logbook

18 oct '99
6 oct '99
28 sep '99
18 sep '99

18 oct '99

It's been remarked that Steven Soderbergh doesn't stick with just one style for his movies. With The Limey, he makes a Quentin Tarantino movie out of flashbacks and -forwards and overlapping voiceovers. Yet he's always had a way of delivering a slantwise ending, and the finale of this film recalls the end of sex, lies, and videotape. This film also gives a nod to the careers of principals Terence Stamp and Peter Fonda.

Even though Guinevere offers honest insights into the creative process, it strains for closure at the end. Stephen Rea's character Connie says, in effect, that you make something because life is a little less painful than if you don't. And we see that pain in the story's wrenching climax, when Harper (Sarah Polley) takes up her camera for the first time to document the wasted potential that is her lover Connie. Few young actors bring the necessary groundedness that is needed to portray Harper -- Polley is the happy exception. One quibble: Connie's character could have been a bit more down at heel and downright unattractive -- Rea is still young enough to be a looker.

Happy, Texas is a goofy comedy of assumed identity that mixes unequal parts of The Music Man, The Wild Bunch, and Some Like It Hot. I was initially annoyed by Steve Zahn's lamebrain Wayne, but came to appreciate the way thoughts struggle out of his mouth: he emits a comic, reverse blurt that makes you think he's about to swallow his tongue. I worried about Ally Walker's inconsistent hairstyle and Zahn's mustache, which disappears mid-picture for not much of a reason.

Three Kings is an entertaining muddle of anti-Gulf War sentiment, cynicism and irony, old-fashioned honor, and toy footballs filled with C4 explosives. It's the sort of story where no one proves to a hero, yet everyone comes out smelling good. For all of the forced crowd reactions, and for all of the Kodak moments toward the end of the film, there are some genuine, complex human reactions at work. A case in point is Nora Dunn's reporter character, who is reduced to tears by a flock of oil-soaked pelicans, collateral damage of the war; a moment later, she snaps off her emotion like a lamp, and goes back to chasing the story. (She's something like Holly Hunter's character in Broadcast News.) The actors are a surprisingly effective mix of veterans and rookies.

One of the rookies is Spike Jonze, who also has directed the most imaginative, inventive film I've seen this year, Being John Malkovich. This is a hysterically funny movie, and I'm inclined to see it again, to catch the lines I missed for the roaring laughter of the crowd. Of course, most of the reaction shots in this movie are funnier than most other flicks' one-liners.

The genius is in Charlie Kaufman's script, which establishes the Alice-in-Wonderland illogic of its world so strongly that one forgives the ultimately forthcoming Jack Armstrong-simple explanation of how one can slip into the consciousness of actor John Malkovich. Once we've accepted the idea of a filing service bureau situated between floors of a New York office building (five-foot ceilings and all), we'll accept almost anything.

Cameron Diaz, in a frizzy-haired wig and chunky sweaters, disappears inside the skin of her character, earth mother Lottie. John Cusack in his moments of extremity, can be positively simian: maybe he's inspired by the pet chimp that Lottie treats better than most children. And who'da thought Orson Bean had a good picture in him?

Which brings us to Breakfast of Champions, which nominally opened in the 94-seat hatbox of the Cineplex Odeon Inner Circle 2 and ran for a week. I have to conclude that award gamesmanship is at hand.

It's warranted in the case of this movie, a brilliant hallucination by Alan Rudolph that manges to pin down the slippery essence of Kurt Vonnegut's 1973 novel, a darkly comic and sometimes infuriatingly simplistic satire. The movie amplifies some aspects of the book and brings it forward into the 90's, and suppresses other aspects of the book rather thoroughly (like its jabs at racism). We have to conclude that the results pleased Vonnegut, who appears in the movie in a cameo; his illustrations from the book appear with the opening credits; and his deadpan disclaimer ("The expression 'Breakfast of Champions' is a registered trademark of General Mills, Inc...") ends the closing credits.

The philosophy evinced by Vonnegut's books is often naive, childlike. And the synopses of the stories written by his alter ego, hack science-fiction writer Kilgore Trout, usually read like ideas for stories that Vonnegut considered and abandoned -- they're one-note ideas that can't be filled out into complete narratives. But the book and the movie make for a great amusement-park ride while they last.

Principals Albert Finney (Kilgore Trout), Bruce Willis (auto dealership magnate Dwayne Hoover), and Nick Nolte (Harry LeSabre, his cross-dressing sales manager) are all over the top in this movie, acting their butts off, as a teacher of mine once said. Dwayne is the successful man who meets himself at every turn: he sees his image on television, reflected in full-length mirrors, in life-sized cardboard stand-ups. For his birthday, all his employees surprise him by wearing masks made of his face. His master gesture is a pasted-on salesman's grin; in Willis's craft it can show grinding physical pain, comedic incredulity, desperation, even madness. In the supporting cast, Ken Campbell is perfectly cast as the adenoidal eccentric Eliot Rosewater.

