NYFF: "Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives"

*slight spoilers ahead but this is not a "plot" film.*

Uncle Boonmee can recall his past lives. My memory is hardly as uncanny. Recalling or describing Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives, the Cannes Palme D'Or winner and Thailand's Oscar submission, even a few days after the screening is mysteriously challenging. Even your notes won't help you.

This is not to say that the movie isn't memorable, rather that its most memorable images and stories refuse direct interpretation or cloud the edges of your vision, making it as hazy as the lovely cinematography. You can recall the skeletal story these images drift towards like moths and you can try to get to know the opaque characters that see them with you but these efforts have a low return on investment. What's important is the seeing.

What's wrong with my eyes? They are open but I can't see a thing.

Most synopses of the movie will only embellish on the film's title. And while Uncle Boonmee does reflect on past lives, he only does so directly in the pre-title sequence as we follow him in ox form through an attempted escape from his farmer master, who will eventually rope him back in. The bulk of the film is not a recollection -- at least not from Boonmee himself, but a slow march towards his death while he meditates on life and the film meditates on animal and human relations. His nephew and sister in law, who objects to his immigrant nurse, visit him. So too does his dead wife and another ghostly visitor on the same night, in a bravura early sequence that as incongruously relaxed as it is eery and startling.

The film peaks well before its wrap with the story of a scarred princess and a lustful talking catfish and then we begin the march towards Boonmee's death, perhaps the most literal moment in the movie. And then curiously, the movie continues on once he's gone. If it loses much of its potency after Boonmee has departed, there are still a few fascinating images to scratch your head over when he's gone.

The bifurcated structure that Weerathesakul has employed in the past is less prevalent this time.  Uncle Boonmee plays out not so much like two mysteriously reflective halves (see the haunting Tropical Malady which I find less accessible but actually stronger), but rather like a series of short films that all belong to the same continuous chronological movie, give or take that gifted horny catfish.

Surely a google search, press notes, academic analysis or listening to the celebrated director Apichatpong "Joe" Weerathesakul speak (as I did after the screening) would and can provide direct meaning to indirect cinema. But what's important is the seeing.

Vision is frequently mentioned and referenced in Uncle Boonmee, whether it's mechanical -- as in a preoccupation with photography which peaks in a late film sequence composed of still images -- or organic. But like the ghost monkey with glowing red eyes (the film's signature image) says to Uncle Boonmee early in the film, "I can't see well in the bright light." It's the one exchange in the film that I wholly related to and understood. I'm not sure I need or want to understand, to attach specific meaning to these confounding stories and images. I only want to see them. Weerasethakul's movie is best experienced in the dark, with the images as spiritual guides. They fall around you like mosquito netting as you walk slowly through the Thai jungle. B+/B

Black Mamba vs. Sidewinder via California Mountain Snake

"I'm sorry. That was rude of me wasn't it?"

[Great Moments in Screen Bitchery #580, Daryl Hannah in Kill Bill, Vol. 2]

Ya think?

It's even ruder if Budd doesn't like being read to. That's a common pet peeve, you know. In those last agonizing minutes of life he has left, she'll do just that.

P.S. Quentin Tarantino sure can write/direct the hell out of a scene, can't he?

P.P.S. Useless Trivia!
Q: What is Nathaniel's absolute favorite thing about Kill Bill Vol 1 and Kill Bill Vol 2?
A: How similar Elle Driver ("California Mountain Snake") and The Bride ("Black Mamba") actually are, right down to their love of deadly handwritten notepads. (One never thinks of notepads as violent. teehee) Though it should be noted that Elle has more meticulous handwriting.

"i know that we are young and i know that you may link me..."

Stale Popcorn Glenn is a crazy person. Glenn is a crazy person that I love. He's decided to review the Scream trilogy. Every scene of it. Starting with Drew Barrymore's fateful phone call of course. You do know that Michelle Pfeiffer loves this performance don't you? Well she does. So does everyone, right?
Hollywood News Scott Feinberg believes the Academy should have two Best Picture voting rounds
/Film Daniel Radcliffe to star in remake of All Quiet on the Western Front. Uh, good luck measuring up, people. Why?
Coming Soon Matt Damon making a zookeeper movie. I always thought someone should make a cable series about a zoo. One of the many unexplored work places of the world.
Cinema Styles "I Hate All of You" a post for those caught daily in the movie buff blog loop

In Contention sings Mark Ruffalo's praises for The Kids Are All Right. I can't wait for all of you to see it. He's marvelous in the movie.
My New Plaid Pants JA reviews Jonah Hex with its Fox waist, Brolin scars, and three thousand Fassbender teeth.
Cinematical cries uncle about Hollywood's 1984 obsession and offers up a few more remake options. Micki & Maude anyone?
A Socialite's Life Cyndi Lauper is getting her own reality series.
Birth of a Notion look back at the opening sequence of Jaws.
Pixar Blog You can now buy the wonderful new short Day & Night at iTunes

