonny Lee Miller simply has too little to do.

Visually, the film is a seventies feast, topped off with a fresh eye to the gothic architecture of classic horror films (gargoyles and wooden carvings have rarely seemed so present, and so necessary). I don't think I've always love Colleen Atwood's costumes, but here she comes through strongly, representing a number of different aspects of seventies dressing without resorting to cartoon or complete heinousness (Depp's modern dress for Barnabas is especially nicely thought through, reflecting the era's fascination with military coats and foppish shirting, nodding to his past without completely stranding him in his present). The scoring is surprisingly inventive, making good use of even the hoariest seventies musical references. The cinematography too, is generally first rate.

Dark Shadows is one more example to the generation of Twi-Hards that it's Twilight that really lets the vamp genre down, not its predecessors and current competitors. Even Burton and Depp can rescue a camp-fest like Dark Shadows, and find more heart, and human soul, in the vampire story than Twilight's lumpy Edward can seem to even dream. It's a shame, then, that Dark Shadows will probably get blamed for not living to a bad ad campaign that misrepresents its true nature, and hides its best qualities. Barnabas, at least, would know how to extract some justice.

Articles We Never Finished Reading (Except For The Pictures): The Rocks That I Got

"The house, a classic white brick manse, is huge—nine bedrooms—and sprawls out from the center hall with two giant wings. The interior is echt J.Lo: luxe, modern, and sexy—dark floors, gray curtains and walls, pastel-colored furniture. Her assistant, Gilly, deposits me in Lopez’s office and says, “Jennifer will be down shortly.” I hear kids shrieking somewhere upstairs. Like Lopez herself, the office is both masculine and feminine. There are wood-paneled walls and wingback chairs, a killer sound system, and a fur throw draped over a sofa. There’s a huge plaque (30 MILLION ALBUMS SOLD WORLD-WIDE); a ledge full of various film- and music-industry awards; and on her desk, nude shots of J.Lo for the advertising campaign for her forthcoming perfume, Glowing (the sample fragrance bottle actually lights up). A quick glance at the shelves reveals a taste for the classics (The Grapes of Wrath, Shakespeare); memoir (Arthur Miller’sTimebends); and self-help (Lies at the Altar: The Truth About Great Marriages). On the glass coffee table there is a big, lush book on Pucci, which somehow seems perfect."

"Venus Rising", a profile of Jennifer Lopez by Jonathan Van Meter, in the April 2012 Vogue

I just wanted to prove that not everything I put down is in New York, and also that not everything is a political or intellectual diatribe. I don't (generally) buy People or Us (though I admit a weakness for the sleazier Star) or other mags with fawning celbrity profiles... but Conde Nast can get me to read them anyway, posing as fashion (Vogue, GQ) or deep thought (Vanity Fair, which isn't). At this late date, I know what I'm in for: a quick tour of the Star's Lovely Home, a few bites of Our Star at a Meal, the old "they're just like us" anecdote, and another few thousand words about how, really, they're not (multiple divorces, million dollar lifestyles, blah blah blah). Sometimes they're interesting (Julia Roberts, Charlize Theron), even thoughtful (Meryl Streep, Anne Hathaway)... but sometimes you can't even fake the necessary interest, which appears to be the case here. I kept putting this issue at the top of my pile, even after the new one came out, determined to read the Lopez piece all the way to the end. But I just couldn't do it; I'd get hung up on descriptions, like the one above, which illustrate both the absurdity of her wealth and the vapidness of the profiles like this (and, by extension, the vapid prose of writers like Van Meter). Then there's the fact that Lopez, still, is the odd kind of nondescript star only America can quite produce: she's not exactly good, her career is kind of middling, she's the third chair on a reality panel show whose recording career has been modestly succesful. Although she seemed a promising actress, that hasn't really worked out either. So why does she get Vogue covers? I mean, obviously, she's attractive, but that seems to be about it, and even there, there are more striking brunettes and women of Puerto Rican descent. So mostly, I've given up, the Vogue goes into my back issue pile, and I'll never know Jennifer's beauty secrets. Oh well. Life, I suppose, must go on.

