Hankblog: July 2004

Tuesday, July 20, 2004

Movie Retrospectives: Wrong Men and Notorious Women
Spellbound

In some respects, it's kinda interesting starting out with this particular Hitchcock/Bergman collaboration for Wrong Men and Notorious Women. All of the features we'll be looking at this week are Hitch films featured in a discontinued box set by Criterion that focus on Hitchcock's skill at creating tension and mystery out of confusing situations. It just so happens that the first feature I chose to look at for this week shows off his raging misogynist side in all its glory as well.

Spellbound focuses on Dr. Constance Peterson, a psychiatrist played by the always radiant Ingrid Bergman. Peterson works at Green Manors, a mental asylum where Peterson has developed a reputation as being almost too singularly devoted to her work and research. Her determination to always find new ways to help her patients combined with her repeated refusal of the advances by some of her male coworkers has led most of her colleagues to believe Peterson a cold fish. All this changes soon enough with the arrival of Dr. Anthony Edwardes, played by a very young Gregory Peck.

Edwardes has come to Green Manors to assume the position of head of staff, replacing Dr. Murchison (Leo G. Carroll). Dr. Murchison is reluctant to leave his post, but the ravages of time have left him battling senility, and he recognizes it is his time to go. Drs. Peterson and Edwardes immediately click and fall into what could be a potential whirlwind romance, were it not for one small problem. Edwardes seems to be prone to some kind of panic attack that strikes him when he is confronted with excessive whiteness in his surroundings (the color, not some kind of Caucasian fear :-), or by parallel vertical stripes.

This phobia in and of itself would be merely odd in any other director's hands. In Hitchcock's hands, it becomes a means to an end towards moving the story into more suspenseful territory. Before you know it, you learn that Edwardes is not in fact Edwardes, has no clue who he really is, and may be a suspect in Edwardes possible death. Peterson and Edwardes rush off, trying to stay one step of the authorities while Peterson utilizes all her skills as an analyst to try and unlock the memories trapped in "Edwardes" head to determine who he really is...and ascertain his guilt or innocence.

The story moves along at a fairly brisk pace as Peterson and the faux-Edwardes (now using the alias John Brown until they can learn more) go around the state of New York in search of clues to unravel the mystery. Despite the possibility that she may be falling for a man who may not be what he appears, Peterson finds all her old beliefs about the nature of love between a man and woman completely unraveled. She is drawn to Brown in ways she does not pretend to be able to understand or explain.

And that is exactly where the story jumps the tracks somewhat for the modern audience. There are so many backhanded comments/compliments/observations about the "nature" and behavior of a woman in love that I almost imagine that had this been written for a modern audience, the central theme could be summed up as follows: women in love ride the short bus to school.

Don't believe me? Watch the movie for yourself. The only quote on imdb for the movie that supports this ideal is one from one of Peterson's colleagues, when he says "Women make the best psychoanalysts until they fall in love. Then they make the best patients." There are others that amount to more of this same idea. Peterson is at various times called stupid, crazy, and incapable of functioning in her professional ostensibly because she has fallen in love with Brown/Edwardes. It's true that she winds up taking measures that would go well out of the bounds of her professional canon for this man. But the comments that are made in this respect throughout the film which were played straight up for the audience this was written for come off as laughably backhanded insults today. I could not help but look at the friends I was watching the movie with and shake my head while asking "Did they really just say that?"

The film's ardent anti-feminist tone aside, the movie itself while not Hitchcock's strongest work is still very enjoyable to watch. This was Peck's third credit, and think it might have been his first true lead (still uncertain on that point). He already displays a great deal of the strength and range that would define his career. When he passed last year, Paramount Theater here in Austin ran To Kill a Mockingbird in memoriam. Before the film, they were fortunate enough to have a screen test that Peck did that nabbed him his first studio contract. The film came from UT's Harry Ransom Center Archives. At the time as I recall them explaining, Peck had just enrolled in med school at UCLA, and was trying acting as little more than a lark. Yet he displayed more skill as an actor in one cold reading from a script than I've seen in most actors today. He was truly one of the all time greats, and will truly be missed.