Broadway.com informs that NY theater comic star Jackie Hoffman who you may have seen in the Broadway runs of Hairspray or Xanadu (she's currently playing "Grandma" in The Addams Family) is "OLD LADY GAGA"...lol

Port of Call: Zoo Orleans

While I'm on the Bolt bus from Boston to NYC -- I whale watched this weekend and loved it -- I am watching Bad Lieutenant Port of Call: New Orleans. Why? Because you demanded I write something about it. I hope y'all don't make me regret this.

*Serpentus Coluber caspius

The movie begins with a shot of a snake slithering through Hurrican Katrina water as the credits pile up with familiar batshit crazy types: Werner Herzog, Nicolas Cage, Val Kilmer. I am not at all afraid of snakes and like all phobias, if you don't have it you think it's strange that other people do. What's scary about snakes? They're beautiful and the way they move is intoxicating.

The snake is moving through a flooding prison and a prisoner named Chavez, seeing the snake, says "oh shit". It's the first line of dialogue in the movie. The first and last series has made me hyper aware of how movies begin and "oh shit" doesn't give me much hope for anything beautifully scripted. But it's Herzog so at least it'll be watchable.

I didn't see the original Bad Lieutenant (1992). The only thing I remember hearing about that movie when it came out was that it was 'sick' and that Harvey Keitel went full frontal. There was an uproar because a) you're not supposed to see penis in movies and b) if you do it's supposed to be porn star size. At least that's the rule according to the internet which always collectively freaks out when confronted with anything approximating reality.

I have no phobia about snakes or trouser snakes but I sure as hell don't want to see Nicolas Cage's!!! I bring this up because in this sequence he talks about his $55 underwear and then he takes off his jacket off. For a second I was very afraid. In the end he just jumped into the 'oh shit'ty water with his clothes on to rescue Chavez.

Six months later Cage is investigating a crime and snorting...vicodin? That rescue apparently messed up his back forever. At least that's what I think he's snorting. I didn't even know it was possible to snort prescription medication but I recently watched the first season of Nurse Jackie (so good) and you learn a lot about how creative people get with their addictions, prescribed and otherwise.


Cage's bad lieutenant is investigating an execution style massacre of an entire family in New Orleans. It's drug related as is virtually everything in the movie. In a little dead boy's room he reads a sad poem about a fish, which sits in a glass. I'm currently undecided about the movie but the cinematography (by Peter Zeitlinger) is pretty great.

During a precinct meeting about this bloody crime there's a fun pan left through assembled cops that ends on Nicolas Cage, his shoulders are asymmetrical with pain and his face wears an odd hung expression. He has the most unlikely of movie star faces. If a woman were as ugly as Nicolas Cage she would only get to be a character actress. She would never in a million years get any leading roles and certainly wouldn't earn millions while phoning it in in numerous action pictures.

Insectum Aphidoidea

Not that he's phoning it in in this movie.

I suppose you could say that Nicolas Cage is a good actor but i think you'd have to define good acting first. At any rate he's unarguably an inventive actor. But invention and "good" are not always simpatico. You should also be consistent and you should maybe work towards cohesive characterizations and end goals. In short, there should be a method to your madness... especially when there's actual madness. Otherwise it'll all tip over into self-parody or self-aggrandizement or self-love or all three. I sometimes think that Nicolas Cage is, as an actor, as compulsive a masturbator as his Adaptation altar-ego. Take his Big Daddy role in Kick-Ass for another example. Yes, it's funny that he's mocking Adam West's Batman cadences but to what end?

The bad lieutenant is sometimes working on his murder case but just as often he's preying on club goers outside of a bar named Gator's Retreat to score more dope. Somewhere in the world right at this very moment, a grad student has just proposed a dissertation on animal imagery in Bad Lieutenant ... or possibly the films of Werner Herzog. Herzog's got a complete menagerie inside that filmography: monkeys, iguanas, grizzlies... you name it.

Anyway the lieutenant just forced a guy some poor sap to give up his drugs and then made the guy watch as he banged his girlfriend. Pleasant. While doing this naughty deed, Cage emits these sounds that are meant to function as sexual grunting but sound closer to guffawed barking. He's such a weirdo (character and actor). There are many shots of animals in this movie, but there's many more of Nicolas Cage behaving like a beast. Now I am beginning to remember vague implied descriptions of perversity from the first film and also why I never saw it. I understand that the two Bad Lieutenants are not especially related as films, outside of their shared perversity?

