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One Party To Rule Them All (The Galadriel Syndrome)

I had wanted to write this around the Inauguration, but time and travel intervened. Still, the State of the Union speech makes a good time for a similar point.

There's a moment in the first Lord of the Rings film - and I get to wear my "Honorary Geek" badge with pride here - where Galadriel explains to Frodo why she shouldn't have the Ring of Power he is transporting to Mordor. She explains how having so much power would convince her that what she was doing right and good, even as she turned herself into an omnipotent godlike presence, willing and able to destroy non-believers. Cate Blanchett does marvelous things with the speech, and the visual effects are striking, but I loved the scene for reminding us that the real danger of absolute power is not what you do with it so much as the fact that you feel that you are entitled to do it.

 

I was struck at the Inauguration, and with the politics that have unfolded in recent weeks, by the fact that, in many ways, we are a nation with one operating, successful political party. While Republicans did manage (weakly) to continue with a majority in the House, and have control of in a umber of states, this past election was a rejection of Republicans and conservatism by a new working majority that prefers Democrats. And the implications of consolidating that power - demographically, it appears to be harder and harder to imagine a route to national GOP victory - force some consideration of what it means to effectively have one party rule.

Take on banal example - the Inauguration Ball, which the Obama team consolidated into one monstrous, 40,000 person event in the DC Convention Center. Where there had previously been as many as 17 elitist, small events scattered across hotel ballrooms, now we have the equivalent of a keg party in your neighbor's field. That's liberals for ya, and my own sense of gay good taste cringes, but that's really beside the point of the optics , when the President and Mrs. Obama made three very theatrical, identical, and largely meaningless "first dances" on stages at different ends of the enormous venue. The effet was less elegant than carefully choreographed, meant to establish distance, not intimacy. And that distance and control, really, is a good indication of having the kind of power that cannot be questioned, and the impression of deserving it.

Republicans have a chance, after Obama's State of the Union, to present there own list of proposals for governance. There's lots of talk that Marco Rubio (!) will offer a thoughtful challenge to the President and a full throated defense of conservative ideas... but really, at this late date, what are they? On health care, the right has offered a "not that" argument against the Affordable Care Act and little more; they oppose any discussion of taxes that involves raising revenue; they support "spending cuts" but offer no specifics on where to cut, and on and on. On issue after issue, year after year, Repub;icans have offered less and less in terms of concrete proposals and almost no fresh ideas that get ahead of any politicla discussion. Gun controls? nope. Immigration? Not much beyond fences and arresting people.

Lately, I find myself watching panel discussions and Congressional hearings on C-Span - the other half of my "Honorary Geek" badge - and I'm struck, repeatedly, by the lack of substantive ideas, questions, or proposals coming from anyone on the right. Almost always, if the President proposed it, or the left supports it, it's simply bad. And the alternative is... doing nothing, or rolling back what's already been done (and is often already working). This is not any kind of approach to serious policy. And it's the deeper reason why, by and large, most Republicans and movement conservatives aren't being taken seriously. Including, for instance, Marco Rubio, whose jump to the front of the National GOP line has everything to do with the image he projects (of bright eyed, right wing Hispanic) and not the ideas he proposes. Rubio vaguely proposes to "do something" on immigration, but it's really too little to impress the most active Latin Americans on this issue, and his bravest notions won't really fly on the right. Moreover, he projects just the kind of youthful inexperience and naivete that defines right wing stardom these days - the more he has to chase approval on the far right, the less attractive he'll be to the mainstream. Or he'll defy the right, and marginalize himself to the fringes.

All of which is fascinating, I suppose... but as a leftie, I'm more concerned about being in the party that won. It's a far cry from my youth in the depths of the "Reagan Revolution," when our extinction seemed more imminent and our ideas seemed hopelessly out of fashion. But, well, at least we had ideas. And we kept having ideas, and rethinking and reshaping those ideas, until we adapted into the party of today. I don't love everything we've become, but that ability to adapt and rethink is the only way conservatives can survive. And right now, I think their ability to do any of that is dubious, at best. 

But what has "being a Democrat" become? In one sense I think "winning" has become the goal that defines us most, but not best; we've figured out how to win national elections, we've built a new coalition of engaged voters across a variety of interest groups, a "majority of minorities" who see that we do best when all of us have a chance. As long as we don't rock the boat, stay silent about poverty in any substantive way, and soft pedal areas of disagreement. The overt and covert silencing of dissent, the weakening of our ability to criticize our own, the papering over of internal tensions... it's these growing failures that signal the rot that starts from within. We can win another ropund of the Presidency (and her name is Hillary), we can hold the Senate, we can, even, retake the House, no matter how negatively its dismissed; but those victories, a return to one party dominance better than 2008, will mean little if all we do with them is perpetuate a new status quo. We need dissent, we need the tension of competing ideas, we need better answers than the ones our leaders just keep coming back to on their own.