In the same vein, I can never get enough of Ingrid Bergman. She plays Dr. Peterson exceptionally well, giving her a very expressive face that adds a lot of depth to her lines. Just as a psychiatrist may read body language in evaluating a patient, the viewer gets a chance to read a different level of Bergman's performance by seeing what her body language may convey. This is most evident in the way she carries herself in her stiff formal mode prior to Edwardes' appearance at Green Manors, and the more comfortable, self assured way she carries herself after she falls in love with him.

There's also all the typical Hitchcock touches that give the movie his personal feel. The score accentuates things nicely, especially during a dream sequence in which Peterson and her mentor from school try and interpret the dreams of Brown to find the secret to his missing memories. The dream sequence was laid out and designed by Salvador Dali. Although originally set to run 20 minutes in the original script, only a small portion was finally used. The effect it has in bringing all of the final missing pieces together does require a bit of a leap of faith, but is no less entertaining for that.

An enjoyable, if dated, suspense yarn featuring a couple of top notch performers. A good way to start things off this week.

Tomorrow: We return to Ingrid and another celebrated leading man (Cary Grant) in Notorious.

Monday, July 12, 2004

Minor Blogroll Update

Hesiod at Counterspin Central has retired from the blogging life. In his/her stead, I've added The Poor Man and also added Queen of Wands to the Goofy Fun list for the fans of Something Positive. Enjoy.

Movie Review/commentary: Fahrenheit 9/11 (It's a long one)

Intro/Disclaimer
Writing a review of a documentary in general is pretty freaking tough if you ask me. You obviously are looking for different things, as the director has to utilize very different devices to move the narrative along. When I first saw and wrote up Errol Morris' The Fog of War for the old Hankblog, it was hard to figure out exactly what to say without diluting and disseminating too much of the message publicly. I thought it was a very important movie for people to see, and still feel very strongly that way now that it's out on video.

For Fahrenheit 9/11, the problem is much more different. No documentary has made as much as this one has. I don't think there's ever been a documentary that more people have talked about because of the subject matter. As such, I think it's better to talk about this film in three phases: thoughts I had about it prior to viewing, during the film, and after.

Going in: Biases and Prejudices
To date, I've seen 1 1/2 Michael Moore films. I saw Bowling for Columbine on its original release. I've seen bits and pieces of Roger and Me over the years since it first came out.

I can say that from my perspective, I saw what I perceived as a stark change in tone from Roger to Bowling. Say what you will about the problems or misrepresentations in Roger that have been taken apart by Moore's detractors since its release, but the film had a heart that seemed like a genuine need to try to do some good for an underrepresented portion of the population. Moore seemed to really want to give voice to the downtrodden.

By contrast I felt like Bowling for Columbine was more an ego trip than anything. I think that while I was in synch with some of the anti-gun arguments that Moore tried to make, that the entire enterprise was ham handed and grossly oversimplified too many arguments. Someone can correct me if I've got the point wrong but you will never convince me that Marilyn Manson has less input and influence in teenagers lives than the President of the United States in terms of driving kids to doing things with guns or anything else, which if I remember it right was one of the principle arguments Moore tried to push when he has his little sit down with Manson. There were other issues I had with the movie, but that's the one that I remember having the greatest issue with out of the gate.

That having been said, my first fear walking into this movie was that it would wind up being some kind of self congratulatory suckoff. Moore had made it clear that part of the motivation behind this movie was to validate the charges that he made in his Oscar acceptance speech for Bowling, which resulted in him getting booed off the stage. It's one thing to know you're right. It's a much more obnoxious thing to try and beat it into peoples heads that you're right, and I know this, because on more than one occasion, I have been that obnoxious browbeater. It was not right for me to be that person then, I didn't think it would be right for Moore to be that person now.

I also had a secondary fear that Moore was trying to position himself as the left's answer to Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, and the like. I detest the loudmouth demagogues of the right as much as anything I have ever hated in my life. As much as I hate what they offer to the "debate" of right and wrong in this country, I hate even more that the left side of the political spectrum feels a need to have someone along those same lines to counter that kind of influence. If two wrongs can not generate a right, two loudmouths can not generate intelligent discourse. And I was terrified that having a leftie "Rush" might be the escalation that would cause discourse to spiral downward even further into oblivion.

