I'll show you around the city, and we'll eat well. We'll drink good wine. We'll make love.

Once again I was promised a return to form from Woody Allen, this time with Vicky Cristina Barcelona, and I was disappointed.

It would be easy to attack Woody Allen and his films for the kinds of characters they present. Characters with the financial means that allow them to take summer trips to Barcelona to study the Catalan. Characters who are high-minded, narcissistic, self-loathing and mildly pretentious. Characters who can worry about the meaning of love and their own self satisfaction rather than how they're going to be paying their rent. But to fault the film for presenting the social class of characters that Woody has been exploring for most of his career, when he isn't dabbling in the Depression, isn't really fair.

While my own financial and employment dissatisfaction served as a small barrier for my engagement with the film, what didn't work for me was that much like Match Point, the film is simply a play on small and familiar themes. Match Point was all about chance and whether someone can be at the right place at the right time to either change their social class or to get away with murder.

This time around, Woody presents his treatise on European romance. When I say European romance, I mean this concept that to travel to Europe is to indulge in a different life, a more care free life. The idea that Americans can throw caution to the wind when in romantic cities and indulge in sexual experimentation with little consequence (exemplified with both Vicky and Cristina's romance with Juan Antonio) or that to be European is to be more passionate and artistic (exemplified by Cristina's photography, as well as most of her relationship with Juan Antonio and Maria Elena). That to live in Europe is to be on vacation all the time.

I can respect the films exploration of these ideas. The problem is that it all just ends up feeling a little too small. By the end, everything is just a little to pat and dry as unsurprisingly, Vicky and Cristina realize that no matter how idealistic Barcelona may have seemed, it isn't what they want in the long run. Vicky ultimately needs the safety and stability she seemed to running away from, and Cristina always needs something new or she'll get bored.

In the end, the film doesn't commend its characters for what they've learned. Rather, it shows contempt for nearly everyone. As a viewer, we look down at Vicky first for being so straight laced, on Cristina for being so aloof and indecisive, on Juan Antonio and Maria Elena for being so emotional and overly passionate while lacking any real intelligence, on Doug for being a shallow financial douche bag. By the end, this contempt is just unsatisfying, as the film really provides no real answers to the questions it presents by being an exploration of a theme. If filling one's life with passion, love, and art isn't the way to overcome dissatisfaction and find meaning, then what is?

Mr. Smith

Dear Macy

I'm playing some catch up, much like the narrative of Gus Van Sant's Paranoid Park. Having endured Van Sant's Death Trilogy (Gerry, Elephant, Last Days) I've been waiting to see Paranoid Park, and its well earned appearance on quite a few top 10 lists this year has finally given me that final push to watch.

The film is very much a continuation of the seemingly art house Gus with its slow ponderous tracking shots courtesy of a first class DP (Christopher Doyle) and its barebones narrative which can be described in just a sentence. IMDB adequately summarizes the movie, "A teenage skateboarder's life begins to fray after he is involved in the accidental death of a security guard." And yet, this is a refinement of the previous three films where things feel much more resonant and meangful. Rather than set a single mood and tone like the aimless school hallways in Elephant or the endless desert trails in Gerry, each long tracking shot plums more emotional depth as we begin to unravel the narrative that Alex is presenting. Each time we repeat the same sequence which we have seen before, something Van Sant did really confusingly and annoyingling in Last Days, rather than feel like it's some trick to make the run time feature length, it just gets us further in the head space of Alex.

While the film starts out slowly, and a little confusingly with the narrative trick of the narrator realizing he should start a bit earlier, circling around the most major event, and it takes some time to adjust to the nonactors, the film is sublimely rewarding, and by the end, you as a viewer will feel the same release Alex has by telling his story. Really, like Slumdog Millionaire, this is another 2008 film that cleverly engages the audience through the act of storytelling itself.

Now bring on Milk.

Baby Steps

It really has been forever since I've blogged, which is what I seem to be saying every time I start back up, but I really feel it's going to take the help of Dr. Leo Marvin to start again. It's not that I don't find that I have plenty to talk about between movies, television, Blago's corruption scandal, my horrendous job search, and just plain living, but let's just take this one step at a time.

There Ain't Going to Be a Jumbotron

"This year is going to be different."

It was almost surprising how efficient the season premiere of Friday Night Lights was providing all the exposition for its third season.