Because of my policy about not showing you photos of Nicolas Cage -- a policy I just invented during this post -- I've decided to only share animal photos during this train of review-thought thing. So far we've seen gator signs, snakes, teddy bears, zebra print fabric... and now an actual alligator, or two of them. One, twitching and dying, appears to have caused a car accident and is belly up on the ground. The other functions like an exclamation point, question mark or punchline to the scene. He's been watching his buddy dying. At first I thought he seem sad but later I decided malevolent. Maybe he chased his friend into the traffic... and was using him as bait for human meat? It must be the framing of his massive jaw.

Alligatoridea Mississippiensis

As the gator wanders away from the scene of the accident, we get the 100th or so shot of Cage chasing his particular dragons: crack, vicodin, heroine. You name it. And then he goes on a date with Fairuza Balk. He's still working angles on how to get more drugs and saying amusingly truthful things while doing so.

Whatever I take is prescription. Except for the heroin.

Oh, yes, I said Fairuza Balk. Plus Kilmer and Michael Shannon? They're all swirling around Cage in this film. I think Herzog must miss Klaus Kinski like crazy. Perhaps he's experimenting like Dr. Frankenstein, assembling the parts or essence of as many unstable, livewire or "off" screen personas as he can find by shoving them all into the same movie and squeezing.

Canis lupus familiaris

The further along the movie goes -- I'm done with it now. T'was too hard to write and watch and bus at the same time -- the more clearly we see the lieutenant's insanity. The animal motif keeps building, too. After the snake, fish, and gators we get an adorable white dog that keeps trading owner hands, prompting Cage to utter what might be my favorite of his line readings in the movie.

I got a friend. She just loves animals. All of 'em. Dogs, too.

As if dogs were the least lovable of animals. Heh.

The dog doesn't really own his scene. He's too subservient. The reptiles are another story altogether. Not to be outdone by the gators, iguanas show up rather memorably and twice over. Plus more fish and stray sightings like a bull fight on the television. The plot is a pileup as Cage, almost continually high, fucks up his investigation (he loses the only witness) and gets deeper and deeper into drugs and debts and danger as he juggles police duties, drug fixes, criminal activities, and relationship infighting with his family and prostitute girlfriend (Eva Mendes, pretty solid throughout).

For all of that, I think the movie is a comedy. The story turns give the impression that the whole thing is an unreliable farce or satire or... possibly political satire? This does take place after Hurricane Katrina and the white guy fuck-up keeps being rewarded for his insanity. Maybe that's a stretch. I'm tired. I'm on a bus! In addition to the narrative being jokey or at least absurdist, the hallucinatory bits, like a double iguana sighting, are so vividly performed and directed. The famous iguana sequence is as good as I'd heard but not for the reason I was expecting. I had thought that the scene would be a hallucination from the bad lieutenant's perspective as iguanas distract him from the investigation. Instead Herzog begins and ends the scenes with the iguanas rather than the cops and its shot from their side of the room. It's the cops not the iguanas that are the intrusion.

Iguana Iguana

It's a brilliant choice, which forces the surreal joke that maybe the animals are imagining the movie rather than being drug fueled hallucinations themselves. What do iguana dream of anyway? Like the alligator watching the car accident, one has to wonder what these reptiles are up to. Whatever their master plan, they're ready for their close-up. Mr. Herzog will give it to them.

The movie will make room for a few more animal references and sightings. The most vivid is the story of man becoming an animal. After smoking crack Cage tells a local drug dealer about a football player who sprouted antlers... "like a gazelle! like an elk!" peppering this tall tale with Jack Nicholson laughter. But the iguanas have already claimed the movie for their own and will steal this very scene from both the human gazelle and Cage himself.

The investigation plot -- the least interesting but constant part of the movie -- wraps up and the movie loses me. Why did Herzog and screenwriter William M Finkelstein end this drug fueled comedy with a serious rehab coda? Still, all is not well in New Orleans even after justice has been served. The bad lieutenant is still bad. All that has changed is that he is now aware of his depravity. The movie ends by reuniting the lieutenant with the prisoner he rescued from the hurricane.

Bad Lieutenant: Do fish dream?

...he asks ex con Chavez in a wonderful non-sequitor after a rehab discussion.

Carcharhinus amblyrhynchos et. all

I hoped that the movie would end right there in an imagined animal kingdom. Instead there's one more line. We jump to a shot of Terrence and Chavez visiting an aquarium, the water that first threatened them two hours back is now safely behind glass. Unfortunately Herzog and screenwriter William M Finkelstein can't resist one last full circle joke about Cage's underpants as the movie's last line. Did they have to?

Bad Lieutenant: You know Chavez, I still hate that I ruined my underwear for you.