If Republicans can't pull it together - and more than ever, I'm convinced they can't - than the question becomes whether One Party Can, in fact, Rule Us All. My own guess is, it can't, that we will, somehow, devolve back into two parties (at least), even if those two are drawn from a deep split within the left itself. Yes, the health of our democracy almost requires it, but it's more than that. At some point, we have to learn the lesson of, well, Galadriel: however well intentioned, it is never good to concentrate too much power into one hand. I don't know if this new feeling of Democrat ascendancy can handle knowing that, or handle dealing with it. But if we don't... the disaster that follows will, in some sense, be entirely of our own making.

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Friday Favorites: The Parent Trap

I keep wanting to continue my weekly hat tip to films I love, but somehow Friday rolls around, and it's late and I'm tired... and well, I have to break the habit.

I know it's totally uncool, but I still have some residual affection for the mess that Lindsay Lohan has become. I still hope (against ever decreasing hope) that she can pull it together, and prove herself, yet again, as the promising talent we once saw. Some people have come back from worse... but not many, and every passing day suggests that this story will not end well. 

The Parent Trap is one of those movies that seems impossible (and unneeded) to remake. When Hayley Mills played identical twins, sisters separated at birth, it was an impressive feat, all the more impressive for such a young actress. Who could match that?

I didn't see Lohan's version until probably a year later, on cable. At first it felt like a lark, but then I found myself paying attention, especially to the details of Lohan's twins. And eventually, I found myself actually making the effort to see her version not just in bits and pieces, but all the way from start to finish. 

Like the original, Lohan plays twins separated as babies by their parents' messy divorce. One is raised in Napa by her wine making father, the other in London by her dress designing mother. The girls "accidentally" meet at summer camp, and gradually realize they are sisters. And then the fun begins.

First the sisters switch places, so that they can meet their missing parent. Here's where Lohan shines, managing the neat trick of both the prim Brit who's dying to know her father, and the boundless openness of the American girl who longs to have her Mom back in her life. Lohan is helped immensely by both Dennis Quaid and Natasha Richardson, and their own sweetly conflicted feelings. 

Eventually, the two are found out, leading to the third act minor conflict where the two have to unite to remove the one obstacle to their parent's reconciliation, a manipulative woman insinuating her way into dad's life.

Director Nancy Meyers apparently picked this project to help her daughters work through their own feelings, after Meyers divorced director Charles Shyer, after years together as writing and directing partners; Lohan's characters are named Annie and Hallie, the names of their daughters, and both girls have small roles in the film. Meyers is a natural for the material, giving it just the right mix of fairy tale perfection touched with real world possibilities. The supporting cast is charming without veering into overly cutesy. Quaid and Richardson are immensely appealing.

But the real find of this project was clearly Lohan, wise beyond her years, creating two surprisingly distinct characters, who nevertheless are identical twins. It's a real feat when you can, with just a look, or the quaver of a voice, realize that one twin is playing the other, without Lohan breaking character or seeming false to either role. It's this film, I'm sure, that made much of Hollywood sit up and take notice. In the world of Disney's tweens, Lohan made most of the others seem instantly irrelevant. Which is why she quickly moved on to a Freaky Friday remake as well.

Of course, we know now what we didn't know then: that Lohan's wisdom beyond her years was hard and painfully won, and the damaged girl who could pretend so well for the cameras couldn't fake it in real life. I get it... she's a mess. But watch The Parent Trap (or even her Freaky Friday), and then tell me again how her life is a joke, even a sad joke. To me... it's nothing short of a tragedy. And one that, sadly, may never be solved. That's not funny, it's a goddamn shame.

West Of Memphis: These Are, Indeed, Their Stories.

By now, I think those who know me well know how leery I am of jumping on popular bandwagons. I'm a big believer in the lonely voice of dissent, the ones who doubt the wisdom of crowds, those who see no need to support a cause celebre. I can do this even when the easier course is to just join the 99%, while still thinking that the 1% are no heroes. Bitter... party of one.

West of Memphis, then, presents all kinds of muddle. How can one support an injustioce? How can one not support three poor young men railroaded into an unfair, unjust sentence? How can one deny a good cause, even if it has celebrities attached? Well, it's not easy... but let me try: West of Memphis is a documentary act of political theater. What it documents is powerful and even moving. What that document means, and what it shows about our popular culture... may not be its real strength.

The film documents the events that led to the cause of "Free the West Memphis 3", three young men accused, tried and imprisoned for the murders of three young boys back in 1994 in the town of West Memphis, Arkansas. Pulling together work from three other documentaries, made for HBO, and with new footage, the film traces the  initial horror of the original crime, the sensational aspects of the original trials, and the arduous process of hunting down and providing information for the eventual appeals that led to the recent release, under difficult circumstances, of those three convicted, yet demonstrably innocent, killers.