The Hunger Games: The Revolution, Televised

I freely admit that I'm not one of the people obsessed with The Hunger Games, and not particularly invested in how it's adapted to the screen. I find the whole level of attention devoted to it a bit weird. Though it is example C (or D) in the adaptations of tween novels to the big screen, it seems to be the hardest to explain. Fans of Twilight can quickly sum up the imprtance of it - the romantic triangle of Bella Edward and Jacob - as can the Harry Potter fans - magic, interesting boy and mysterious back story - but what I've found in the past couple of months is that Hunger Games fandom is much less coherent. It's something about the empowered girl and the exicting plot ("I couldn't put it down" seems the most common expression), but beyond that, not exactly clear.

Having seen the filmed result, I can kind of see both the appeal and the incoherence... but generally, I'd call myself underwhelmed. The Hunger Games is a curious bid for a blockbuster - briskly plotted, but also predicatble and a bit dull, overthought and (literally) underfed. Surprisingly didactic - how else can one put allegory and class consciousness onscreen, exactly? - The Hunger Games strikes me as yet another curious tween monstrosity, another "empowerment" tale for girls whose underlying themes are really anything but.

Much of what ails The Hunger Games I'd probably chalk up to a familiar problem with much of fantasy futurist science fiction: the problems really lie with the premise, and how deeply one is willing to invest in the creation of an alernate reality.

The Hunger Games takes place in a vaguely futurisitic quasi-America, where another apparent Civil War resulted in some sort of brokered peace deal that divided the country into 13 "Districts", 12 subsidiaries ruled by a capital district where wealth and power have apparently centralized. And the fiction comes down, literally, to how fully one is prepared to buy into this premise. Finding it skeptical on several levels (point A: the new capital is not a coastal city, but a landlocked valley area in between mountain ranges. This is rarely how national or international capitals work. Example B: it's hard to explain how the 12 subsidiary districts simply came to accept this sort of centralized control, given that they are mineral rich, or farm producers, etc. That's a building block of independence right there), I had a hard time buying much of the film which is built on it.

The 12 subsidiary districts, as a condition of the peace, are required to send two young adults, boy and girl, to an annual contest where only one winner will survive. These are, yes "The Hunger Games" and have some impact on how food is distributed (though the film is especially vague on this connection). As the film starts, a new Games cycle is underway, and the "Reaping", where the children are selected, is the first big moment. The film starts in District 12, the Mining District (meant to represent, none too subtly, Appalachia), and we are introduced to Katniss, a hard scrabbling young woman who helps sustain her family's meager fortunes by bow hunting on forbidden land. When Katiss' younger sister Primrose (the names are uniformly groan inducing) is picked for the female roel, Katniss leaps up to take her place. She and a local boy - Peeta, no really, Peeta - are then whisked away to the Capital for two weeks of preparation and then the Games.

After a futuristic train ride (which called to mind nothing so much as Atlas Shrugged, of all films), the two are deposited into  a frenzy of activity of preparation and TV appearances. One of the ancillary points of The Hunger Games is about media distortion and TV reality programming gone mad... which is interesting, but odd, since the story seems curiously agnostic about the stage managing and manufacturing of false drama; it's bad... but also, for the plot, often quite convenient.

Similarly, the film wants to make a murderous competition amongst teens seem shocking.... but it does this, mostly, by putting children in considerable danger and making them into the bad actors in the demise of other kids. My mother has often pointed out to me, especially in horror films, that this use of children as monstrous actors is exploitative and offensive, and I've come to similar conclusions. For all the attempts to try and dress up this kid on kid killing as both allegorical (it's sci-fi!) and extreme so as to make a point... the reality remains that this film has it both ways at once: isn't it terrible that kids are killing kids, hunting each other for sport? And hey... isn't it interesting to find out who wins?

Actually, it's not that interesting to find out who wins, since the series heroine is unlikely to die off in Part One; and her fellow competitors, save for hapless Peeta, are largely ciphers, barely drawn in and given simple motivations and obvious plot filling roles which they do, and die, largely in logical order. Nor is the behind-the-scenes manipulation of the Games all that compelling, since the Capital adults are pretty much uniformly painted as twisted wrongdoers with no moral compass (save for Katniss' mentor Cinnah, the perfect, morally upright black man the world needs right now).

The film, for what is, seems both overlong and a bit thin; brisker editing would have helped in a number of spots, but the Game itself is less enervating than many of these "Human Hunting in the Wild" escapades - Deliverance, for instance, comes to mind as vastly superior in suspense and execution. Moreover the cinematography of the action sequences is done with jerky, handheld cameras which frequently make the action unclear as to who is doing what to whom, and often out of focus. It's an odd, unsatisfying set of moments. The scoring, too, is predictable and dull, but the film could actually use more incidnetal music, rather than long stretches of stiff, uncomfortable silences.