Director Alan Rudolph is in complete control of his design. A child's balloon veers into an establishing shot. Dwayne's wondering eye peers out from under a motel bedspread. Buck Henry's zillionaire Fred T. Barry first appears as a talking $1000 bill. Even the license plates of Midland City's cars have been anonymized by red and blue stripes.

Rudolph accomplishes some exposition by showing a television interview of Barry in Dwayne's motel room while Dwayne plays a scene with his secretary paramour, and this overlapping of stories captures the spirit of Vonnegut's crumbled narrative. Maybe the most inspired choice was the selection of lounge music favorite "Stranger in Paradise" for the movie's theme.

There's a lot of movie here to watch. It's not all that laugh-out-loud funny. It's more like watching the plane crash that constitutes 20th-century civilization.

6 oct '99

The Chemistry of Change, by Marlayne Meyer, directed by Sue Ott Rowlands, Round House Theatre, Silver Spring, Maryland

Sometimes it is the quietly-told story that is the most unsettling. Set in California in the 1950s, this is a play, dusted with comedy, about self-proclaimed matriarch Lee and her shiftless family. Carnival barker Smokey appears on the scene, and soon everyone is changing for the better: Shep marries his girlfriend; Farley gets a job; even tomboyish Corliss acknowledges her womanhood and starts wearing a dress (even if it's ugly and purple).

But Smokey runs a ride called the Hell Hole, wears a red and black smoking jacket, and has horns sprouting from his forehead! He's the devil, and each character virtually acknowledges him as such.

Mayer and director Rowlands leave the viewer to finish the story of Smokey: is he a devious tempter, or just a somewhat frightening catalyst for positive change? Lee holds some very liberal views for her time: she performs back-alley abortions and practices serial monogamy. In the end, she embraces Smokey, and this turn just makes the puzzle harder to solve.

A special note for Rowlands, who makes a virtue of the necessity of an often-used screen door.

King Lear, by William Shakespeare, directed by Michael Kahn, Shakespeare Theatre, Washington

This production starts off strong, with its pre-show music of ominous, shadowy rumbles (a popular sound design, these days). The time setting is a generalized blend of the twentieth century, with design elements from the Rust Belt and World War I soldiering. And in Lear's first scene with his daughters, a shock! Cordelia is played in American Sign Language by Monique Holt, with another actor interpreting her lines in voice. This conceit makes Cordelia's inability to speak her love for her father all the more eloquent. When Cordelia returns in the second half for the recognition scene, everything works toward a very touching moment.

But in between, there's not much else to favor. Gloucester is played for laughs, as much as possible. There's no desperation in the by-the-numbers storm scene. Scenes like the one outside Regan's castle could be trimmed. And the disguise that Edgar wears when he fights Edmund puts one in mind of an Mexican wrestling match.

Back on the plus side, Floyd King as the Fool has learned that iambic pentameter fits American nonsense songs very well, and I liked William Whitehead's Albany, who begins the play as a pretty-boy figurehead and matures into a battlefield leader.

The bones of a typical David Lynch movie poke out through the G-rated skin of his The Straight Story, about septuagenarian Alvin, who rides a lawn mower across Iowa to see his stroke-stricken brother one last time. There are the sounds -- the surprisingly threatening rumble of a grain elevator being loaded, the shrill roar of the mower as Alvin rides into an enclosed barn -- and the images -- a gargantuan ear of corn being towed behind a car, the eerie slow progress of the mower that just matches the pace of Lynch's patented dolly shots. But this is still a Disney picture.

It's possible to see Alvin as an existential hero, for whom the journey is more important than the goal. But the script undercuts this: Alvin bestows on each person he meets along the way a drop of trite wisdom about the strengths of family. With the exception of a scene that takes him back to a horrible moment from World War II, each encounter on the road is wrapped in a neat little package.

28 sep '99

Very strong, fearless work from everyone involved with the inspiring American Beauty. There are no weak links in the cast, no lame subplots. The picture does a more interesting job of using a mix of film and video to tell its story than does something like The Blair Witch Project: there is a very subtle moment when Ricky's video camera catches Jane's reflection in a mirror, and we see her heart begin to soften. I must single out the efforts of Allison Janney as Ricky's beleaguered mother. And the anecdote of the plastic bag, blown about in the alley, is unforgettable.

