A thousand complications, none really believable: Big Love

"Big Love" is a totally preposterous series that is in spite of itself kind of fun to watch. This series - a very straight and ambitious Mormon businessman (Bill, running for Utah State Senate, part owner of an Indian casino) has three wives, each in a different age bracket and personality type. Lots of kids. Second wife's daughter has been raised in a Mormon cult, obviously modeled on the Texas cult broken up a few years back. She's freed, but her father is coming after her. Also some weird subplot about the cult founder who's a closet homosexual and therefore at war with himself. A thousand complications ensue, none really believable, but so what. We get the point, which is that, in an age of reality TV, when a realistic story about a polygamous Mormon family would fit right in, the only way to get extra edge is to push the plot elements way over the top, which Big Love does. As with most of the HBO series, the production values are strong, the acting is solid, the script is pretty sharp. It's just that - with so many things "on," why would you watch this one for more than an episode or two? I just don't find it compelling enough. It's a good thing it's been confined to the backwaters of HBO. I wonder how the Mormon community feels about it and deals with it. HBO was unafraid to take on stereotypes with The Sopranos, and I know the network took some heat on that, but taking on a religion is a tougher challenge, and I give them credit for believing in the show and not backing away because of the challenge. I remember a treatment I'd written about a rabbi and a cantor which was pretty roundly shunned, part of the reason being, we were told, the controversial nature of the material.

Find the original version of Cinema Paradiso and see that one

As predicted, as expected, "Cinema Paradiso," a great or nearly great 90-minute movie has no business posing as a three-hour epic - the charm and whimsy of the original is nearly drowned in the schmaltz of the great doomed love affair between Toto, the poor fatherless boy, and the wealthy banker's daughter. The director or producer or distributor or whoever it was who made him cut that material in the first instance was right. It makes the movie not only tedious but all too typical. Remove that entire plot element and you've got a charming picture about a boy from a small town, where they entire social and cultural life centered on the movie theater, who goes off to the big city and becomes famous but loses touch with his origins, and returns home for a funeral and finds that everything has changed - and then that amazing ending, amazing even in the 3-hour epic version of the picture. Stop reading here if you haven't seen it or have forgotten. Toto takes home, to Rome, an old cinema real and finds that his mentor, Alfredo, has made for him a reel of all the outtakes - the kisses and embraces that the priest required him to excise from the old films before screening. The montage is funny and touching - and meaningful, it's all the love that has in a sense been "cut" from Toto's life, and all the things once forbidden that are now sweet in their ordinariness, in other words, the entire past is there, and it moves him and us immensely. Find the original version and see that one.

How do you turn a charming movie into a bloated monstrosity? Director's cut!

How to make a charming, 90-minute classic film into a bloated 3-hour monstrosity. Two magic words: Director's cut. The cinematic equivalent of vanity press. Well, my fears were a bit unfounded on "Cinema Paradiso." The three-hour version too much to handle in one night, we broke it up and watched the first 90 minutes last night - made it much more palatable. The film still does have the charm that I remember from first viewing, the wonderful sense of the small Sicilian town whose cultural and social life revolves around the cinema, the young boy obsessed with everything about film, his touching bonding with the gruff but lovable projectionist - all a bit cornball and sentimental, even when viewed through the frame of the adult Toto, now a director, alienated, wealthy, la dolce vita - he's like Mastrioni in LDV or 8 1/2. At least the first half didn't seem too long - I'm worried about part two because what seems to have been added is Toto's adolescent love for the fair-haired banker's daughter - a completely different kind of movie, and much more traveled ground. If I'm right, that who strand of the story was wisely cut, leaving the focus on the boy/man's relation with the projectionist father figure, Alfredo, and on his lifelong fascination with cinema. We'll see how it holds up as a 3-hour show. Either way, the older scenes in the village, apparently just after the war, are the strongest and most real - at times even surreal. The burning of the cinema and its reconstruction as a modern film palace moves the film into less interesting territory, because much more explored.

Illusion and reality in Curb Your Enthusiasm

Finally the Seinfeld reunion story within the story of "Curb Your Enthusiasm," and the story of both revolves around the same theme: will George/Larry get back the girl (i.e., estranged or ex wife). I won't give it away. It's a good episode, though by this time in the series we're pretty used to the Seinfeld cast ten years down the road of life and we don't have the same frisson on seeing them for the first time in an earlier episode. In fact, by the time we see them on set and in character, they look pretty much the same as we remember. The Larry David insanity of this episode involves an extended debate/running gag about the contours of the word "favor": when does it require a tip, when must you return a favor, what's the difference between a favor and a chore, etc. That's the kind of riff he does so well, playing around with the nuances of language, culture, modern life. It must make it hell to be him or to be around hm, but like the best comedians he's always pushing you to think about things in new ways, to see the ordinary in a fresh light - artists do this, too. So much of the show, of this whole season of the show, is about illusion: we really see that the whole Seinfeld show is an illusion, filmed on a set, in Los Angeles, by actors who are by no means anything like the characters they portray, what a shock!, but the beautiful trick of this is we're seeing it within a frame of another comedy, which in its own right is filmed on a set, played by actors, etc. He creates the illusion that he, Larry, is real because the Seinfeld cast is "acting," when of course it's all acting, all illusion - Hollywood.

