Most unromantic movie about Romantics: Bright Star

I thought "Bright Star" would be a movie that both Marge and I would love, and I was wrong on all counts - neither of us loved it. It certainly had the creds: I love Keats, and the story of his tragic life seems eminently cinematic; Marge loves Campion and all those BBCish British costume-drama productions. And yet: what a boring movie! It's so earnest and well-meaning - and preposterous. First of all, I've never seen a less passionate screen romance that this one (Keats and Fanny Brawn, played to two actors unknown to me). Fanny is a good actor, I admit, and her breakdown on learning of Keats's death in Italy is a terrific scene. Keats seems like a a total nonentity, not a romantic lead in any way. Bright Star tries to get at a depiction of the process of artistic creation, which is really tough to do (I wrote about this re Crazy Heart, on elliotsreading.blogspot.com), but we don't really get a sense of how a 19th-century poet lived and worked. It's corny: Keats climbs a tree, sees a nightingale's nest, goes home and writes an ode! Most ridiculous, as Campion obviously wanted to work into her film lots of Keats's language, both poems and letters (good idea), she has Keats and Fanny reciting lines to each other and she has him literally "tutor" her in poetry, which allows him to spout aphorisms from his letters. Though we marvel at the language, this does not work at all as drama or cinema. It's almost ludicrous. Finally, Campion unfortunately for her is stuck with the historical facts and therefore has Keats dying offstage while Fanny is home in Hampstead, sewing. Ugh. There has to be a better way to tell this story. But if in any way Bright Star leads people to read Keats, then it's added some good to the world!

If Departures were American - would it be a hit? or would it be ruined?

"Departures," its unusual subject matter aside, is an entirely conventional, simple, even saccharine story. The unusual subject and the, for Americans at least, somewhat exotic locale, make the movie watchable, but also tag it as a niche/indie/foreign film. It's about a young man (Daigo), a cellist, who loses his job when his orchestra folds; he and his young wife (Mika) go back to his hometown (Yamagata?) in the far north of Japan, where he finds a job as what here we would call an undertaker's assistant. Evidently, in Japan the undertaker does the funeral arrangements, but a subcontractor actually prepares the bodies, and does so in a ritual ceremony before immediate family. Though these ceremonies are very important to the family, the people who prepare the bodies are social pariahs, kind of like a low caste in India. Who knew? Daigo keeps his new profession secret even from his wife. Through the course of the movie, she learns of his work, leaves, comes back, sees what beautiful work he does. He gradually gains some acceptance in the town, as he builds his love and respect for his aging boss/mentor. More important, the movie builds toward a phony reconciliation of sorts between Daigo and the father who'd abandoned him at 6. Lots of cello playing in background, sometimes in dreamy fantasy sequences. For me, the interest was in learning about this quirky aspect of Japanese culture. As to the movie itself, there's nothing really credible about the plot, but when has that stopped a movie from becoming a hit? I imagine that Departures could be remade at low budget in an American setting and could find a much wider audience (a la Shall we Dance?, Magnificent Seven), though to me that would dissolve all of the elements that make Departures at least somewhat intriguing.

Is it fiction? or documentary? or a new kind of movie?

I wanted to like "24 City" and wish I could have liked it more, but it's a movie that doesn't attain its admittedly lofty ambitions. This Chinese movie is about the demolition of an old factory, built in Chengdu to made war materials, and replacing it with a modern factory (eponymous) - the new global economy of China replacing the old. The old was top-secret military, workers recruited from around the nation and transported to Chengdu, far from their families, paid a bonus to keep information secret, and a whole society emerged around the factory, quite separate from the surrounding city. Story told as a series of interviews with the factory workers, some very old, some young - documentary style, though I believe it is scripted and the workers are all actors (not sure of this, though), cut in with scenes of the last days of the old factory, totally dangerous and scary working conditions, and occasional shots of the construction underway for the new 24 City. Some of the footage in the old factory is great, and the interviews all include a scene in which the director poses the subject (or subjects, some are couples, groups of workers, friends) for a very long shot - all of these quite extraordinary. We do learn, through the film, about an aspect of Chinese history and contemporary culture, but unfortunately the stories of the workers, the interviews, are not intrinsically all that interesting, and when they are they're just spoken narratives rather than dramatized events (as in filmmaker's recent movie about a Chinese city soon to be flooded - much better movie, don't recall its name). The documentary-fiction style is often used for highly polemical purposes (Michael Moore) or for satire and comedy (Best in Show et al.), but here the director uses it as a way to tell a story within a historical context, but it just isn't as compelling as I'd hoped, and it times it was difficult to follow the narrative - to know if the workers were already in the new factory, for example. I'd see more work by the director, Jiang-ke I think?, and really like his The World, but this was not a movie for everyone.