But creatively, the film's biggest flaw is probably in art direction and costume design, where the films "rich vs. poor" obviousness becomes just too much. On the poor side, the depiction of hard conditions and deep poverty rob the characters of a lot of their diginity - it's all dirt and rags and grim greys. On the rich side, the film doesn't just refer to one opulent period, but instead gloms almost all of them onto one another - art deco (ie Nazis) on top of Baroque (Revolutionary France) on top of Late Empire (Napoleonic) on top of Gilded Age until the effect is cartoonishly overdone. It's not just "less is more", it's that this kind of eccentric melange - the kind, most obviously, that John Galliano turned into high art at Dior, for instance - is actually very hard and takes a very precise, knowing eye. Instead, what we get here is all wrong - bad perms, clown makeup, tight, uncomfortable looking dresses and improbable, impractical shoes... and that's not just the girls, it's actors like Stanley Tucci, Toby Jones, and Woody Harrelson, too.

Those latter three names give a sense of the overloaded star power careening through this film (add in Donald Sutherland in an inexplicable cameo as President and it's all just too too much), most of them phoning it in for the paycheck (only Harrelson, I'd argue, really finds the center of his role as a former champion turned trainer). Of the yonger leads, I thought Jennifer Lawrence was too old for the part (given that she's already played a much more mature notion of the Katniss part in Winter's Bone), but she actually underplays quite nicely and grounds the steeliness of Katniss in some much needed uncertainty and naivete, though she's largely superheroic and wildly confident. Liam Hemsworth, as the love interest left behind, is colorless. Josh Hutcherson, as Peeta, is charming, but doesn't have all that much to do beyond suffering and looking noble.

I can't entirely knock The Hunger Games as hopeless - as frustrating as it was at times, this is undeniably more fully thought through and precisely plotted than much of what passes for Hollywood Blockbusters of late. And in that, its popularity reflects, most likely, a yearning for better written big budget films, a wish I have as well.  Mostly, I suspect, The Hunger Games gives a comfortable perch from which to feel guilty about privilege and plenty without having to do all that much about the people suffering with less. The trilogy, apparently, continues into a revolution by the Districts against the Capital... but like most of the story's plot, these developments are broadly telegraphed in advance and don't feel like they deliver much, ultimately, in emotional payoff, but I'm happy to wait and see.

As empowered and strong as Katniss is, she's hard to root for, distant, overprepared and stoical - oddly, not all that far from Twilight's Bella, minus the disastrous relationship choices and self destructive tendencies. As positives as her strengths are, thematically, The Hunger Games basically posits that the only route out of poverty and hard circumstances is personal confidence, combative skill and mass uprising. I'd like to think the options on all three aren't quite that limited, much the way I think we need more than manufactured, televised drama to make our lives worthwhile. Curious and unsatisfying, The Hunger Gmes isn't so much a disappointment as a puzzling oddity.

Making Love

Via The Sword (which I won't link to, cause it's totally NSFW and if pressed, will pretend I never heard of), I found a link to a New York Times article about "the Gay Film which changed my life" which is one of those shared experiences gay people have, finding overt, and often covert images and representations in films that let us know we're not alone. Indeed, The Celluloid Closet - more the film documentary than Vito Russo's amazing book - makes clear that those images were often put there on purpose, often that very same purpose, the winking acknowledgment of our own existence to one another.

It's a somewhat less relevant point, I find, as my gay generation gets older; we are so much more visible than we were, and the covert, hidden world no longer matters as much. Which isn't to say it's entirely irrelevant, but reading some of the younger generation's choices, you realize how much the world has changed. 

In any case, I kept trying to think of what, exactly, that film would be for me... and sadly, I came back to the obvious: Making Love, the 1982 drama starring Harry Hamlin and Michael Ontkean, about a married doctor who has a gay affair and comes out to his wife. It's a dreadful thing, trying too hard to be "groundbreaking" and too nervous about its topic to be of much use... but you know, you're sixteen and you've got very little to go on... and you take what you can get. Particularly since it was the first thing I can remember that had anything close to approximating two men in bed having sex.