*
*all species names herein are potentially innacurate. I wasn't going for research or realism.

FB Awards: Editing, Animation, Visual Effects

I know I should be providing Golden Globe Predictions and updating my Oscar pages. Soon... soon... but for now more of my choices for best of the year at the 10th annual FB Awards. You can read this as my Oscar ballot if you must (though I don't do 5 nominees for animated feature -- there's too few of them released for that... and I almost decided to do 5 for visual effects because, honestly, SO many movies use visual effects. Why is that category so small every year?)


While we're on the subject of editing and visual effects, I don't think I can express to you how much I love the banshee taming sequence in Avatar's 'Hallelujah Mountains'. I love it so much that I go all blank and slack-jawed and filled with only wonder and that's not just when I'm watching it but whenever I've thought about it afterwards. Suddenly I wish I had a braid that could conquer wild animals, mythological or otherwise. I'd settle for being able to ride your every day horse hear on Earth. I've only tried it once and it scared the hell out of me. Maybe I should try hang gliding instead? You can pretend you're riding a dragon... or, er, hanging from one.

It's not just Avatar. There's more love expressed for (500) Days of Summer, Inglourious Basterds and District 9, too, among others.

Monologue: "Meerkats. Do you know what they are?"

Monday Monologues is back

Yesterday, I went to the Prospect Park Zoo and I would still be traumatized by the one armed kangaroo (the horror. the horror) had the meerkats not redeemed my visit with their indefatigable cuteness.


Check out the little guy to your right there. He's just hangin', waiting for someone to bring him a cold beer. The guy on the left was more of a people person (er...) and kept watching the crowd watching him. The third member of this meager meerkat exhibit -- out of frame -- was darting back and forth like he had had 18 cups of coffee with his yummy box of insects.

While I watched them "Harmour Love" played in my head (joy!) and I forgot all about how dull Amy Adams was in Julie & Julia and my heart nearly burst again for love of her in Junebug. Oh, that expert conjuring of Ashley, a day-dreaming impressionable small-town chatterbox, her thoughts always darting back and forth. She's a gabby people person living in a house full of silent types. By the time she meets her big city sister-in-law Madeleine (wonderfully played by the underemployed Embeth Davidtz) we understand that Ashley's learned not to even wait for answers to her rapid fire questions.

Are you wearing any makeup? because you could wear more if you wanted to.

You're so tall.

I'm fair. But I like to experiment with a lot of different looks.

Were you born in Chicago? I was born right here...lived here my whole life.

My favorite animal is the meerkat. Do you know what they are? They're so cute, Ohhh! They're --I've got this little charm bracelet with meerkats on it.

Did you have lots of boyfriends? I bet you did.

Did you ever try out for cheerleading or anything? I tried out but I didn't make it.

When an answer does come, her sister-in-law pulling one question from the tumbling batch of them, it looks like Ashley might finally be speechless.

Madeleine: I was born in Japan.

[pause]

Ashley: You were not.

*

The Assassination of Animal Rights by the Coward Jesse James.

Hello, Jose from "Movies Kick Ass" here. Have you ever wondered when animal treatment began being monitored in the film industry? Well, neither had I until the other day when I was browsing in YouTube looking for cinema urban legends.

I obviously started with the infamous Munchkin suicide from The Wizard of Oz and was amazed by how many people taped themselves examining the events a la Sherlock Holmes. Fortunately the whole thing is just a myth; it was proved that it's a bird and not a person. But this led me to feel sorry for the poor bird who was kept as an ornament inside a studio while they shot the movie (if studio bosses were mean to Judy Garland, I shudder thinking how they treated stock actors, extras and animals).

My search didn't lead me too far away from Emerald City because it was in 1939 when the American Humane Association began monitoring how animals were treated after a controversial
sequence in Jesse James where a horse was killed after falling off a cliff.

The horses were blindfolded (made me wonder about the poor horse in Gone With the Wind's burning of Atlanta) and when one passed away he was simply replaced by a new one (sums up the early film era huh?), incredibly even more animals died in the making of this movie and going back in history there's a large record of inhuman treatment onscreen (Thomas Edison was notorious for this).

Fortunately things have changed since (except in Lars von Trier land but that's another story...) and now all movies featuring animals have an AHA representative to make sure they stick to the rules. I guess 1939 was more significant in film history than just for the quality of the movies, but for the changes being made inside the industry.

Oh and no animals were harmed in the making of this blog post.

"LINKTUMSEPRA!"