While the Taylor family still bickers with the same rhythms and realism as ever, a lot has changed. Smash injured his knee and lost his scholarship (which I can't recall happening at the end of last season so I assume happened in the interim), Riggins is the new tailback, leaving the team struggling. A new quarterback has come to Dillon to shake things up and maybe take Matt's QB1 position. Coach Taylor's job is seemingly in danger after not taking the team far enough last season.Tami is now principal of Dillon. Lyla has given up on Jesus and rebounded with Riggins, and lastly, Tyra and Landry are just friends again. Unfortunately Street and his pregant waitress are nowhere to be seen, but in contrast to that, it at least seems we are forever rid of the Latino stereotypes of Carlotta and Santiago as well as that damn Jesus freak Logan Huntzberger. And, oh yeah, the show is about football again.

And now that we're all caught up, I can say that this was quite a welcome return. I personally never had a horrible problem with Season 2, although watching this episode and thinking back, I really feel like the show has found itself again. I'm no sports fan, and so the very idea of the show focusing more on football doesn't exactly excite me, but that hardly matters. What really works about this show is that by focusing on football and the team, it's able to capture the smaller moments in the characters lives around it, instead of becoming a show about grand moments and inanane melodrama as it did last season.

This might sound like some attempt to be overly profound, but by actually being about football, the show actually gets to be about so much more that feels real. In a way, Tami's current conflict with the school budget seems to be a commentary on season 2 as she is concerned with everything else but football at Dillon, including the students, the teachers, the textbooks, and meanwhile while she struggles with the budget, the coaches have new computersand working AC. It's especially telling when Buddy starts telling Tami "Clear Eyes, Full Hearts..." and Tami saying "Let's not go there." It's as if the writers are saying that as great as football is, there are other things that matter.

And what really matters about the show is the people and their lives. Really, this show is about the Taylors and how they inspire and support everyone around them. While the vice principal tells Tyra that there is no way she is getting out, and will be lucky to get into a tech college, Tami lets her know that she can do anything she wants as long as she works hard enough. And in the best scene of the episode, which got me pumped the way the best moments in the run of the series have, Coach Taylor plays a game of raquetball with Brian "Smash" Williams, and tells him that he will play football again and make it onto a college team, and he won't give up on him until it happens because he needs something good to happen. The scene is especially powerful because not only does Coach tell him, but he shows him that he can be fast again as we watch him move around that raquetball court and implicitly understand that while he's a half second slower now, Smash will play again.

Take That, Day Job!

Out of complete and utter boredom, I guess I can blog on request as my week has left me plenty of time to catch up on some television, read, and see the worst movie of the summer. It's pouring outside, so it's not as if I am going to have any customers to distract me.

Since I was 15, I have worked at CD City, a small and always struggling independent music store. Yet, no matter how bad business gets, the owner always manages to find the money to go on extravagant family vacations to New York, the Bahamas, or the Caribbean. Meanwhile, I am left to tend shop with a customer base that wants nobody but the owner of the store and thinks I know nothing, leaving the struggling business with even less customers, and leaving me with nothing to do but browse the internet and watch DVDs on my laptop. That, and and the combination of staying at my mom's for the week while she blabbers too loudly and too early in the morning on the phone about temple gossip and misinformed politics,as well as giving me a hard time about what I'm going to do about finding a job, is enough to drive nearly anyone insane.
With my newfound free time I was able to finish Series One of Doctor Who. If you don't know, Doctor Who is the story of the last Time Lord traveling across space and time in the TARDIS, a ship disguised as a police box of the 1960s (though I'm sure you already knew all that). The premise in itself is pretty brilliant because it allows the show to go anywhere and do anything. Past, present, future, the plots are limitless and the feel of the show is filled with the kind of excitement and wonder appropriate for that sense of narrative freedom.

Cleverly, in order to avoid the problems of a leaving star, the show came up with the solution of regeneration. Every time the Doctor is about to die, he is able to live on by regenerating into a new body. Same memories, same person, but a different actor with a different personality and new eyes.

I've always heard that people remain the biggest fan of their first Doctor (which is usually the scarf wearing Tom Baker who played the Doctor from 1974-1981), and having only seen random episodes here and there of the 11th Doctor, David Tennant (my first doctor), I came into Series One with some trepidation. The theory does hold up, as I find David Tennant far more playful and enjoyable than the pained and brooding Doctor that Chris Eccleston plays, but by the end of the series, I definitely warmed up to Eccleston. And I'd have to say that this is by design.