West of Memphis works best in that part of pop culture mindset put in place by CSI and SVU (with side order of Justified) - as people sift through the questionable forensics, retrace the statements of witnesses, and gradually piece together a horrific, and tragic, alternative take of events, the film works as a mystery thriller whose revelations, even when obvious, still feel breathtaking. The unfortunate thing is how these developments play out over many years, reminding out that TV's one hour dramas tend to misstate the real abilities of even the best detective to suss out the real truths. 

The cause of the West Memphis 3 was originally championed by Peter Jackson and Fran Walsh, the couple responsible as well for the astonishing adaptation of Lord of the Rings (and now, the somewhat more endless feeling Hobbit), and of all the celebrity participants, their roles feel the most natural and organic to the proceedings. The case was, and is, clearly, as much an obsession for them as it was for those closest to the convicted men, and their passion for finding the truth, and eventual justice - without inserting themselves too heavily into the process - is admirable, and quiet moving. 

I have no doubt that others, like Henry Rollins and Eddie Vedder, are also genuine in their search for justice. But the celebrity quotient of the documentaries steadily rises over the years until it begins to overwhelm at least some of the good intentions. The concerts, the press conferences, the chumminess through prison vistor glass... all starts to feel a bit too easy, too familiar, too much about "look who's here" and less about the tragic case and all the lives damaged in the wreck. The surreality surely is topped off by the fact that the penultimate major victory of the justice seekers comes out of a (dismissed) nuisance lawsuit against Dixie Chicks lead singer Nathalie Maines.

The ultimate resolution for the West Memphis 3 - freedom at the price of a useless, meaningless guilty plea for each of them - isn't exactly the most uplifting, and the film squarely evades the hard questions of what, really, will happen to all of these sad lives once the cameras are off and the real world moves in. Mystery solved... what else is there left to see?

West of Memphis raises some hard questions about class and crime and the search for justice in the small towns of the south... but generally avoids, as a film, much in the way of illumination beyond familiar tropes and easy stereotypes. It's hard being different, a bad attitude can get you imprisoned, society can be cruel to the developmentally disabled... these are not revelations so much as cliches, absent acknowledgement of other, more complicating social ideas. And the film does little to move beyond the cliches in trying to give context to these tragic turns of events. The result, then, is a documentary which left me, for all the interesting details and cunning detective work, a little nonplussed and emotionally distant. I'm glad they're free, I'm not sure its justice... and I tend to wonder what real life looks like for these folks when the cameras get turned off. And I don't think Johnny Depp can answer that for me. Or you. 

Les Miserables: There's A Grief That Can't Be Spoken

Of all the "big eighties" musicals (Phantom, Cats, Dreamgirls, etc), I've long suspected that Les Miserables is the best known and least understood of the bunch. More than the others - only Phantom really comes close - Les Miz isn't really so much a traditional musical comedy as much as it is light opera, a style very popular early on in American musical theater, but that eventually got subsumed into the opera houses of most of America (along with Gilbert and Sullivan and Porgy and Bess). Light operas and operettas were the sort of thing Nelson Eddy and Jeanette MacDonald did for MGM, where there was a lot of emphatic singing and usually little spoken dialogue, but it didn't quite qualify as "serious" opera because they were more recent, and tended towards more popular melodies.

Few people get that Les Miserables, in French, was originally more of a song cycle with some staging, before Cameron Mackintosh swept the whole thing up, translated it into English and gave it an elaborate staging in London. Even then, the initial reaction to it as a piece of theater was as more of an event, not easily categorized as traditional, straight musical theater. As it made its way to Broadway, Les Miz became treated more conventionally, even though, as a show, it actually has next to no spoken dialogue, is mostly sung-through, and relies heavily on recitative as well as traditional "numbers," which often function, in the show, more as solo arias, or duets and trios, amongst main characters. It's a short hop, really, from Les Miz to La Boheme, shorter than the hop to, say, a Phantom. The musical themes assemble and reassemble in the different numbers, and the show's first act closer, "One Day More," gradually blends the different threads preceding it into a stunning thematic whole.

Thus, in some ways, it's unfair to come to Les Miz expecting the familiar contours of the form that's been identified, since World War 2, as the American musical comedy. Les Miz is more thematically dense, more musically demanding, even if it does not, fully, fit the form of conventional opera. More than any show in recent memory, it is a singer's show - it requires, first, singers who can act more than actors who can sing (never mind dancers; the show is almost entirely free of traditional choreography). Arguably, Les Miserables has attained its cult status, and its rabid fan base by being staged as a musical, while playing to its operatic pretensions.

And so Les Miz arrives on film, proving that it still has worlds to conquer, its operatic pretensions in place, its place in pop culture secure. Tom Hooper's adaptation is all the junkies could expect - big, bold, brash and full of soaring musical moments. However well made, it cannot entirely mask the show's book flaws, and while visually magnificent, it can often feel somewhat less than the sum of its parts. And as always, the show rises and falls, most, on the strengths and weaknesses of its singers.