Vanity Fair that lengthy piece on Heath Ledger is now online in case you haven't read it

The Big Picture offers a pointed critique of the same

Cinema Blend I Love You Philip Morris trailer. Does this explain the distribution problems?
PopWatch Another photo of Jake Gyllenhaal from Prince of Persia: Sands of Time. For the sake of Gyllenhaalics everywhe

re, I hope this movie opens big. His taste seems to run towards smaller dramas and a franchise on the side would help bolster those opportunities

Coming Soon a couple of set and prop pics from Clash of the Titans and The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader

Nick's Flick Picks has been doing a series on 00s films that need a second look. Nick & Tim discuss Spike Lee's controversial Bamboozled
/Film a third lawsuit for The Lord of the Rings. Will The Hobbit actually happen? Speaking of... worst idea ever: Harry Potter as Bilbo Baggins. I'm convinced that that particular casting rumor is only breathless fangasm and entirely removed from reality. Peter Jackson isn't dumb.
Antagony & Ecstasy offers up a great review/defense of (500) Days of Summer

One thing I've never mentioned here: I absolutely love the snide snail's

pace of Alan Rickman's line readings. He's a joy.

Potter Everywhere

i09 "Harry Potter and the Half-Hearted Ending"

Towleroad a few words from me... though you've heard my take on the vodcast
YouTube Harry/Voldemort rap battle. Kinda funny in concept. Less so in execution. I mean, a full 90 seconds before the rapping actually start? Er...

MTV Draco Malfoy (Tom Felton) has his eyes on being a musician?
The franchise's new hunk Cormac McLaggen? He's played by Freddie Stroma who already has breathless fangirls and gayboys going weak at the knee which is all well and good since Hermione wasn't the slightest bit interested. For those who love beefcake, these underwear ads featuring the actor have been making the rounds (NSFW). Hey, a man's gotta make a living before that role in a billion dollar franchise lands in his lap.

Lazy Eye Theater shares a personal response to the growing Harry Potter franchise but his defense of the movie reads to me like an ode to the strengths of television series, not cinema. Since the majority of moviegoers seem to only care about franchises, does this mean they'd rather be watching TV but just like the bigger screens?
Bad Manors Squirrel Diner Harry Potter hovers, Have you ever seen this live stream? It's so silly. Each day new objects for squirrels to interact with as they eat. (Today it's hula girls).

Halfway House: Donkey

When a movie doesn't work for my first and last series -- sometimes the movie star's mug will be the first thing you see or the last (or both) -- I'm gonna use it elsewhere when it's amusing. SPINOFF SERIES ALERT!

Screenshots from halfway through the movie in question. We're about sixty-six minutes in for this one.

Look, he's my donkey!

This made me guffaw when I jumped to the halfway point of the DVD. See, Jesus cured this little crippled boy but he seems more excited about that ass than his newly working legs. Regardless, Richard Burton is so impressed you can totally tell he's going to convert to Christianity even though it will cost him his life. At the end of The Robe [*SPOILER*] Burton will walk up into heaven while a chorus sings "Hallelujah".

Subtle!

Richard Burton and Jean Simmons ascending

The Horse Whisperer

[src]

Now Playing: Gay Zombies, Role Models and Zoo Animals

Just opened, from least to most screens... roughly. Links go to trailers

JCVD in which the Muscles From Brussels plays himself all washed up in some sort of pseudo-doc like comedy biopic? Very strange... but it might make an interesting warm up to The Wrestler, in a way, might it not? But the real question is 'can Van Damme still do the splits while fighting in his undies?' If so: sold.
Otto; or Up with Dead People in which Bruce LaBruce (of must see fringe cinema like The Raspberry Reich) tries to scare up the horror crowd and then torture them with undead gay sex
Pray the Devil Back to Hell a in which women struggle to bring peace to civil war plagued Liberia (documentary)
The World Unseen in which two women fall in love in South Africa during the early days of Apartheid

Repo: The Genetic Opera in which stunt-casted names (Giles from Buffy, a certain hotel heiress, Andrew Lloyd Webber's ex, rock stars, etc...) rock their way towards intended cult movie glory in this busy bloody story of organ theft terror. Unfortunately clips suggest a major ear sore. At least our Giles can sing...
The Boy in Striped Pajamas in which two young boys separated by the barbed wire of a concentration camp fence, forge a friendship. With Vera Farmiga and David Thewlis
House in which two stranded couples are terrorized in a satanic motel
Soul Men in which Samuel L Jackson and Bernie Mac (RIP) do road trip comedy on their way to the Apollo Theater for a reunion concert

Role Models in which adorably dim Seann William Scott and just plain adorable Paul Rudd are forced into Big Brother type community service. Directed by David Wain (Wet Hot American Summer) so it might actually be hilarious
Madagascar 2: Escape 2 Africa in which the giraffe, hippo, zebra and lion are reunited for another madcap adventure that one marvels is not a DVD knockoff sequel but an actual movie playing on (gulp) 4,056 screens

Expanding: Jonathan Demme's vibrant Rachel Getting Married added over 200 screens so it should be easier for some of you to catch my latest cinematic obsession. Happy-Go-Lucky and Synechdoche New York both moved into extra markets as well. Warning on the latter two: If intensely cheerful souls OR pathetic miserabilists enrage/annoy you these aren't the movies for you as both films definitely follow the lead of their main character's worldview. But both have ardent fans, too. More on both later I hope.