Why a TV show about a TV show is not a TV show about nothing: Curb Your Enthusiasm

The real fun in watching "Curb Your Enthusiasm" as it winds toward its Seinfeld-reunion conclusion is to see how a TV sitcom is actually managed. It's a real kick to see the Seinfeld set - and watch the cast members look at it in awe, as if it's some kind of national monument (maybe it is). And to watch them read the script of the reunion episode - have to wonder whether it's actually a first read-through or if they did a read-through to prepare for the filming of the read-through. Watching the rehearsal is great, too - again, it seems as if they really are working through the material for the first time, so it's either very well directed to look like a rehearsal, or it really is. The plot is again very clever, but some of the crude sexuality is to me out of place - as if David thinks part of the mission is to make this an x-rated pay cable version of Seinfeld (maybe it is). Well, I guess without the crudity it would be just another Seinfeld episode but without the commercials. How does the cast look? Jerry and Jason have put on pounds, Julia L-D has not - she looks great. Richard (Kramer) looks the same and Newman actually looks a little more svelte. He plays a great cameo in this episode. Lots of fun to watch, as the series builds toward its inevitable conclusion, with the question left unresolved so far: will Larry get Cheryl back? She's cast (in the reunion show within the show) as George's ex, and seems to be playing the part well - I thought they'd have her screw up in some way, but no, at least not yet.

Watching Larry David and Jerry Seinfeld riff: Curb Your Enthusiasm

The Bare Midriff episode of "Curb Your Enthusiasm" is entirely ridiculous but funny nevertheless. You can't buy into the premise, nor are you meant to do so. Larry is writing the Seinfeld reunion, with Jerry, in one of the studio lot offices - actually, this is some of the most interesting material in the series, as it does give you a pretty good idea as to how these shows are written and it seems to be filmed on the real studio lot. A couple of guys sit in an office with a big whiteboard and riff off each other for hours. A good life - but only a handful of people in the world are good enough to do it well, and of course, their very wit and eccentricity, will constantly keep them on the edge and get them into trouble and ruin their relationships with others, even with other show-business eccentrics. This episode, unlike some of the others, takes a turn toward high camp, as Larry reminds a woman of her exhusband killed in a road rage incident many years back (this is comic, actually), Larry accidentally sprays a Jesus picture with piss that looks like a teardrop, leading people to believe there's been a miracle, and Larry ends up on a rooftop, about to fall from the ledge, saved by hanging onto a woman's fleshy "bare midriff" - well, you can see that this episode pushes the comic high jinx a bit past the breaking point. Best scenes are watching Jerry and Larry play off each other, arguing (in whispers) as to who's going to tell the secretary/assistant to dress properly. They're like a couple of little boys - which is what comics do best. They don't grow up.

Where the actors in wheelchairs disbled actors or just playing them on TV?: Curb Your Enthusiasm

"Curb Your Enthusiasm" continues to be funny in the most surprising, totally un-PC ways, but the humor is always generous and uplifting, you're never laughing at characters, it's never mocking - except for the central character himself, Larry David, who can certainly take it, with his success and prowess. Episode I saw last night - Larry meets girl in coffee shop, asks her out, as she moves around the table he sees to his surprise that she's wheelchair bound. This leads to dilemma for him, but he comes to realize that it will be a great asset to his character to show that he's broadminded enough to date someone "handicapped" (he doesn't quite know how to address this issue: are you handicapped? disabled? challenged? - I am right now, she says). Again, the plot clicks beautifully, with the subplot - his public tiff with Rosie O'Donnell leading to a takedown in a fight over who's picking up the tab for lunch, merging with the main plot, in which Larry invites two "wheelies" to the same private party and both show up - so pushes one date into the coat closet - the two "wheelies" chase him through the house while a classical recital takes place (shades of the Marx brothers), he thinks he'll evade them by going up the stairs, but Rosie picks up the pursuit. Insane, very funny in a wholehearted way. I wonder if the two beautiful women in wheelchairs are actually disabled actors. I hope so - not that I wish those two to be disabled of course, but I think it's great that casting is now seeking disabled actors to play the roles of the disabled - old high-school friend Henry Holden leading the charge on that issue.