Many have argued that the film's weakest link is Russell Crowe as Javert, obviously the most actorly of the film's lead singers. Crowe has worked hard, and he does have singing experience (a band with him and his brothers is big in Australia), but his limited range is apparent, and at times he does struggle. But I think Crowe is being sold short for what he brings as an actor (and then too, the part of Javert is easy to treat harshly). At his best - his version of Stars, or Javert's eventual death scene - Crowe wisely undersings and retains the humanity of his character where others would go for bombast, or reach for the rafters. Crowe knows film well enough to understand its intimacy, and he connects with the camera in ways that others don't do quite as well. It's an idiosyncratic, star turn performance that works more than it doesn't.

On the other hand, there's Hugh Jackman, muscling his way through Jean Valjean with his usual scene chewing, always "on" qualities, who seems genuinely miscast. Valjean is the show's most brutal part, a screamingly high tenor role where the singer has to hit the highest notes with a full on belt. It's a singing skill that really encompasses a handful of men (there have been, I think, maybe 8-10 Valjeans  on Broadway in the life of the show)... and Jackman just isn't one of them. It's painful, really, to see the vocal strain as he tries to put over crucial numbers, none more so than the cruelly high "Bring Him Home." Lord knows, Jackman's qualities of pure showmanship can overcome most obstacles... but a note out of reach doesn't magically get reachable. And his acting can only take that so far.

The film starts with Valjean being paroled after 19 years in hard labor for stealing a loaf of bread during the French Revolution. Unfortuately, his parole makes him (shades of today) a virtual persona non grata in civilized society, and so he faces an agonizing (those notes!) dilemma of turning to crime or hiding in a new identitity. Assuming a fake name and a false identity, Valjean becomes a town mayor and factory owner, where a young woman named Fantine loses her job when the other women turn on her because of the foreman's obvious preference for her good looks. This leads Fantine on her own downward spiral, which she describes in her number "I Dreamed A Dream."

Anne Hathaway's appearance, 20 minutes in (she's gone by about 20 minutes later) is the film's down payment on greatness, and Hathaway shines so bright the effect is nearly mesmerizing. Gaunt and grim, she slogs her way through Fantine's travails, and though she's not the vocally strongest Fantine (Patti Lupone, for Christ's sake, was the original), Hathaway has that quality I've only seen in Marion Cotillard on film, of truly being able to act a song so thoroughly, all other doubts wash away. Bewildered, hurt, scared and desperate... all of this and more plays across her face as she attacks the song, sometimes letting emotion overwhelm her notes, other times, hitting them all the harder and more accurately to let the music do its job. Her performance is the most solid Oscar entrant I've seen all year.

Les Miz is a sprawling show, and Fantine's death leads to the real meat of the show, where Valjean adopts Fantine's daughter, Cosette, from a rapacious couple of innkeepers whose every thought is stealing (the Thernadiers, here played expertly by Helena Bonham Carter and Sacha Baron Cohen). Still running from his jailer Javert, Valejean and Cosette wind up in Paris in 1832 as an eventualy botched student revolutionary protest sweeps up a group of young men, including Marius, Cosette's suitor, and the Thernadier's daughter, Eponine.

This is one of the great legendarily down shows, and virtually all of the show's most memorable numbers are death scene last gasps, interpsersed with dripping declarations of undying love and the occasional call to stand up and fight for freedom. The ideas are big, the music swells, but the lyrics are often surprisingly small, and often trite. Les Miz succeeds best, and affects most, when its not trying too hard, pushing too high, or smacking us with the obvious. But even its most shameless moments can pack a surprising punch.

After Hathaway, Jackman and Crowe, the biggest vocal surprises are Eddie Redmayne and Amanda Seyfried as the lovers Marius and Cosette. Redmayne is a foursquare romantic tenor in great voice, and Seyfried has a glorious light soprano that lifts her material way higher than I remember when I saw the show. The Eponine role is a natural stunner and she delivers. Carter and Cohen are aces as the Thernadiers. And the smaller roles - Gavroche, Enjolrais - work as reliably as one should expect.

Tom Hooper's direction is less assured than one might expect, as he seems to struggle with balancing the intimacy of the characters and their solos with the bombast and enormity of the action surrounding them. Les Miz, on stage, is memorably presented on a spinning disc, rotating characters on and off, and Hooper does his best to try and recreate the effect with pull backs and dolly shots to surround the sets, but he also frames his soloists in super tight, unforgiving closeups (Hathaway's lack of Hollywood vanity is remarkable), and the mix of shots doesn't make either choice necessarily effective. Hooper's focus on soloists robs "One Day More" of some its punch, Fantine's death is poorly staged, and Jackman's showiness would look less desperate if Hooper pulled back. None of this can diminish the power of the strongest numbers (Dream, On My Own, Empty Chairs at Empty Tables, Master of the House), but  by the end, the show feels more like a slog than a journey.