The film was touted as one of the first "major studio" attempts to tackle the topic (which topic? gays? gays in marriages? who knows?), and it generated lots of press buzz, but not much in the way of box office. But it did enjoy a healthy, early run on cable television (HBO, and even Showtime, as I recall), which is where I, and I'm sure many others, managed to get in surreptitious viewings of the forbidden.

As for the performers, Ontkean was kind of stiff (he's more appropriately square and reserved in Twin Peaks, where he played the upright town sheriff), Hamlin was surprisingly relaxed (oh was he a hot, swarthy mess in his youth), and Kate Jackson, as the wronged wife, was stuck in a thankless part (which was supposed to help her flee television and roles like Sabrina on Charlie's Angels; ultimately she wound up back in TV). Though I wouldn't recommend it, I think it was, in its way, a necessary step: somebody doing it all wrong so later, others could get around to doing it right. And, to be fair, it was a rare film that said being gay didn't make you crazy or sick (and even if it did suggest that being a promiscuous gay slut was a deeply unfulfilling personal choice... that didn't stop us all wanting to be Harry Hamlin, or at least wanting to sleep with his type).

So, yeah... it was Making Love. Which isn't the worst way to go, I suppose.

Why I Watch The Oscars, Part 2

Just a suggestion, skip the excruciating banter between Chevy Chase and Paul Newman. This was the year of the Writer's Strike.

 

 

Why I Watch The Oscars, Part 1

 

The Oscar Predictions

It's sad to say, but necessary: the internet and the 24/7 news cycle have largely robbed the Oscars of any sense of spontaneity. It's true that, for years, it hasn't been impossible to pick obvious winners, but lately the sense of foreordained outcomes have overtaken any sense of suspense and the unexpected upset is really a thing of the past (even if Meryl Streep beats Viola Davis this year). The Golden Globes, the SAGs, the DGA and Producer's Guild have all become staples of the "Award Circuit" and between their choices and gossip blogs and Deadline Hollywood... there's just no room for the weird left field lunacy that occasionally took hold (and surely, no streakers or Sacheen Littlefeathers, either). It doesn't make me love the Oscars less, it just makes me feel... old.

In any case, I'm heartened by the fact that this year's choices really do reflect much of the best of film this year, and the likely winners, too, tend to be good choices who deserve recognition. It's not hard to predict, but let's get to it:

Best Picture - Will Win: The Artist. Should Win: The Artist. Honorable Mention: My Week With Marilyn. There's a small, even accurate, subset of caring filmgoers (like my Mom), who have a point that The Artist is not quite all its ardent admirers make it out to be. I freely admit: it's a small film, with modest points to make about life, love, and film. But those modest points are, indeed the point - no film both revels so fully in film history and in the joy of both performing and just, well, living. That last is a point, I think, that a number of the competing films (Hugo, The Decendants, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close) kind of miss. Not the necessity of living life to the full, but the joy in it. The Artist is just too happy to ignore. And in another year, a lot of what distinguishes The Artist, right down to its admiration for old films and real stars, would be the reason to reward My Week With Marilyn.

Best Actor - Will Win: Jean Dujardin, The Artist. Should Win: Jean Dujardin. George Clooney has one. Otherwise, I think he'd get this (I still think he did, for Michael Clayton, for some reason). Brad Pitt doesn't need one. And after that, there's Jean Dujardin, with the best role for a guy this year, making the most of it. He had me at hello (unlike Tom Cruise ever did), but I think Dujardin's Oscar hopes were sealed once the final number began; all that... and he taps!

Best Actress - Will Win: Viola Davis, The Help. Should Win: Meryl Streep, The Iron Lady. Honorable Mention: Michelle Williams, My Week With Marilyn. Non-Nominated Choice: Kirsten Dunst, Melancholia. I hated The Help, but Davis is a great actress and about the only thing that saves the film from utter embarassment, and let's be frank, Oscar has a lot of work to do (still) recognizing actors of color. Still, this is one year when Streep's natural skills and star power went further than ever to make a memorable impact, and 17 nominations in 30 years do mean something. Even sadder, the failure to recognize Michelle Williams is getting to be a real failure on the part of the Academy. She's too good to keep ignoring. And finally, the real robbery victim is Kirsten Dunst, with her tour-de-force in Melancholia.