So that's the set of mental and emotional Louis Vitton I was carrying with me as the theater darkened and the film started.

In the theater: Immediate impressions (some "spoilers" ahead)
A lot of the comments I've heard from people who've seen the film and read here and there all make the same observation that it's almost like watching two different films. The first half seemed starkly different from the second both in the terms of tone and how Moore chose to convey the message. Nothing I saw in this movie did anything to dispel that criticism, so rather than talk about that too much, I'll focus on what worked for me and what didn't.

Much of what worked for me in both halves of the film had to do with simplicity and letting the images and sounds of people and events tell the story itself. I think one of the single smartest decisions Moore made was in not showing the footage of the planes hitting the twin towers, just leaving the screen black and letting the audio of the impacts and the initial news broadcasts wash over the audience. I think everybody came away from the events of 9/11 with different thoughts and feelings, and in leaving the screen blank, each viewer's individual imagination recreates the event as they remember it when it happened. That has to be one of the smartest decisions a filmmaker has ever made in my mind. Fading in with the streets covered in debris and the reaction shots brings the audience in visually with where we are mentally: coping with the aftermath.

In the same way, much of the second half of the movie works most effectively at its simplest. From the images of dead and wounded (both Iraqi and American), to the thoughts of the men and women in the field, and the experiences of Lila Lipscomb, a mother in Moore's hometown of Flint, Michigan who finds herself doing a 180 on her position on the war when it winds up hitting far too close to home what the real cost of the war is, Moore is at his best with this message. We can truly empathize with a lot of these folks we meet along the way. Lipscomb's story is the heart of the matter, and I can say that there were few if any dry eyes in the auditorium as her story unfolded.

The parts that lost me on the movie were Moore's trademark humorous bits where he tries to make light of some kind of perceived insanity. Personally, I think that in light of the subject matter, it's entirely inappropriate even as a means to try and break some of the tension created by the more serious moments of the film. If it is inappropriate for President Bush to make jokes about missing WMD's because of the number of people who have dies in the search (and I think this was highly inappropriate when it happened), then I don't think it's any more appropriate when Moore makes jokes using the current administration's heads grafted onto the figures from Bonanza, and make the war in Afghanistan some kind of joke to illustrate the stupidity in how the war there was carried out. It undermines the moral authority we have in criticizing how this war was carried out, and it trivializes the deaths of those who fought there. Moore was trying to be too damn smart for his own good there, and he really needed to show some better judgment on that, in my opinion.

Along the same lines, I think he flubbed his criticism of the Patriot Act with the number showing him reading it via loudspeaker for the benefit of Congressional members who voted for it without having read it. I thought the scenes showing who has been clamped down on because of the passage of the act was much more exemplary of what kind of problems there are with the act. Riddle me this Batman: if you're going to criticize members of Congress for not examining the flaws in the Patriot Act in total, shouldn't you do a bit more in pointing out the problems with it than a silly little shtick and a couple of real world examples?

I think there are other quibbles to be had, both good and bad, but I think these examples highlight the general strengths and weaknesses of the movie. It's much more compelling when you're not staring at Moore's fingerprints all over the damn thing. When he's so obnoxiously trying to be the focus of the action, the movie loses a fair amount of its momentum and focus. Thankfully, I think the film carries that momentum very well in the final act, and finishes with a fair amount of pop.

Out of the dark and into the light: Final thoughts and further reflections around the web
Walking out of the theater, the first thought that came to mind was the fact that it was significantly more restrained than I thought it would be. Granted when Michael Moore dials his voice down a notch, it's not that appreciable a drop compared to others. Considering that I think that Moore usually keeps his rhetoric dialed "all the way to 11", going down to an 8 is still pretty freaking loud. But the much gentler hand was readily apparent to me at the films strongest points, what I thought were it's most important ones. That goes a long way in my mind towards making the film more compelling to me.

And I can not argue with one positive aspect of the outcome of this film: people ARE asking more questions of the government that at anytime I can recall since 9/11 occurred. Though Moore on glosses the surface of the media bias that exists in favor of the president (contrary to the so called liberal media that the right has been peddling since time immemorial), he does hit it enough that I think people are taking their news with a few more grains of salt than they had previously. Maybe not a lot of people, but more than before is still a good thing. Florida in 2000 reminded us of just how much impact a few people can have in the outcome of events that define nations.