Still, for its flaws, indeed perhaps because imperfection keeps this monster human scale rather than enormous and bloated, Les Miserables manages a surprising amount of subtlety, genuine emotion, and soaring power. Indeed, the film's attempts at intimacy solve a number of the second act book problems the show carries with it, which allows the show to feel more like an altogether more inclusive whole. All of which make it, for me, the Oscar contender to beat for Best Picture (I'll do Lincoln shortly), and a glorious adaptation of a misunderstood theatrical event. Someone may try again... but good luck with that. This one will stand pretty tall regardless, for a long time. 

Skyfall: JB, Hooker

I've been so absent from my first love - film criticism - that I'm really rather embarrassed. I'm still a movie lover, first and foremost, and not getting to write about it hurts my soul. 

And so, perhap, it makes sense to make a fresh start with an old favorite: James Bond, and Skyfall, the latest entry in the saga.

Skyfall marks Daniel Craig's third foray into the Bond mythology, a journey that's been fascinating, and slow, often for reasons beyond creative control (since Quantum of Solace, MGM went bankrupt). The film arrive in time to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Bond films (Dr. No, 1962), and carries the usual weight of these exercise, all the expectations intact, a built-in audience waiting to be delighted... and disappointed.

The big surprise of Skyfall is how solidly the machinery works, how cleanly it wraps up a set of loose ends and puts the story back on familiar ground and known territory. Strikingly well plotted, making the most of its strengths, Skyfall makes the strongest case yet that Craig's Bond is one of the best, a grand reimagination of the genre that's respectful of the past but not bound to it. At the same time, Skyfall is, at worst, a pretentious mess: a low budget act of desperation, hampered by some egregious hammy acting and sloppy scene chewing from talents who really should know better. The balancing act between the best and worst of its impulses, to me, is what makes Skyfall better than most, but a bit a big budget disappointment.

First, the good: Craig's Bond is what makes the film work, and work well, for much of the story. Accidentally "killed off" in the lively opening (a fine,if somewhat derivative chase through Istanbul, ending in a familiar feeling battle atop a moving train), Bond returns home to England when MI6 is attacked, and a list of undecover spies is exposed. Traipsing off to Shanghai, Bond discovers the madman (natch) behind these diabolical schemes, bringing him to justice... only to have the mad genius use just such an outcome in his favor to wreak more havoc. The action culminates in a fierce battle at Bond's childhood home (the titular Skyfall), where a few final twists play out.

Craig's strengths remain readily apparent: his impressive physicality, his solid acting chops, his ability to give a conventional, well defined role a sense of freshness and innovation. Where Connery (and Brosnan) inhabited the part as movie stars - more an act of being than pretending - or Moore played everything as simply dashing and debonair, Craig finds a role to inhabit, an actual part to play. It's marvelous to see what an actor could do with the part, and Craig never makes it simple, or easy.

Well, except for the part where he makes Bond seem... well, easy: as usual, Craig doffs his top at the drop of a hat (or a sheet), making Bond his own Bond girl (who needs Ursula Andress when Craig's there to bound out of the surf topless?). It's a remarkable, respectful Bond world where Craig is, time and again, more naked onscreen than his female costars, at the same time making the obvious point that he's the show, the reason people paid to get in (and really, isn't that being an honest hooker, at least?).

Indeed the film's creepiest, yet slyly sexiest moments are the interplay between Bond and the mad genius Silva, overplayed by Javier Bardem. In their initial confrontation, Bardem gets especially physical, tracing Bond's chest and parting his thighs (no, seriously - it's amazing, in its way), and making suggestive comments about his "first time." It's heartening, I suppose, that Craig has a comeback ("who says it's my first time?"), but there's a subtext here that's old and especially homophobic, a notion that gay is sick and weird, the province of mad geniuses and creepy freaks. Bardem is a mystery to me - I frankly don't get his appeal and I've yet to be truly impressed by him onscreen as an actor - but the problematic role of Silva is ultimately not about him. The bigger problem is the "mad freak genius" aspect of Bond villains, especialy when they don't seem especially menacing, scary or dangerous. Still Bardem's "jamon con queso" performance - all ham and cheseiness - doesn't help. Understated muttering is still scene chewing if you do too much of it.

The rest of the (small cast of) supporting players is fine - obviously Judi Dench's M, but also Ben Whishaw's fine turn as Q, and Albert Finney and Ralph Fiennes, as well as underused Naomie Harris - but there's a sense of using a machine gun to kill a squirrel in the acting talent assembled. Actiually, the machine guns in this film also seem like overkill, too. There's acting aplenty in the supporting cast, often too much to too little effect. Whishaw's too tic-y, Finney is wasted, Fiennes is adequate, but not especially memorable. Only Dench, with and without Craig, seems to have mastered the right balance of hammy and serious needed to make a vast commercial enterprise like this work, proof, as if one needed it, of how seasoned and smart Dench is as a performer. It is, dare I even say it, practically worth another Oscar nomination.