Best Supporting Actor - Will Win: Christopher Plummer, that movie where he pretends to be gay. Should Win: Kenneth Branagh, My Week With Marilyn. Overlooked: James Cromwell and John Goodman, The Artist. Plummer's never quite put it together, as a star, which goes a long way, I think, to explain why his generally good acting has never gotten an Oscar. I suppose then, pretending to be gay is as good as any reason to give it to him. I mean... that's totally believable, right? As opposed to, say, Branagh putting tons of colors into the desperate, petty, intelligent shades of Sir Laurence Olivier. Or the pure embodiment of decency and loyalty James Cromwell gives off with no words in The Artist, or the equally wordless brilliance Goodman conveys as a hard nosed, but softhearted, movie studio exec. Nope, gay it is.

Best Supporting Actress - Will Win: Octavia Spencer, The Help. Should Win: Berenice Bejo, The Artist. Nice Try, but No: Melissa McCarthy, Bridesmaids. Utterly Overlooked: Judi Dench and Julia Ormond, My Week With Marilyn. ... And here's progress: 73 years later, it's still brave to give a black woman an Oscar for Supporting for playing a maid. A sassy maid. A sassy southern maid. Oh never mind. All this so we can overlook the phenomenal part of Peppy Miller in The Artist. And while the masses and critics sing the praises of Melissa McCarthy (and I agree, she's great), that role isn't even the best thing in Bridesmaids. Meanwhile, Dame Judi Dench obviously can't win again... but how crucial is her underplaying as Dame Sybil Thorndyke in Marilyn? And how gloriously did Julia Ormond evoke Vivien Leigh? But never mind, it's all about maids this year, anyway.

Best Director - Will Win: Michel Hazanavicius, The Artist. Should Win: Woody Allen, Midnight in Paris. Honorable Mention: Asghar Faradi, A Separation. There's a lot of talk about rewarding Martin Scorsese for Hugo, but Scorsese is always and forever too needy and too desperate to be rewarded; and anyway, does the world need more children's films made for grownups? I think not. That said, Hazanavcius is a fine choice... but I'd be just as pleased if we recognized Woody Allen, just once more, for his sustained brilliance, especially as exemplified in a film as rich and satsfying as Midnight in Paris. And for real directorial insight, go see A Separation, and tell me any American director coud have managed anything that dense and deep.

Best Original Screenplay: The Artist. Shoud Win: Bridemaids. This could also go to A Separation, and another good choice woud be Woody Allen's writing for Midnight. But I'd mostly love it if we recognized Kristen Wiig and her cowriter for the real genius of Bridesmaids - the brilliant, startlingly honest script.

Best Adapted Screenplay: The Descendants. I didn't see it. And I'd be okay with all of the others... except the dreadfully boring adaptation of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy.

Best Foreign Film: A Separation. If only for its brilliant, wordless final shot as the credits roll. As bad as the characters feel, you'll feel worse. And yet, that's a good thing.

Best Costumes: Probably The Artist. If they give it to Sandy Powell (again) for Hugo, I'll scream. And if there's any justice, they'd give it to Arianne Phillips for W.E.

The rest... well, just give it a good guess. They really like The Artist, and they like to spread the wealth. That, plus the height of the cliff and the breath of the sea... and you should be able to figure it out for yourself. :)

The Iron Lady: The Lioness In Winter

A few years back, I finally caught A Cry In The Dark, the Meryl Streep movie where she plays Lindy Chamberlain, an Australian woman whose daughter was taken by wild dingoes. It's the "Dingoes Took My Baby!" movie. I'd avoided it in theaters, my own moment of Meryl overload - too many accents, too many weepy dramas, all of that.

That was silly - A Cry in The Dark is a fine film, and Streep is, naturally and predictably, quite good in it. It's also less deliberately tragic than some of her earlier efforts, more about the sensational trial Hemmings went through than the event itself.

What struck me more, and stayed with me, is how seamlessly Streep inserted heself into an ensemble cast, not being bigger than the film or her costars, but one of them, and part of the film.

Streep has had a fascinating career as America's Greatest Living Actress; it's an assessment that got made very early in her career, and the remarkable thing, really, is that she has lived up to that rep, pretty much unbroken, ever since. Yes, even with Death Becomes Her on her resume.

The other interesting thing, though, when I thought about it, is how Streep has made her name playing, in essence, smaller parts. Nearly every film she's made is an ensemble piece. She's rarely the sole, or central, point of attention. She's played wives and mothers, and committed professionals, most of them part of a group, a family, or a team. And that, I think, is what complicates her history as an Oscar nominee - her chances hinge on the strength of the ensemble, and how one takes the whole film. Which is why, for instance, she wouldn't win for A Cry in the Dark - she's the best thing in an okay film.