EQQQQQQQ ! EQQQ !

So I went to Equus on Broadway. Let me back up a bit...

I generally disapprove of stunt casting and I'd been frustrated that people were so gung ho about seeing Potter's wand. It's all anybody talks about when talking about this classic which would lead one to believe that no one had ever seen a penis before. Or not seen one since the 70s. Sad for them.

Equus, for those of you who weren't alive in the 70s when the play caused a ruckus, is the story of a boy who commits an unthinkable atrocity in a stable and is sent to a psychiatric ward for treatment. It's a weighty tale with fascinating ideas thrown around about psychological imprinting, fetishistic sexuality, religion, reparative therapy and adolescent development. Yet all you ever hear about is the dick. Now, I'm totally for onstage / onscreen nudity so I don't wanna sound like a prude but all I could think was this: if people are expecting Daniel Radcliffe's penis to be as meaty as the play they're going to be disappointed. Even if he's hung like a, well...


I was going to be all annoyingly smug and skip the production until they brought in a real stage actor to replace Daniel Radcliffe. But my best friend wanted to see it for his birthday so off we went.

Mea culpa. Radcliffe ain't half bad. He's not even a third bad. It's not quite an award worth stage performance but he holds his own and he's definitely been growing as an actor with so much on the job training. At the very least he's ingeniously cast (yes, Virginia, stunt casting can work) and his physicality, speech, everything... completely sells that precarious and awkward space inbetween boy and man. Which is exactly where the part of Alan Strang, the young man who loves horses to death, needs to live. Richard Griffiths (who you'll know from the film and stage version of History Boys or as Uncle Dursley in the Harry Potter franchise) handles the constantly monologuing psychiatrist role like the consummate stage professional he is (Richard Burton and Peter Firth were both Oscar nominated for the psychiatrist and boy roles in the film version although one of them was marked "supporting", natch).

What's more the production is staged beautifully, eery horse masks top smart costumes and the lighting design is TONY worthy. The supporting cast is good, too. The gorgeous Lorenzo Pisoni plays two key roles and Radcliffe himself is amusingly enamored and not just onstage. Kate Mulgrew is terrific in the small but tricky role of Hester, the psychiatrist's confidante. The only weak spot was the actress playing the mother. She didn't seem to understand the nuances of her role, missing key moments and overplaying others.

All in all it's a very good production of a great play. Equus belongs on stage, where it can stay more abstracted, so if you've only seen it on film, try and catch this production. And if you want a really unsettling double feature, chase it with last year's unnerving experimental doc Zoo on DVD. B+

Pfeiffer Forever

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Libby Gelman Waxner, the humor columnist for Premiere once remarked that Michelle Pfeiffer was 'what God had in mind for humanity before the blueprints got all dusty and smudged in the glove compartment'. I've come to cherish such old school hosannas to her cinematic grandeur like they were ancient scripture. Since we don't see much of her these days, her name spoken aloud often registers as a surprise. I hear the name with its own exclamation point. In last year's brilliant Werner Herzog documentary Grizzly Man there's a scene in which Timothy Treadwell, the film's "star" of sorts, talks about the bears and their mating rituals. He calls the most desired female 'the Michelle Pfeiffer of grizzly bears.' For such a supposedly ideal human specimen, this was not the first time Pfeiffer was mistaken for an animal.

The Ferocity of Pfeiffer

This not-quite-human effect started with Ladyhawke in 1985. Prior to that she ran the risk of being an interchangeable member of Hollywood's blonde beauty pack (infinite in number they are). There was the gum chomping Pink Lady of Grease 2 and the angry icy Elvira from Scarface but she was still just an actress... merely human. She was not yet "PFEIFFER" the star. It would take this mystical role in Ladyhawke as Isabeau, a woman who was also a bird, and simple aging to make her beauty truly alien. Once the softness of youth faded you imagine her onscreen lovers could cut themselves on the browline or cheekbone. The features slowly starting revealing their exquisite if angular architecture. She is rumored to have landed the Isabeau part after a comedic audition in which she imitated our feathered friends. But Catwoman aside, it's not usually a laughing matter when Pfeiffer lets her inner animal roar.