Of the other details, there's not much to be said - Adele's theme song is both one of the best Bond themes ever, and surely one of her best performances as well. The gowns are sumptuous - especialy in the Macau casino squence. The Bond toys, are minimalist but classy (only Craig could make Bond's shaving routine into the sexiest thing imaginable), though Bond's shrunken suiitings are getting to look kind of excessively tight on Craig's yes, impressive, physique. The title sequence is, yet again, top notch.

Visually the film is a feast, and Sam Mendes deserves considerable credit for how good this thing looks, and how solidly he handles elements, like the action sequences, that one might think were beyond him. Mendes is good for not losing sight of his actors in the midst of the derring-do, at his best in moments where the action doesn't just snap and crackle, but actually shows us character development as well. Why, oh why, then can't Mendes seem to get more of a handle on Bardem's messy, psychotic, morass of a performance? Charitably, I'm willing to accept tht Mendes made a bad thing better than it ight have been otherwide; but if there's a next time, Mendes will need to do better on the villain front.

And of course, there will be a next time, a more familiar time with a more conventional MI6, with a reimagined Moneypenney and other details more in line with familiar expectations (how's that for avoiding a siginificant spoiler?). Craig owes us, and Bond, more time, and more films, to see what he makes of his Bond. And, three films in, it seems fair to admit that he's done a pretty decent job of it, so far.

Friday Favorites: Quiz Show

When I started writing about some of my favorite older films, I said I had a hard time thinking of these favorites, and that, plus a general slowdown in writing (oh... who notices?), left me grasping for topics.

But a few things came to mind over time, including Quiz Show, the film I think probably best shows Robert Redford's evolution as a director of quality projects, which are especially clever at illustrating the dominance and decline ofmainline WASP culture in America.

Redford's first effort was the difficult, somewhat depressing Ordinary People, a story of the aftermath of suicide that marked Mary Tyler Moore's drastic departure from her role as America's midern sweetheart via her television show. The film speaks tense volumes in its silences, the uncomfortable distance between couples and between parents and their kids. 

Quiz Show was Redford's 4th venture, 14 years after Ordinary People, but much of hwat he excavated in Ordinary People continued to resonate. Ostensibly, though, Quiz Show is - on the surface - much more glitzy and light, exploring the period of early TV history when the networks were dominated by game shows, mostly "quiz" programs where contestants demonstrated fantastic levels of knowledge on the most esoteric topics. 

In particular, Quiz Show focuses on the collapse of Twenty One, and its biggest success, the Columbia professor Charles Van Doren, who had a spectacular run on the show. Van Doren replaced Herb Stempel, and he was selected in part for his looks and personality, a kind of WASP ideal projected over much of the fifties (Mad Men, especially in Season One, makes a lot of this similar point).

In the film, Van Doren, played by Ralph Fiennes, is pursued by Richard Goodwin, an investigator for a congressional committee looking into quiz show fixing. Good win is eventually able to confirm that producers of Twenty One were feeding answers to contestants, picking winners and sidelining contestants to keep ratings high. Van Doren repeatedly protests his innocence to Goodwin, even as he grows disillusioned with his role, and tries to pull himself off of the show, only to have NBC move him into a guest role on the Today show.

Redford is, admittedly, playing a bit fast and loose with the facts - the quiz show scandal was driven primarily by the discovery of a "briefing book" of answers found on the set of the show Dotto, and similar fixing was discovered on The $64,000 Challenge; and Van Doren's personal history was simplified as well. But the key moment of the film - where Van Doren makes an oblique, vague "confession" of his guilt to the congressional committee did actually occur, as did the moment when one of the Congressmen on the panel chastised him for not deserving to be rewarded for simply telling the truth - especially the truth of a massive lie.

The insight Redford brings to the material is to climb under and around the great lies of the fifties, about the worship of the WASP ideal, and the marginalizing of other ethnics (especially Jews, as exemplified by Stempel). Redford presents Goodwin as being seduced, initially, by the comfort and ease of Van Doren's preppy, upscale family, a world away form his own experience, even with his Harvard degree. 

Fiennes is a  big part of why the film works, providng both the surface glamour of Van Doren's easy charm and good looks, but also reflecting his growing unease with the deceptions and the highly public nature of his exposure. At the same time, he offers Goodwin a heartfelt, if troubled defense of his actions - "what would you do if someone offered you all this money?" His fall from grace, and that of his parents, is vividly displayed in that Congressional confrontation, and in the subsequent response of the press, and Redford makes the point, quietly but effectively, that only a group as unassailable as white upper missle class protestants could suffer such a fall at that time, when a fraud is revealed.