I think that the relative criticisms that have come from the right on the movie demonstrate the strengths that it has in that it seems like they're splitting particularly fine hairs in order to try and gain some kind of moral high ground. The largest and most significant accusations that are made within the film seem to have gone largely unchallenged. To me, that seems to say that there's not enough ground to try and dispute them, or doing so could unearth more skeletons than the right wants to see.

But above all else, I just like the fact that people are talking about the issues in a more intelligent fashion that what I heard around me prior. Sometimes that distinction is very slight. Sometimes it's very much evident. All change that I've heard has been good change. But I'll be the first person to admit my exposure to the political dialogue at large is still pretty limited.

I think this is a flawed but very important movie. I think that whether you lean left or right politically that you have some obligation to see it, or at least see/read more about the issues it addresses in order to be able to present a more well rounded opinion on what is happening in the world around us.

I don't claim it's unbiased. No story ever really is, whether it's film, literature, stage, etc. When we're told a story, we're invariably going to see it from the slant of the person telling the story, and we're going to be more or less receptive to that slant depending on the biases we carry with us once we go in. But I think this story tries to get you to look behind the curtain a lot more than most. I think that's a really important thing to do these days. And I put my liberal bias out there so you know exactly what you might need to consider in reading this.

That's more than we've gotten from the current administration. Chalk one more up for dialogue.

Bonus Reading:
Billmon at Whiskey Bar gives us a good read on why a loud voice like Moore's is needed on the left.

Jeanne at Body and Soul talks about one of the aspects she found most disturbing, something that I also found uncomfortable, but couldn't articulate nearly as well as she does.

Kevin Drum at Washington Monthly talks about the mirror Moore holds up to the right.

Lastly, Spinsanity takes apart the half truths that exist within the film. They're fairly evenhanded more often than not, so this is well worth reading if you agree with the movie, but still need your grain of salt.

The TCCI

As I attempt to make a regular return to regular blogging, I figured I'd jump back in with a link and listing to the TCCI. A very higbrow variation on the sort of getting to know you quizzes that make the email rounds, this one is trying to get a fix on your preferences on various cultural either/or selections. The original post for the TCCI came from here, though I first stumbled across it via Crooked Timber here. A list of the questions/preferences appears below, along with my choices:

