Mambo Taxi

Last weekend, I got to see Hugo, the new Scorsese movie, and I wanted to report that it is just as good as the reviews say. The basic story is simple enough: around 1930, an orphaned boy lives in a Paris train station, risks capture by the station-master, makes a friend, and tries to find a message he believes was left by his deceased father. Woven in is the history of moving pictures by magician/inventor Georges Méliès, who built the first film studio in the world and produced hundreds of films (including the 1902 "A Trip to the Moon").

It is a fairy tale, with a light magic-realistic touch, balanced by an amazing amount of "this really happened" (which you'll have to go learn yourself; it isn't brought up in the movie). Or, ask me about it if you don't mind spoilers.

The plot has some nuance, which I appreciated, though the acting could have used a lighter touch- everyone was capable in their roles, but nearly all of the characters felt cartoonish at times.

The train station, clock works, movie studio (walled in glass to let in light- apparently historically accurate) and Paris street scenes are all gorgeous. Visually, I loved it. This is the first movie I've seen where the 3d truly enhances the art, rather than feeling to me like a gimmick. (I saw and liked Avatar, and I won't argue with somebody who felt this way about Avatar- but I'm a "gears, steam, and clockwork" kind of guy, rather than "blue alien jungle". TMI? [hush!])

What else to say? I don't think it passes the Bechdel Movie Test- there are various scenes of women talking to each other about men. I wonder if this was different in the original novel or a Scorsese touch. Oh- perhaps I'm wrong- a women talks to a girl (and boy, but mostly the girl) about how wonderful it had been to be an actress; that might count.

Anyhow, I am glad I saw this in the theatre.

We heard The Shaw Festival was putting on The Women this year, so we re-rented the film last week. (The George Cukor/Clare Boothe Luce version, not the 2008 mess, of which no more will be said).

The story is of Mary Haines, a New York socialite in the late '30s, confident in her marriage, progressive about women's rights, and it turns out, a pretty awful judge of character. Her friends mostly are conniving busybodies, her husband's been cheating on her for months, and she has nobody to turn to but her mother, who tells her to sweep the affair under the rug. She instead takes her "friends'" advice, confront the Other Woman (played by Joan Crawford) and her husband. She ends up on a train to Reno, the only place to get a 6-week divorce, and are soon followed there by her friends, who have highs and lows of their own. Back in New York, two years later, the plot culminates in a big party with a cut-throat battle royale, and formerly naive Mary comes out wiser, and apparently the only one not spattered with mud.

On the one hand, it's a morality play, asking serious questions about whether women spend all their time cutting each other down, and whether modern society was all that modern after all. On the other hand it's a campy bitch-fest with some of the best one-liners of any film I've seen.

So, yes. Highly recommended. (We are possibly having a re-play party in early October; remind me if you're interested and I haven't mentioned it)...

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On Sunday, we saw the Shaw Festival version. On the balance, it was well done, but it lacked the chemistry in the (all-star) movie. The sets were amazing (and the stage-pieces swooped around the stage, in and out of the light, in a very satisfying way) but I can conclude that I liked the movie better.

The accents were jarringly off- they occasionally managed "NYC flapper" but often the accents seemed out of place, which was disappointing.

One of the aspects that I thought I didn't like about the film actually turned out to be lacking in the stage-show: Mary's relationship with her pre-teen daughter, who is played in the film as fairly melodramatic or even mawkish. In the stage-show, she stands more on her own, isn't very hammy at all, but also doesn't have the intense connection with her mother that was so striking in the film, especially after Mary goes through with the divorce. Before seeing the stage-show, I would have said she over-played the character; afterward, I think she was an essential partner for the main character.

Both versions do a good job with Mary and her own mother, who is "pleased that she's finally needed again" to help Mary figure out how to cope. There are slight differences in pacing between the two, and the ending of the stage show is ambiguous, but both were fine in those respects.

The stage version was stylish, and the lines still had as much zing, but the actresses didn't have the stage-presence of the movie-stars, sadly enough. So this is one of the rare occasions when I was happier with the film than with the stage-show.