It wasn't even a laughing matter in Ladyhawke. The comedy was delivered by the headlining star Matthew Broderick (intentionally) and its anachronistic synthesized rock score (unintentionally). Pfeiffer's work was all serious "I am sorrow" suffering. She doesn't go for laughs, she goes for the jugular. Not just as an actor but as a budding star. They say that many great stars understand intuitively their rapport with the camera. She must have known then, when she turned to the camera in the moonlight that black hood framing her otherworldly beauty, what a gift the film and the character were to her. Beautiful. Tragic. Not entirely human. The studio would wisely lift the image for the movie's poster. Broderick was the marketable star but Pfeiffer as a legendary face was the great takeaway of the film.

The Isabeau performance isn't avian in shape the way her later correlative woman/animal work was in Batman Returns, when she gave in completely to the stylization. But a nonhuman or animalistic detail finds its way into many performances. Is it the way her tongue sometimes lifts tantalizingly up, too visible in her mouth --not a cheap come hither, lip-licking starlet movement but just something her mouth does, opening with anticipation. Perhaps she's waiting to be fed? But mostly I see the animal in her eyes. Watch any given film and you'll see it. They move too quickly surveying danger or registering movement or, more distinctly, they refuse to move at all. It's in those killer shots where she holds her gaze a beat or two too long on a co-star that you begin to wonder. What is the person is to her? Friend? Lover? (gulp) Prey?

All of these fascinating alien or animal intensities are in full bloom in White Oleander (2002), which I consider among her very strongest work. In an excellent review in Salon, Stephanie Zacharek wrote:

"Ingrid, as Pfeiffer plays her, has both the look and composure of a self-possessed lizard: Her eyes, which we normally know to be a dazzling blue, are icy and cold here, and you could probably count the number of times she blinks during the whole movie."

I haven't counted Stephanie, but I trust that the number is very small. If Pfeiffer had been any less beautiful as a woman, her intensity as an actor would have scared audiences away long ago.

Bird. Deer. Reptile. Wolf. Cat

Comparing Pfeiffer to a reptile was not my idea but I was glad to hear someone else bear witness to her animal within. Back in Ladyhawke Rutger Hauer's man/wolf initally reads as the more imposing creature but it's Pfeiffer's woman/bird that gets scarier with the running time. See that unwaveringly ferocious contempt with which Isabeau locks her gaze on the bishop late in the film. One senses immediately that were this the bird and not the woman standing before him, he would already be missing his eyes.

From her breakthrough days as a cursed bird Pfeiffer's animal instints continue. You could claim the next incarnation as that startled frozen deer in Dangerous Liaisons but for this movie watcher, it's in the area of predator not prey where Pfeiffer comes alive. There's an extra kick to her work as Isabeau and Ingrid and Catwoman or any of her angry but more recognizably human characters that you don't get her in lighter or passive fare. It's her savagery peaking through. Maybe she played the wrong role in Liaisons. It's amazing when you stop to look over Pfeiffer's gallery of characters, that Merteuil and Valmont even made it to the final reel, let alone devoured her.

I get angry whenever watching Wolf that the film is tricked up with special effects to convey the lycanthrophe within. When that film's trailer first appeared in 1994 the marketing hook was all about winkily joking with the audience about the familiarity of Jack Nicholson as a beast, a tactic that also worked wonders back when the two stars first teamed for The Witches of Eastwick. In the trailer Pfeiffer is merely seen slumbering enticingly in a nightgown. I never bought that Sleeping Beauty routine for a second. I knew the film would contain more than one beast. And sure enough, there she was in the film haughty, hostile, bitter and even in the throes of passion, no schoolgirl pushover. At the end of that film after her character Laura has been bitten by a werewolf and her course is set, they throw yellow contacts on this goddesses baby blues. It's a redundant move. You've always been able to see the beast within.

It's for all of these reasons perhaps that Catwoman is so identifiable as a career peak. Never mind that that part was not originally hers (Annette Bening backed out when she became pregnant), it's a perfect fusion of actress and material and timing. She's fully in command of all of the tools in the actors arsenal, careful character modulation, comedic timing, physical and vocal control, ferocious nerve (try doing this without looking foolish. I dare you), and playful stylizations perfectly attuned to the director's sensibility. It's a great work of performance art. Everyone remembers those clever quips, her overt cat gestures (the licking. ohhhh the licking), and her hilarious throwaway "meow." I have one special favorite moment I find too delicious. Catwoman is having a conversation with the Penguin and she's circling a bird cage in his lair. Her laser focus hypnotically shifts from Penguin to the tiny bird and it's like there is no actress at all. Only this cat, this meal, this teasing game in her head.

She's a killer.