1. Fred Astaire or Gene Kelly? Gene Kelly. I've always thought that Astaire was a more technically sound dancer, but Kelly has a joy in his movement that you don't see as much from Fred
2. The Great Gatsby or The Sun Also Rises? I've only read Gatsby. So this is a pass.
3. Count Basie or Duke Ellington? Gotta go with the Count.
4. Cats or dogs? Dogs, as I have a more doglike personality, and allergy concerns are a factor. Have come to meet a few cats I can make peace with however.
5. Matisse or Picasso? I have to go Matisse, but my exposure to both is very very limited.
6. Yeats or Eliot? I know no Yeats, and Eliot I only know what was turned into Cats. That alone is almost enough to pick Yeats though. We'll call this one pass.
7. Buster Keaton or Charlie Chaplin? Chaplin, without question.
8. Flannery O’Connor or John Updike? Have to go pass.
9. To Have and Have Not or Casablanca? While choosing between Bacall and Bergman is impossible, I'll go Casablanca as I think it's a superior script, and has better supporting cast. With all due respect to Hoagy Carmichael (sp?), no one beats Sam.
10. Jackson Pollock or Willem de Kooning? Pollock. Maybe I'm biased by the movie, but I do find the drip work really fascinating.
11. The Who or the Stones? Won't be fooled again. Who all the way.
12. Philip Larkin or Sylvia Plath? Pass
13. Trollope or Dickens? Pass
14. Billie Holiday or Ella Fitzgerald? Billie. I tend to side with the tragic figures a bit more
15. Dostoyevsky or Tolstoy? Pass
16. The Moviegoer or The End of the Affair? Pass
17. George Balanchine or Martha Graham? Pass (boy am I starting to look clueless)
18. Hot dogs or hamburgers? Gotta go with a good dog. Nathan's Famous all the way.
19. Letterman or Leno? Leno lost me with the Arnie Governor's announcement. Can't side with the tool. Letterman.
20. Wilco or Cat Power? Pass. Heard of Wilco, but never heard Wilco. Cat Power is a complete unknown.
21. Verdi or Wagner? Think I have to say Wagner
22. Grace Kelly or Marilyn Monroe? Marilyn. I side with my friend Patricia that Kelly was a better actress, but Marilyn was just such a joy.
23. Bill Monroe or Johnny Cash? Cash had much more versatility I think.
24. Kingsley or Martin Amis? Plead ignorance
25. Robert Mitchum or Marlon Brando? Brando. Someday the Don may ask me for a favor...
26. Mark Morris or Twyla Tharp? Pass.
27. Vermeer or Rembrandt? Pass
28. Tchaikovsky or Chopin? Tchaikovsky reminds me of Fantasia with the riffs from Nutcracker. Chopin's Nocturnes remind me of the end of The Professional. What does it say about me that I go to the more depressing film? Chopin.
29. Red wine or white? Red, absolutely. Doesn't matter what's actually being served, I just prefer reds overall.
30. Noël Coward or Oscar Wilde? Pass
31. Grosse Pointe Blank or High Fidelity? Grosse Pointe Blank. Minnie Driver is sexy as hell
32. Shostakovich or Prokofiev? Huh?
33. Mikhail Baryshnikov or Rudolf Nureyev? Pass
34. Constable or Turner? Not sure who or what we're talking about here
35. The Searchers or Rio Bravo? Neither. I must confess that despite my father's influence, just not a John Wayne fan.
36. Comedy or tragedy? Tragedy, I think. Makes comedy more meaningful
37. Fall or spring? Spring. Nothing better than opening day of the baseball season, and all that surrounds it.
38. Manet or Monet? Monet I think. Couldn't tell you why.
39. The Sopranos or The Simpsons? The Simpsons. Much as I love Tony.
40. Rodgers and Hart or Gershwin and Gershwin? I like a Gershwin tune...how about you?
41. Joseph Conrad or Henry James? pass
42. Sunset or sunrise? Sunrise, sunset...Sorry, slipped into musical mode. Think this one depends on who I'm with, so I'll say pass.
43. Johnny Mercer or Cole Porter? Mercer
44. Mac or PC? I work for Apple, what do you think?
45. New York or Los Angeles? New York. Not just for my Yankee bias
46. Partisan Review or Horizon? Never heard of either. Pass.
47. Stax or Motown? For my tastes, I'm gonna have to say Stax. Booker T & the MGs, John Lee Hooker, Sam & Dave, and Isaac Hayes. How can you go wrong?
48. Van Gogh or Gauguin? Van Gogh
49. Steely Dan or Elvis Costello? Elvis lives.
50. Reading a blog or reading a magazine? Blogs. Without question
51. John Gielgud or Laurence Olivier? Gielgud (The park, Bitterman...you know how I love the park)
52. Only the Lonely or Songs for Swingin’ Lovers? Pass
53. Chinatown or Bonnie and Clyde? Chinatown
54. Ghost World or Election? Only seen Election. But that's freaking deranged.
55. Minimalism or conceptual art? Pass
56. Daffy Duck or Bugs Bunny? Daffy. Just because I enjoy being contrary.
57. Modernism or postmodernism? Pass
58. Batman or Spider-Man? Spider-Man. Batman broods too much.
59. Emmylou Harris or Lucinda Williams? Neither
60. Johnson or Boswell? Pass
61. Jane Austen or Virginia Woolf? Pass
62. The Honeymooners or The Dick Van Dyke Show? Honeymooners. Much more to my tastes.
63. An Eames chair or a Noguchi table? Have to say neither.
64. Out of the Past or Double Indemnity? Pass
65. The Marriage of Figaro or Don Giovanni? Figaro
66. Blue or green? In the name of my hair, both.
67. A Midsummer Night’s Dream or As You Like It? Midsummer. Absolutely.
68. Ballet or opera? I'd have to say if they're done with equal skill, I'm inclined more towards opera. But I've seen a few ballet performances that make a strong argument in their favor.
69. Film or live theater? Film, by the slightest of edges.
70. Acoustic or electric? Acoustic.
71. North by Northwest or Vertigo? North by Northwest. Much more thrilling I think.
72. Sargent or Whistler? Pass
73. V.S. Naipaul or Milan Kundera? Pass
74. The Music Man or Oklahoma? OU SUCKS!!! ;-) Seriously, only seen bits of both, but the music I know from both puts me in the Music Man category.
75. Sushi, yes or no? Whenever possible.
76. The New Yorker under Ross or Shawn? Does it have funnies? Pass
77. Tennessee Williams or Edward Albee? Pass
78. The Portrait of a Lady or The Wings of the Dove? Read neither. Pass
79. Paul Taylor or Merce Cunningham? Pass
80. Frank Lloyd Wright or Mies van der Rohe? Think I'm gonna have to say neither. When my friend Elizabeth started talking about van der Rohe on iChat, I knew something clicked in my head that said I've seen that before. Quick tour of the web confirmed what I thought.
81. Diana Krall or Norah Jones? What little I've heard of both, I side with Krall
82. Watercolor or pastel? Both a little soft for me. Think I'll say neither.
83. Bus or subway? Never been on a subway, so pass.
84. Stravinsky or Schoenberg? Pass
85. Crunchy or smooth peanut butter? Smooth
86. Willa Cather or Theodore Dreiser? Pass
87. Schubert or Mozart? Mozart
88. The Fifties or the Twenties? Twenties. Flappers were sexy as all hell.
89. Huckleberry Finn or Moby-Dick? Moby Dick. I hated reading Mark Twain.
90. Thomas Mann or James Joyce? Pass
91. Lester Young or Coleman Hawkins? Pass
92. Emily Dickinson or Walt Whitman? Three in a row.
93. Abraham Lincoln or Winston Churchill? Lincoln. The undertaking he had was so much greater in my mind because he had to repair a rift from within.
94. Liz Phair or Aimee Mann? Aimee Mann. Shush, keep it down now.
95. Italian or French cooking? Italian, without a doubt.
96. Bach on piano or harpsichord? Piano.
97. Anchovies, yes or no? Negatory, good buddy.
98. Short novels or long ones? Long ones. Even when I don't have the time, I prefer the investment made in a long story. Plus they're more enjoyable to read to someone else.
99. Swing or bebop? It don't mean a thing if you ain't got that swing. Swing absolutely.
100. "The Last Judgment" or "The Last Supper"? Have to say neither.