The angriest character on TV

Michale Chiklas (vic mackey?) is the angriest character on TV and one of the scariest. "The Shield" (season 6) is about as subtle as a sledgehammer, but it's pretty compelling, especially, maybe only, because of Mackey. For whatever reason, the other so-called tough cops that surround him seem about as tough as, well, a bunch of 2nd-tier TV actors, which they are, but Chiklas more than makes up and carries the show. Too much so at time. Every time he enters a crime scene you know he's going to kick through the door and then kick the shit out of somebody in a way that borders on murderous assault. Of course that makes him all the more scary, as we know entering season 6 that he is out for serious revenge on whoever planted a grenade in a car that killed one of his partners (Lem, end of season 5), and we know that it's one of the two remaining partners, I forget the names at the moment. To Mackey (sp?), everything's about loyalty, and we await the confrontation when he realizes one of his troop killed the other member. That's the overall plat; the great Forrest Whittaker, from internal affairs, is still checking out Mackey. His family life is still a mess. He's another one of these vulnerable heros, will break any ethical boundary or restriction, but if you're being held hostage he's the cop you want to come to the scene and rescue you. He's a terrifying figure, but fierce about his family (though unfaithful), someone you always want on your side but you never really want to be on his. The Shield build on a series of fast cuts, often with Mackey leading his men right toward us, they're blurred in the background, and his face is locked into scowl. I'll keep watching.

Damages - can anyone explain it all?

The final episode of "Damages" Season II was a bit disappointing - it had to be, you knew it would. You could see this story careening toward its ending, with far to many strands to tie together, even in an "extended" episode. Yes, I admit, I was totally glued and captivated by every word, and couldn't get enough of Close on screen. But the way it unfolded finally, sting upon sting, just strained credibility, as well as straining the brain (mine) trying to make sense of it all: Ellen working for FBI trying to "sting" Patti (catching her asking Ellen to bribe a judge), but oddly she warns Patti that they're under surveillance, shoots (at) Patti so as to draw the FBI guy to the scene he's watching, then Ellen goes off to bribe the judge, FBI shows up to arrest not Patti but Ellen, then Tom miraculously appears, with his sister (a U.S. atty) and arrests the FBI guy - he'd been undercover, too, in some manner. Patti off free, for now, but stabbed by the crooked trader, who also goes off (season 3?), but most other principals caught, arrested. Phil story still not resolved. And most of all what about Ellen? She knows Patti tried to kill her, but how will she deal with this in Season 3? Her boyfriend Wes now seeming OK, but he obviously has a troubled past history. Anyway, so much going on here, but the series saved by some great acting, really provocative story editing to keep you engaged, and if some things don't quite make sense at the end, it's hard to complain - it's been a great ride. But there's too much here for any single mind to contain, let alone explain, it all! (I felt that way about Ulysses, too, for different reasons.)

Nobody messes with Patti

Next-to-last episode (12) of "Damages" season 2, we learn more crucial info and have some terrific scenes. Now we learn that Purcell actually killed his wife (or thinks he did) and calls Kendrick to help him out of the jam - but it happens that she's still alive and Kendrick's guy finished her off. That could prove relevant - episode ends with Purcell turning himself in, for a crime that we know he did not actually commit (tho he did strangle her). Turning himself in leaves his daughter very vulnerable - seems odd. Wes is about to shoot Ellen (on orders from the crooked detective), but backs off. Now it becomes clear, as Marge observed, that he is taking guns to Ellen's apartment to protect her, not to shoot her - as the earlier flash-forwards led us to believe. Tom, pressured into bribing a judge in the UNR case, refuses to go along, and Patti fires him. What's with this? Why would she want to make Tom her enemy? There has to be a reason. We know from earlier flash-forwards that Tom provides Ellen with a gun - with which Ellen will shoot Patti? Most exciting in this episode is the screaming match between Patti and Phil. Patti realizes that Phil has been betting against her, buying stock in UNR. She makes him see that the UNR people put him up as energy secretary just to derail Patti's case. He seems contrite for a moment - he's a fool, he obviously did not know he was being played - and then he explodes, and then Patti/Close lets him have it. A great scene! She throws a coffee cup and orders him out. He says he's fight her in a divorce suit, and she raises her hand and says: Good luck! Nobody messes with Patti. He is completely overmatched.

Damages, Andy Wolk directs - best episode yet?

Episode 11 of "Damages" season 2 - directed by Andy Wolk. Go, Andy! Is it the best episode of "Damages" yet? Could be - though at that point we're really racing toward the finish line, and hoping somebody's at the wheel. Hard to believe that all of this can be wrapped in two more (40-minutes) episodes. And just to make matters more confusing, a new character is introduced (Ellen hires a detective), a new plot line opens up (Phil's affair becomes important - Ellen sends secret pix to Patti. How does Patti know Ellen sent them?). Extremely confusing about Patti's son's relation with the older woman (why did they bother to show him with a young artist more his age?). And everyone's confused about who's watching the surveillance videos, both of the "present time" confrontation between Ellen and Patti (the FBI guy is watching) and the hotel room where Clair and what's his name, William Hurt, have a liaison. There's just too much, really. We see more of the "present tense" all the time - now it appears that Ellen (or at least someone) has shot Patti, and Ellen is arrested (as in season 1). But maybe that whole shooting is a setup of some sort - who and why? The crooked detective with the beard is involved, as is Wes (Ellen's duplicitous boyfriend). No series has a more complex plot (maybe Lost does, I don't know), and few are more compelling. Most of it's Patti/Close. I want to see more scenes with her, there are never enough. Walter Kendrick, played by the guy from The Wire, seems a very evil character, but the script does not use him well enough. He pushes Claire/Harden out of the picture in his struggle to maintain control of the board of UNR, but he doesn't by this point in the series seem a threat to anyone we care about, and Patti's lawsuit against him has faded from view. A lot of elements to take up in final two episodes, to say the least.