San Francisco Ballet, Opera House, Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Washington

Four very strong pieces from choreographer Jerome Robbins. "In the Night" (1970), set to Chopin nocturnes, uses three pas de deux to lightly suggest creatures of the night -- a pair of nightingales, perhaps cecropia moths. Characterized by complicated lifts, the piece reminds us that men can look good with graceful arms and women can look good in long skirts.

The programmatic "The Cage" (1951) uses the Stravinsky Concerto in D for String Orchestra, and soloist Lucia Lacarra is venomously flexible as a black widow spider trainee. I don't usually look forward to male solo pieces, but "A Suite of Dances," from 1994, is quite enjoyable. The dance integrates vernacular dance and everyday gesture in a way that makes the classical vocabulary feel natural and unforced.

Finally, 1983's "Glass Pieces," set to compositions by Phillip Glass, underscores the connotation of "body" in the term corps de ballet, for in this piece the corps is a single living organism, yet one composed of individuals. A good dance.

18 sep '99

"Pushing the Boundaries," The Washington Ballet, Eisenhower Theater, Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Washington

A cosmic convergence of mishaps, bad luck, and failed communications prevented me from seeing all of the Washington Ballet's autumn program, but I did see "Na Floresta," an earthy, flexed, crepuscular dance (1989) by Nacho Duarto, set to music by Heitor Villa-Lobos and Wagner Tisso. It's a well-balanced ensemble piece for ten dancers, with a floor work section for the men and four nice-sized pas de deux (or trois, in most cases) for the women. The dance embodies the Brazilian feeling of saudade, that feeling for grown-ups of rueful love. The closing image positions the dancers in a tight group, each body saying, "I am reaching for the moon, but my feet are flat on the ground."

The other Latin-inflected dance on the program, a premiere by Septime Webre, the more vigorous "Juanita y Alicia," suffers by comparison. The music is by various Cuban composers, and is performed live; unfortunately, several awkward musical transitions left one with the impression that the dances weren't really set to the music. The exception is the pleasing twenties-flavored "Orgullecida." On the whole, it's a collection of pieces, not an integral suite. And nothing explains the two women's names of the title: there is only one distinguished female character. Some tricky light cues, perhaps not accurately executed on opening night, added to the confusion.

The Exact Center of the Universe, by Joan Vail Thorne, directed by John Tillinger, Century Theatre, Century Center for the Performing Arts, New York

Frances Sternhagen is the draw here, and she is good as Vada in this comedy of Southern culture and prejudice in the 50's and 60's. She has a marvelous way of punching a line with a smirk or an eyebrow-lift where another actor would use the voice, and she has an effective stillness. Unfortunately, the stillness is at odds with the text, which describes Vada as very active.

Indeed, the text is most of the problem here: it really doesn't take us anywhere new. Scenes are interrupted by expository voiceovers from Vada's son Appleton, and lose whatever momentum they may have built up. We don't buy the confession by Marybell that she has concealed her Italian heritage from her best friends for forty years.

Faults can be assigned elsewhere, too. There is no chemistry between Vada and the ghost of her dead husband. A set piece (Enid's "treehouse") cramps the playing area. And Tillinger rushes the ending, deflating the punch of the last line. Perhaps he understands that "I've always hated fig preserves" just isn't funny enough to end a play.

Elementals, stories by A. S. Byatt

A brief collection of Byatt's fairy tales for adults. The best of them is "Cold," not previously published. Among other things, it features Byatt's knack for lovingly enumerating precious things. Courtship gifts for the ice princess Fiammarosa include:

... a silken robe, flame-coloured, embroidered with peacocks, light as air. A rope of pearls, black, rose, and luminous pale ones, the size of larks' eggs, came from an island kingdom, and a three-dimensional carved chess game, all in different jades, with little staircases and turrets edged with gold, came from a tiny country between two deserts. There were heaps of gold and silver plates, a leopard in a cage, which sickened and died, a harp, a miniature pony, and an illuminated treatise on necromancy.

Also fine is "Crocodile Tears," a study of deferred grief that takes an Englishwoman to southwestern France, where the heat and dust of Hemingway's Iberia is directly invoked.

The cunningly-designed book, out of its dust jacket, looks just like my upper-level college math texts.

About twelve of us were in attendance for a weekday evening screening of The Very Thought of You, an entertaining little romantic comedy which boils down to three English guys enchanted by Monica Potter's jewel-like indigo eyes. The movie's involuted plot and the rivalry among the three give us three opportunities to "meet cute," and the needed romantic suspense is sustained.

The barback in the place around the corner from the City Cinemas Sutton knows his Palm organizers.

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