Offer up your own thoughts in the comments if you like.

Thursday, July 01, 2004

Movie Review: The Day After Tomorrow
The Day After Tomorrow (2004) Director - Roland Emmerich; Starring - Dennis Quaid, Jake Gyllenhaal, Ian Holm, Emmy Rossum, Sela Ward; Screenplay - Roland Emmerich and Jeffrey Nachmanoff; Rated PG13 for "intense situations of peril" (I don't write this stuff folks, the MPAA does).

Intro
A sort of disclaimer is in order. I am, for reasons I myself can not fully understand or explain, something of a fan of disaster flicks. I don't know why, but movies that make a spectacle of mass carnage appeal to me on some visceral level. I remember as a kid surfing cable channels and if one of the Airport movies was on, or Towering Inferno, or Poseidon Adventure, I had to stop and watch. I'm not the kind who rubbernecks at traffic accidents, so I don't know where this fascination with FMD came from.

I say this to advise that I was predisposed to liking this movie from the get go, or at least of a mind to be more forgiving of this feature than I might have been of other movies of similar quality. I found The Day After Tomorrow to be neither truly awful, nor an exceptionally good film, but some decent popcorn fare for a summer release.

What (or When?) is The Day After Tomorrow?
In what appears to be the present day, paleo-climatologist Jack Hall (Dennis Quaid) is doing studies on global warming and its affects on the polar ice cap. He theorizes to leaders of the world at an environmental conference that global warming could contribute to the coming of a second ice age at some indeterminate time in the future. He is immediately lambasted by the Vice President (TV Veteran Kenneth Walsh), who sounds conveniently like Dick Cheney without looking like Dick Cheney. This will hopefully keep Roland Emmerich from being detained as an enemy combatant.