Even the score serves to underline the distacne between the glitzy illusions of the fifties as seen in pop culture and the grimmer realities. The film opens to the snazzy swing of Bobby Darin's "mack the Knife" itself derived from "Moritat", a selection from Brecht's Threepenny Opera, then enjoying a revival on Broadway (starring Brecht's wife Lotte Lenye, who gets a shout out in Darin's version). Redford closes the film with Sting's reading of the actual Moritat, which is when you realize that Brecht's actual lyric is far darker, and far less charming than Darin's slick ode to a sexy gangster. So is the film, as it peels away the layers of lies in America's pop culture. And that may be Redford's truly finest achievement.

 

Rock Of Ages: Sticky Sweet

Rock and Roll has a long, checkered history on film; in part, I suspect, it's because the anarchic rebel heart of rock can't really be subsumed or captured by Hollywood's embrace of the most "conventional" conventions. So much of what defines pop culture - the very structures of our popular entertainments - are the hoariest notions of storytelling enshrined onscreen. From HIgh School Confidential to The Girl Can't Help It, through Help! and the counterculture apex of Easy Rider and Midnight Cowboy, into the seventies era morass of Streisand's A Star Is Born and Midler's Rose.... Hollywood's history is littered with attempts to use "rock" as a way to give voice to a "youth culture" as a way to challenge a "status quo" that fails on all counts. 

If Rock of Ages is a dreadful dud - and it's surely one of the most dreadful, duddiest attempts out there - it would be a mistake
to isolate it as a lone example of the "rock musical" gone bad. "Rock musicals" are, in fact, generally problematic, the good ones (I'd say, well, Hair... and then what? Grease?) not so far from the bad, and all struggling with, as I said, trying to square a circle of presenting youthful rebellion in a clean, neat Hollywood package.

Sloppy and lazy, Rock of Ages pulls together a fairly random set of eighties "rock" songs, packages them up with a fairly limp familiar plotline of "I wanna be a star!" and flails around in search of a conclusion. Originally created for the theater, Rock of Ages - still running - is mostly a tired excuse to pull in kids my age with a vaguely familiar soundtrack of songs from our youth, packing them in even if, under even mild examination, the show is illiterate and incoherent. One of the most obvious problems is the show's soundtrack, which  vaguely assembles  eighties "hair metal" songs, a genre which, I'd argue, isn't really a genre at all: the real story of the eighties is how the notion of "rock" splintered apart after a seventies era apex of Album-oriented rock (AOR, in radio parlance) and hard rock ubiquitousness. By the mid-eighties, "rock" was, in many ways, nearly dead, with hair metal and other sub-genres simply serving as the dead end for diehards - who, it could be noted, amount to a white working class of mostly men holding out against the resurgence of dance and urban music that was really changing the face of pop.

That whitneness is a large chunk of Rock of Ages' dilemma onscreen, only partially solved by the late appearance of Mary J. Blige, in what appears to be the show's second act. By then we've been introduced to Sherri, a young aspiring singer who leaves Oklahoma to come to LA and pursue her dream. She quickly gets mugged (this happens in more Broadway shows than you might think), and meets her male counterpart, also an aspiring singer who works in The Bourbon Room, a larger scale club space that has a long history of launching and promoting up and coming rock acts. Drew, the young man, brings Sherri to the cliub, gets her a job, and the two begin a fairly conventional romance.  The club, meanwhile, under pressure from Moral Majority types, is struggling to stay in the black, and the owner pins his hopes on a desperate plan to revive the club's fortunes with a concert by popular band Arsenal, fronted by the charismatic, yet odd, Stacee Jaxx.

Tom Cruise, as you may have heard, plays Stacee Jaxx, and the performance is, by now, classic Cruise: a true movie star, Cruise may not be the strongest actor, but he plays Tom Cruise really, really well, and to the extent that Stacee Jaxx works, it's because Cruise exudes the star quality needed to pull it off. Say what you will, but Cruise has never been one to just phone it in, and he's not starting now. There's an intensity and determination to his performance that goes a long way to lifting this material above where it might be otherwise, and Cruise deserves credit, as he did in Magnolia, with proving that he's at his best, often, in these supporting roles where he can dare to be less than entirely likable.

But Cruise is no singer, and it shows. As much as he swaggers and stomps through his backstage drama, once he's onstage as Jaxx, Cruise's studied approach to "Rock God" reveals his limitations. Compare Cruise, for instance, to Blige, and the contrast is obvious: Blige, as usual, inhabits her singing with a passion that's almost impossible to bottle. Cruise, by contrast, gives the impression of moving across the stage, striking pose after pose, vaguely reminding us of other stars (Jagger, Tyler... you know the drill), without a real feel for how these stars found their stage presences in the songs they sang. It doesn't make him a failure in the part, but it's a reminder, however subtle, that Cruise is, in some ways, enitirely miscast in this role, struggling to make it work.