My point is, really, that Streep has redefined what it is to be a star, largely on her own terms; which, by now, it should be clear are pretty feminist. Streep is a proponent of women's lives and women's roles, and a woman's approach to making film and art.  What's remarkable, really, is how she's been able to chart a course doing largely that in a business often aligned against anything of the sort.

All of which is why The Iron Lady may well be a breakout chance for Streep to win an Oscar (or not - apparently the Gods are smiling on Viola Davis). Playing Margaret Thatcher may well be Streep's first real turn in a "Great Lady" part, the central role in a film built entirely around her character. I don't think Streep has ever made herself the central star of a biographical picture, ever. But of course, The Iron Lady is not like other biopics. Directed by Phyllida Lloyd, The Iron Lady asks a question not usually asked of biographical subjects: what happens after the most important thing you've ever done? 

The Iron Lady is a fascinating look at what it means to age, and to age out of the spotlight that once you held. Some have compained that the film is an injustice or an insult to Thatcher; I'd disagree. Lloyd hits the high notes of the Thatcher period in Great Britain, and doesn't give any easy answers about Thatcherism, either. But by showing an elderly woman dealing with what it means to be past your prime, Lloyd, and Streep, illuminate aging and confronting mortality with more light than I think I've seen in, like, ever.

Margaret Thatcher, of course, is a strong, indomitable figure to portray, and Streep goes at it with gusto. Thatcher was the first, and one of the few, women to serve in Parliament, the first to rise through the ranks of the Conservative (Tory) Party, and the first woman Prime Minister. Because she is a peer of Ronald Reagan and carried strong views, conservatives here and in England tend to lump a lot of what happened in the eighties into one big right wing ball. But Thatcher was very much her own creature. Her sense of conservatism was, to her, a kind of common sense. She grew up a grocer's daughter and believed, firmly, in the value of hard work and a sense of purpose. Her rejection of government ownership and social welfare came out of her belief that both things held back individual ambitions.

It would be easy to make a political biograpy of this; Thatcher herself did, over several volumes, discussing her time as Prime Minister. But Lloyd is more interested in the drive and ambition of the actual woman, the details that make a personal life. The film focuses on the support and care Thatcher got from her marriage; her husband Denys being her chief cheerleader and rock of support. When Thatcher's hotel was bombed by IRA separatists, she was in her suite of rooms with Denys, and her initial response wasn't about about strength or justice... it was trying to find her husband.

In the film, Thatcher is hauunted by the presence of Denys, still nattering aorund, offering advice, refusing to leave, even though he's already passed. This allows for a framing device that brings in flashbacks to Thatcher's rise and eventual success as prime Minister, and also to look at the questions of aging and dementia (which Thatcher's daughter has alluded to in interviews). But the film is not a tragedy, nor is Thatcher protrayed as simply weak and decaying in her senior years. Instead, we see Mrs. Thatcher ultimately apply to herself what she always believed: that there is no point to wallowing. One has to get up, get tough, and soldier on. In this case, alone.

This is great lady stuff, Katharine Hepburn stuff, and Streep, as usual, disappears into the role, carrying off not just the accent, but the sense of what it is to be such a commanding, determined presence. When she gives her doctor a long lecture on how one's hopes and beliefs becomes one's character, she is authoritative, yet also immensely human and true. One can debate the ultimate value or success of Thatcher's policies, but in another sense, we hold the debate on her terms: the world we have, post-Privatisation and after Thatcher ended or changed much of the social welfare structure of Britain, is a world that it is not nearly as apocalyptic as her worst critics insisted it would be. And that, in some sense, proves her right.

Lloyd hasn't delivered the sort of pure, unvarnished ode to Thatcher's commanding greatness that many wanted or expected, and there is, surely, a time and a place for that film. But this film, which captures and dissects what it is to age, and how we, as a society, determinedly look away from the hard parts of the final aspects of aging, is a remarkable, and worthwhile, effort. And I suspect, over time, the value of The Iron Lady will become clearer, and another Streep performance will get its due.

Or we could just give her the Oscar and get it over with.

Friday Favorites: LA Confidential And The Whole Delicate Business

When the subject of films comes up in my conversations, and I mention my love of them and the reviews I write, lots of people (strangers mostly) ask "So... what's your favorite film?"