Pfans Make Me Hot
Your Blog-a-Thon Participants (Listed in Alpha Order)

As Little As Possible "...A Galaxy Pfar Pfar Away"
Auteur Lust "Cinema's Own Forbidden Fruit"
Being Boring "My Sexual Awakening (in Black Vinyl)"
Cinephilia "My (Sex) Life with Michelle Pfeiffer"
Coffee Coffee and More Coffee on Ladyhawke
Cutting Room "What Lies Within (Great Talent)"
film ick on What Lies Beneath
The Flick Filosopher on Catwoman's "gyno-power"
The Gilded Moose "BREAKING: Pfeiffer Pissed"
Girish on The Fabulous Baker Boys
Glitterati Gossip "Truly Timeless"
Mainly Movies "Susie Diamond is Forever"
Many Rantings of John on One Fine Day
ModFab "Pfeiffer's Fabulous Five"
Movies Madness "Pfor Ever and Always"
Musings of a Cigarette Smoking Man on Batman Returns
My New Plaid Pants "Mistress of the Dark"
Nicks Flick Picks on A Thousand Acres
Noel Vera on Batman Returns
nOvaslim "Haute Poosee"
O.P.A.L. on her fandom
Oh My Trill "My Life Without Michelle"
!! omg blog !! "Catscratch Fever"
Oscar and the City Two memories of Pfeiffer
Pfangirl "Diary of a Lapsed Pfan"
Popbytes "Pfeiffer is an Amazon Woman"
Pop on the Rocks "Pfeiffer of the Opera"
Queer Beacon on White Oleander
Queering the Apparatus "Ohhhhh Witchy Woman"
Sarcasm w/ Light Cream Sauce on Witches... & Tequila Sunrise
Scene Stealer Top Five Performances
six things "Six Degrees of Michelle Pfeiffer"
A Socialite's Life on Michelle's comeback
Stale Popcorn Michelle in costumed glory
Stinky Lulu on Grease 2
That Round-Headed Boy "Michelle Pfeiffer's Short Stuff"
The World of Ramification Hottie of the Week



If you're just joining us... check out the blog entire. It's not all Pfeiffer all the time. [This is not a perfect world -ed]. It's just all Pfeiffer this week (the great one's birthday is tomorrow, woohoo) and whenever the topic blissfully comes up

If you need regular heavy doses of Pfeiffer here are the best websites on the net: Official Pfeiffer Admiration Location (updated frequently) * Michelle Pfeiffer: The Face * Bond's Michelle Pfeiffer Page * Noelle's Michelle Pfeiffer Page (dormant but extensive) * Pfandom (this is my own. Not regularly updated as it was pre-blog) *

UPDATE: If you liked this blog-a-thon check out the two others the film experience has hosted since: Vampires (October 2006) and Action Heroines (June 2007)

tags: Michelle Pfeiffer, catwoman, movies, cinema, celebrities

March of the Penguin Lovers

So I go waddling off to this movie March of the Penguinstwo nights back with my favorite co-worker. I say 'waddling' because the nights events centered around penguins and, prior to the film, we ate scrumptious fattening cupcakes at Billy's Bakeryon 9th Avenue.

My friend and I both love penguins so naturally our response to the release was "we are there!" This might account for the movie's already sensational box office. At $16 million and counting it's one of the most successful docs ever. If everyone (literally) who loved penguins were to go see it I shudder to think how high the box office could go... it could share icy waters with Titanic, because, who doesn't love those cute tuxedoed critters?

[SPOILERS AHEAD] Surprisingly, for a movie about exceptionally cute birds who can't fly, it's also hard to watch at times. Penguins do die. One violent death felt uneccessary to show -exploitive even. Why show that? For When Animals Attack thrills? No thank you. And for every cute awkward floppy moment there's at least two ominous: "but it gets worse!" style doomsday narrative bombs for our favorite wild animal friends to fear. My co-worker cried basically the whole time. But for me the most difficult moment was a slow shot of one egg cracking and filling with ice. Deeply sad.

It's not that March of the Penguin doesn't revel in cuteness --it just doesn't have to work for that part. What it really wants to do is teach. The movie is educational, too... at least in that trivia-game "I did not know that" way. But I couldn't help but feel that the narrative was very narrowly focused --As if it did not want to overburden me in any way with thoughts extraneous to penguin marriage, childrearing and fidelity. Did Rick Santorum edit it? Kidding. (sort of) What I mean is that the movie just kept dropping issues as they came up if they did not relate to the procreative miracle. Were the filmmakers not interested in the penguins who didn't pair up or produce offspring? Or lost offspring halfway through but still seemed to be helping the team survive the winter? I cared about those marchers too. The movie doesn't.

After the movie in all its cool beauty (ice is really photogenic) was over I did feel a little bad for being hyper-critical. So I waddled away slightly embarrassed but happy to have basked in arctic cuteness for 80 minutes. B