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melted_snowball rented a batch of Pre-Hayes Code movies, (specfically: Forbidden Hollywood Volume 2). We watched one of the other Norma Shearer films, "A Free Soul". It had many "WTF?" moments, and it wasn't a "greatest of all time" film by any stretch, but it was fun, and one of the better early talkie movies I've seen. Apparently it was fairly scandalous for its time; showing an unmarried woman spending nights with her lover; part of the loose morals that the Hayes Code successfully censored for the following decades.

Thursday night, d. and I went to see Almodóvar’s latest. I hadn't read many reviews, and none of the ones I read give away the... middle, but I think it's worth the reveal.

If you liked Women on the Verge, you should see this. There is a film-in-a-film which has a delightfully wrong homage - (there's a bed on fire; and barbiturates in the gazpacho; and... you just can't do that. Can you?) or as The New York Times review puts it:

"the director’s pastiche of his early, funny work becomes, in the context of this somber new film, a poignant reflection on aging and loss. To catch a glimpse of “Women” in the mirror of “Embraces” is to see how cinematic images can be both tangible and ghostly."

Much of the film is in flashback to 1992-1994, a full 14 years before the film's "present". [A self-indulgent side-note: I'm struck by how much happens in that 14 years- and it's a bit spooky to overlay the plot over top of my life, to see elements I would just consider "modern" in the 1994 shots and realize no, they were modern 14 years ago. Getting old here, folks.]

Things start with bright and cheerful casual relationships, a writer who changed his name and lost his eyesight, a close assistant and her son; in flashback, Almodóvar tells the back story of the principals, unspooling what might be a murder mystery. It can't be film noir if it's shot in bright primary colors, can it? But noirish it is; and fairly grim for a portion. Until Almodóvar upsets the apple-cart with the first glimpse of Women on the Verge. (In the theatre, dan and I were the only people who were laughing out loud. Which felt pretty damn weird!)

I will be thinking about this film for a while. It digests slowly. There are themes of piecing together ones past; re-editing a badly told story into something beautiful; recovering destroyed photographs from their shreds; reclaiming one's whole identity from pieces that had been buried and considered dead. An Almodóvar trope: self-reinvention and becoming more true to oneself.

Loss. Aging.

And beautiful images of Spain, which I haven't visited, and really would like to.

Slumdog Millionaire came highly recommended from all over, and I will echo that back.

I could swear that I read exactly this story in a William Gibson short story, though; we got your mashup Bollywood/ska/rap soundtrack, characters starting from the very bottom, hyper-on-on-on pop culture, computer-networks and cellphones playing a central role, cities growing up out of the slums, violence, the odd implausible coincidence, and heavy reliance on inter-connected flashbacks. Did I miss anything critical?

I did like it; I was merely puzzling over whose style it reminded me of. Gibson's it.

Friday night we saw the movie Diabolique, which was one of Hitchcock's style-influences. It was an OK (but merely OK) suspense/horror story.

Which I bring up now because it ended with a spoiler warning. Something like, "Don't be diabolical! Keep the surprise ending from your friends who haven't seen it yet!" ...And fifty years later, I won't say more about the surprise, out of respect for that.

This week, I've also seen a two-part Doctor Who episode from the new Series 4, which involves the Doctor meeting another time-traveller- she knows him very well; he's just meeting her for the first time. The show handled the interpersonal dynamics quite well. She'd tell him something impossible, he'd ask her incredulous questions, and she said, "Sorry, spoiler." The look on his face...

I like the dance in this show, between the Doctor being omniscient yet not- compared to men, he's like a god; but his omniscience usually turns out to be experience over his amazingly long lifespan, being very clever, and having good instincts for how things ought to turn out.

And this makes a story. True omniscience and omnipotence only make good stories in short doses (or maybe as acquired tastes).

(Of course in Doctor Who, he also treads the line on omnipotence; I know some people find it overly deus ex machina, but there seem to be a lot of things in science fiction that I'm willing to suspend disbelief for when it otherwise feels like a good story...)

I was recently thinking about these: would I be happier to know how something will turn out, with 100% certainty? How about probabilities? It seems to me that's the difference between a spoiler and a coming-attraction; it's all in the mystery.

And if I may get a bit theological in my journal; if there's a word for what God means to me, it might just be that: mystery.

So: bring on all the predictions through any human filter you like. But if we get to the time where we've got scientific instruments that can map a person's life with 100% certainty, or if I were to suddenly discover I believe in a God who doesn't respect free will... I expect then I'll have problems.