Much of the casting is similarly head scratching: actors with no real musical background, like Cruise, Alec Baldwin and Paul Giamati (who makes the film's irredeemable villain so irredeemable as to be a cartoon), against more traditional musical theater types like Catherine Zeta-Jones, Diego Boneta and Julianne Hough, and more rock and radio based types like Blige and Russell Brand.  That the musical theater types fare best (CZJ, however thankless her role is as the uptight antirocker, can't hide her ways with a good number) gives away the game that for all its claims to a rock and roll heart, Rock of Ages is grounded, really, in terribly conventional musical theater cliches: this is a showbiz, backstage musical with "rock songs" where 42nd Street should be, which goes a long way towards explaining why it doesn't really work.

As the young leads, Hough and Boneta are pretty enough - too pretty, really, on both counts - but they're both saddled with some of the worst of this film's material, particularly Boneta, mouthing words to Foreigner and Journey songs that seem, in context, like gibberish. Hough, as she demonstrated in the Footloose remake, is tougher and smarter than the limited, good girl in trouble business she has to put over here. Her character's hardest choice is going from waitress to stripper, and Hough radiates the kind of unreality that she's too sweet to get too jaded from it all, but even she's too smart to buy it.

The film struggles, really with the challenge of being "Sex, Drugs and Rock and Roll" while being the more PG-13 "Smooches, Occasional Drinking and Pop Rock" family friendly alternative. No one in the movie gets stoned, never mind the odd absence of coke or heroin, even in an ostensible mess like Stacee Jaxx (Cruise is no one's idea of a hardcore alcoholic, no matter how he strolls around, scotch bottles in hand). And while the film pants with a kind of soft porn leeriness, the sexual situations are mostly tame, even in an obvious over the top number like the version of "I Want to Know What Love Is" that Jaxx sings while laying Malin Akermann's patently unbelievable Rolling Stone reporter on the back room pool table. Raunchy sex never had it so sad.

Most everything is this film is a pale carbon of other, not necessarily better, but still more committed rock films. Mark Wahberg, I think, can rest easy knowing that his own turn in Rock Star - along with Jennifer Aniston's - has more heft than anything Hough or Boneta can produce. Cameron Crowe's Almost Famous is way more true to the seventies era ethos of groupie/rock god, Rolling Stone excess than anything here. Blige's turn as a strip club owner with a heart of gold is essentially Cher's role in Burlesque, and both women have the star power to exceed weak material, but even Burlesque feels more ultimately authentic than anything Rock of Ages can conjure. 

Perhaps most weirdly, the flm can't shake the odd homoerotic undertone of its material; there's a whole lot of creepy male bonding on display here, too much crotch level interest in the men's leather pants to be ignored (Cruise, ever the tease, can't resist parading around in codpiece, jockstrap and assless chaps, and even his twin gun tats aimed at crotch level are really gay porn iconography). The film's cringiest, yet oddly sublime scene has Baldwin's club owner finally admitting his dirty desires for Brand, as the club's manager, to the tune of "Can't Fight This Feeling" the REO Speedwagon tune rock fans are most likely to call "That's so gay." That Brand has the verve to do the number in his best Freddie Mercury impression only adds to the subtlety, and to his credit, Baldwin is actor enough to sbubsume his "straight stud" history and commit to the moment at hand.

Fundamentally, though, that psychotic number is, in a nutshell, all the Vegas-y, trashy incoherence that sums up everything wrong with Rock of Ages: the wrong material, the wrong performers, the wrong (and false) emotional notes (as a runner up, among a "hard to choose just one" field, let's nominate Blige's strip club ode to "Any Way You Want It"). Director Adam Shankman can't begin to find a sustaining tone for this material, veering between satire, leaden humor, and melodrama without ever touching passion, intensity or ecstasy in any real way. Shankman managed to make sense of all of this with Hairspray (and try not to imagine how Blige could have steamrolled the Queen Latifah role there, either), but that just underlines where pop rock conventions and Hollywood work best in familar frames. Rock of Ages can either fit in the box and be denuded of its real danger and pathos... or it can soar. This film decidedly doesn't, with it's feet firmly on the floor, however strewn with used beer cans.

Finally, this film deserves two final slaps: one for the shoddy score, which is too lazy to include either Def Leppard's title track or Steve Perry's "Oh Sherrie", despite the obvious references to the lead character. Too many of the numbers smash together incongruous pairings (Harden My Heart and Shadows of the Night? We're Not Gonna Take It and We Built This City?), and find little musical payoff. Too many of the songs, especially the Foreigner material, turn out to be full of weak lyrics (making Mick Jones his generation's Jerry Herman, I think). Even the moments that work - especially Cruise's actorly reading of "Pour Some Sugar on Me," which was already all about sex, but becomes all about sex and Tom Cruise - have a sleazy obviousness that's trite. And yet more insulting, if that's possible, is the sleazy costuming which make the eighties look even worse than we all might remember them - from Zeta Jones' ill fitting suits to Hough's hooker streetwear, to Boneta and Cruise in tight jeans and nothing to the imagination tops, this film makes a whole era into a sleazy looking cartoon. And that, I suspect, is its real point. Hot and sticky sweet... those used to be good things. I swear.

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.