Eccleston begins the season after facing the destruction of all Time Lords in the Time War, leaving him alone and with the guilt of the death of his people on his hands. Before finding Rose Tyler, we don't know how long he has been traveling alone, but in some ways, it has stripped the Doctor of true joy, emotion, and humanity. It isn't until a full season of traveling with Rose as his companion, as well as Jack Harkness, and working with those who are close to Rose (Jackie and Mickey) and everyone they face on their travels that the Doctor lightens up and begins to enjoy life again. Nowhere is this made more clear than in the Steven Moffat penned "The Doctor Dances." It would have been interesting to see where Eccleston would have taken the role after that first series, but I'd still take Tennant over him any day.

And yes, I realize that Time Lord, TARDIS, regeneration; it all sounds pretty geeky, and of course it is, when on top of that you have television budgeted special effects and a stretched out piece of skin as the last human, but it doesn't matter when it's just so fun to watch, so while most of you probably glossed over any mere mention of Doctor Who, you should really give it a try.
DO NOT SEE THE ROCKER! No matter how funny you think Rainn Wilson is in The Office or Six Feet Under! I even thought that Rainn Wilson made House of 1,000 Corpses just a little more watchable, but not this dreck. This film plays like a bad made-for-Disney Channel movie, with a wealth of wasted comedic talent including Jeff Garlin, Jane Lynch, Will Arnett, Fred Armisen, and Jane Krakowski.
Instead of featuring Rainn Wilson in the publicity for this film, they should have been honest. This film was designed to highlight Teddy Geiger, the young singer-songwriter who somehow achieved some semblance of celebrity by being featured on the quickly canceled Love Monkey. Geiger plays Curtis, a sensitive and prolific songwriter and performer (he's got notebooks filled with songs, though the movie only features about two of them), who still hurts from his paternal abandonment. No, he's not bitter.

And neither is Rainn Wilson, who was kicked out of 80's glam rockers Vesuvius, and now catches his big break playing with his nephew Matt's band, A.D.D., headed by Geiger, and also featuring Emma Stone as Amelia on bass and vocals, who is so stone-cold that her major character arc is whether or not she'll crack a smile by the films end.

And you won't smile either as Rainn Wilson goes through the ringer with physical comedy in which he plays drums naked, falls down, and repeatedly gets hit in the face and balls. This is what the film considers comedy.

And just to make everything a little more contrived, as the drama and supposed heart of the film, we're asked to wonder whether Rainn Wilson will get with Christina Applegate (playing Curtis' mother who also used to rock but is horribly underdeveloped and due to Applegate's recent medical problems in real life is also distracting), whether Curtis will get with Amelia, and whether Matt will get with that weird girl who keeps showing up to all of ADD's shows.

If you can't tell, this is just predictable garbage.

Lastly:
I better do my homework.

Has Anything Bad Ever Happened to You?

Today at the library I was surprised to see a small indie "mumblecore" film like Dance Party, USA on the DVD shelf. While at first it would seem that the film effectively presents a unique coming of age and redemptive story, as Gus, eighteen in a week, realizes the wrongs of his fronting and womanizing ways, even a quick second thought leads me to believe that the film is simply a moral duping.

The opening shots of a young Jessica waking up to a house full of people sleeping on the floor after a recognizable suburban house party is as gorgeous as much of the dialogue free portions of the film, set to minimal piano music, and far transcends the Mumblecore label, but it's when the character's begin to talk that the film finds itself on very rocky and awkward footing. I first rolled my eyes at Bill and Gus as they discussed the girls they got with or wanted to get with, but mistakenly thought the film would follow the more innocent seeming Bill with a crush on Gus's ex-girlfriend. Instead, the film tells quite a different story about Gus who we hear recount stories about getting blow jobs through brown bags, and sleeping with the hottest fourteen year old (Kate) at a party. It's later that the story of sleeping with Kate is revised, as Gus decides to tell Jessica the truth, that he raped Kate.

By making the party atmosphere and the characters feel so real, it's hard not to first get caught up in sympathizing with Gus who clearly has regrets for what he's done, and who is oh so stereotypically sensitive because he thinks about studying "like art, or photography" but ultimately, the film attempts to just give him a pass because of how guilty he feels, and even worse, excuses it because he goes to Kate and she doesn't recall anything so horrible ever happening to her. Beyond that, the film tries to make you forget that right before even telling Jessica the truth, Gus sleeps with yet another girl, and really, what is his motivation for talking to Jessica other than seeing a pretty girl sitting alone. In the end, it seems Gus only lets his guard down because Jessica's defenses are so far up as she is aware of Gus's reputation.

The film seems to want to make a statement about lost innocence, growing up, and moral honestly. The problem is that it does it in such a morally dishonest way by asking the audience to absolve Gus of such a horrible act simply because no one remembers it but him. And on top of that, he somehow gets the girl.