Anyway, Pseudo-Cheney thinks that Hall is full of it for his cockamamie theories, and he might have had a bit of a case. Except that "extreme" weather occurrences all over the world have everyone on the planet BUT pseudo-Cheney aware of just what kind of bad mojo is being unleashed on the world. The net result of all kinds of wonky science is the coming of the next ice age, one that turns most of the northern hemisphere into an ice sheet in the space of a few weeks. This leaves us the opportunity for Quaid's Hall to play hero on a quest to see if his son Sam (Jake Gyllenhaal) who was in New York for an academic competition is still alive. Naturally there's a parallel story going on where Sam gets to show he is Jack's son, demonstrating his amazing intellect and pluck in helping he and his friends survive the calamity.

So does the story shine, or does all hail break loose?
I suppose that depends on what level your expectations are set for. As far as disaster movies go, this one isn't too bad. Dennis Quaid is an actor who I always felt wasn't an all-timer but had more talent than he's shown of late. Here he isn't awful, isn't great, but is adequate for what's called for. I mean, it's hard to make an action hero out of a climatologist (visions of a sort of Willard Scott, Man of Action elicit chortles as I write this). Harrison Ford made an academic a great hero with Indiana Jones, but he had far more script to work with and wasn't playing second fiddle to some good effects work.

Gyllenhall is also adequate as Sam. There are a few moments where you can almost buy a relationship between the two, because of the way they conduct themselves. But realistically, neither character is there to give the story a lot of depth. They're pretty much secondary to showing a lot of stuff get destroyed in all manner of weather possible.

So you're saying this particular storm blows?
Not entirely. The effects work is really spectacular in the opening third to half of the movie. There's so truly neat stuff going on, if you can mire past some mediocre green-screen work in the opening sequence on a glacier that's part of the arctic ice shelf (cue ominous music BUT NOT FOR LONG). The tornadoes that are a prominent part of the trailer really did impress me. And there's some nicely framed shots that really make you feel the desolation of New York as frozen wasteland. One wonders if they did test screenings for New Yorkers who weathered the blizzards of the last couple of years for pointers on making it look more believable.

But the effects work isn't quite enough to save the movie from the some really clunky, awful dialog that just slows the pacing to an absolute crawl in the second half. The movie feels like it's going to last as long as an ice age in the second half. By the end of it you're supposed to be pulling for a heroic finish and all the principles to be home safe and sound. The practical reality of what they give you is that it's really hard to care. The stunning Sela Ward is totally wasted in a subplot as Hall's estranged wife who is ostensibly in almost as precarious a position as her son Sam. She has a poor waif stricken with cancer in her care as well, to make sure the heartstrings get a few extra tugs along the way. When their situation is resolved in an almost deus ex machina sort of way I really didn't give a damn one way or the other. I had in fact completely forgotten about them until my attention was forced there. Considering that they're supposed to be one of the other big emotional pulls, that doesn't speak well for what Emmerich is trying to do with the movie.

Sounds like a less than perfect storm.
It is, but to be honest, anyone expecting anything more is deluding themselves. This was a summer event movie, being released at a time to try and maximize its potential box office draw before the other heavy hitters had a chance to step up to the multiplex. It's a decent slice of eye candy for the effects geeks, it has a few good action sequences, and it really does try to give you a fair amount of bang for your buck. It may not succeed on every level. But if you have a matinee feature you're trying to catch, and it's one of the options, you could do a lot worse. Especially if you can catch it at discounted prices. A lot of the appeal that still exists for this movie is going to fall flat on video except for those with the grandest of home theater setups. So if you can swing it, catch it while you still can on the big screen. You'll get the most out of this you can.

Who says Yankee fans are all bad?

Via Jeanne at Body & Soul, this small piece about last night's Yankees-Red Sox tilt that ran in the NY Times (registration required). The VP dropped in for a visit.

During the singing of "God Bless America" in the seventh inning, an image of (Dick) Cheney was shown on the scoreboard. It was greeted with booing, so the Yankees quickly removed the image.

God bless my fellow Yankee fans. At least this day. All you haters can curse us the rest of the time :-)

Hankblog

Tuesday, July 20, 2004

Monday, July 12, 2004

Thursday, July 01, 2004

About Me

Previous Posts

Archives

Blogroll