Truthfully, I tend to say that I don't have one, or even a few; I've seen a lot of movies, and liked a lot (though certainly not all) of them. But I know myself and my likes well enough to know that the positive feelings for a film are often situational: it's where I was, who I was with, the way that film spoke to a particular moment or feeling I was in tune with at that time. I love sad movies most when I need a good cry. I really loved Truth or Dare when I saw it, but it was also the height of Madonna Madness, and I can't say that it truly holds up to what I thought at the time.

Still, when I say I "have no favorites," it's also a lie; I love movies, and I own a lot of the movies I love and I watch them repeatedly. I go out of my way to see and re-see certain films, certain stars, hear my favorite lines yet again. This afternoon, I caught the final dramatic courtroom denouement of Legally Blond, a film I still admire a lot, for those last lines of Elle Woods as she destroys the real murderer's fake alibi - "And as someone who's had, oh, thirty perms in her lifetime, shouldn't you be aware of the rules of perm maintenance?" Always makes me smile.

In that vein, I've decided, sort of, to stop lying: I'm going to try and make a regular habit of going back over the films I love and why. It's a way to push myself to more regularly write reviews, and also revisit the good stuff, and why it's good. It's also my way of being a better steward of film blogging: people I admire, like Self Styled Siren, who remind me to be passionate about the thing I love.

So first up: a film that speaks to the whole business of loving film - LA Confidential. 

The Oscar Nominated Shorts: Live Action

There are two, maybe three reasons to go to a theater and see the Oscar nominated short films: a) you want to dominate your Oscar pool, b) you're a real film geek, and maybe c) if it's either this or that horror film with the guy from Harry Potter, is there really a choice?

I'm not proud; I have to admit that I've been dying to go to a theater and see the Oscar nominated short films simply because the Oscar pool at the party I go to (hi, Izzy!) is especially cutthroat, and I'll do anything to win. Artistry, shmartistry. I just need to pick the right winner.

Okay, seriously: this is my first year seeing the live action short films, and I have to admit... it was a preety great experience. They may not be the absolute best in short film, but I've seen five short, very entertaining and well made films in one sitting. And that's not at all bad.

Let's dispense with two of them straight off: Pentecost and Time Freak are charming, one-joke premises with snappy pay-offs. Pentecost is an Irish film that tells the story of a wayward altar boy who uses the incense burner as a hazardous weapon. And just when he seems to have learned his lesson and will get to end his penance in time for Liverpool to play in the championships (football, natch), he shows that he too can score a winning goal. Time Freak asks the loaded, yet poignant question... if you're geek enough and obsessive enough to build a time machine, would you go back in history... or simply try to fix yesterday until it was perfect?

But if I had to pick a winner (and I will), it makes more sense to focus on the longer, more complex efforts. Raju is a haunting tale about a German couple who adopt an Indian boy in Kolkata, only to have the father lose him ina crowded market the next day. in his desperate search, the father trips over the uncomfortable reailty that the boy may have been kidnapped for sale as an "orphan" and the film wrestles with the bigger questions of what it means to do the right thing. Ambitious and well made, I tend to think Academy voters won't overcome the depressing sense of loss that hovers over the film by the end.

My personal favorite is Tuba Atlantic, a Norwegian film with yet another jokey, farfetched presence: a dying man tries to reach out to  his estranged brother, in America by finally making use of the invention they made as boys, a giant tuba capable of emitting a sound far enough to cross the ocean (their inspiration was Krakatoa, whose eruption could be heard 5000 miles away in Australia). Full of refusal to give in to death, and a murderous rage at seagulls, Tuba Atlantic takes a potentially dicey, difficult subject and never loses sight of lightness and laughter. And even the tuba provides a handsome payoff.

Still, I suspect that Academy voters may favor the even more obviously sentimental The Shore, a tale from Northern Ireland about estranged best friends reunited after many years and the possibility that one stole the other's girlfriend. Graced with a number of strong performers (the headliner here is Ciaran Hinds), The Shore ambles along at a modest pace, unfolding its charms in a gentle relaxed way. Time heals all wounds and true friendship aleways survives... and really, who can argue with that?

Tomorrow, hopefully... I'll have similar findings on the Animated shorts. Anyway, my suggestion: pick The Shore... but tell everybody else to pick Tuba Atlantic.