Girl Detective

G. Grod and I accompanied 6yo Drake and 3yo Guppy downstairs, where they stared, wide-eyed and silent, at the tree in the living room that had not been there the day before. (Shh. G put it up Christmas Eve while I wrapped presents and helped.)

In past years, G and my parents have sent so many stocking stuffers that we haven’t needed to help. This year was a scaled-back celebration for lots of v. good reasons, so I was on stocking duty for the first time. Friends helped with lots of suggestions, and in the end I put in: a chocolate, a peppermint, a small box of Altoids, a pack of Glee gum, a candy cane, a temporary tattoo (free from a store sometime last summer), mechanical toys they got at a birthday party and forgot about, a roll of quarters (for video games and gumball machines), a tiny satsuma mandarin orange, a finger puppet and a pack of Annie’s bunny fruit snacks. The boys decided on their own that Santa had filled the stockings.

The boys’ Auntie Sydney managed to score a Zhou Zhou pets Giant Hamster City Playset, which was the hit of the morning, though Lego Secret Agents and Snap Circuits also got a lot of attention. We watched The Grinch Who Stole Christmas, then I made snow Totoros

which the boys had no interest in while G shoveled the heavy, wet snow. Good for building, bad for shoveling. Since the roads were bad we didn’t go out for Chinese, but instead made pepperoni pan pizza. G discovered that vodka makes the cooking process a lot easier. We had pumpkin whoopie pies for dessert, then watched Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer.

At bed, the boys and I read several of our favorite Christmas books, the new Christmas Magic, beautifully illustrated by Jon Muth (Zen Shorts and Zen Ties), Mr. Willowby’s Christmas Tree, Olivia Helps with Christmas, Harvey Slumfenburger’s Christmas Present, and James Marshall’s The Night Before Christmas. Then we sang all the carols we know from Tomie DePaola’s Book of Christmas Carols, which we borrowed from the library for the fourth year in a row.

Then G and I snuggled down on the couch to watch The Shop Around the Corner, which charms me anew every time I watch it. Is it perfect? I think it might be.

I’m fifteen. I see National Lampoon’s Vacation. Chevy Chase IS my dad, insisting on driving the family truckster when flying is so much easier, taking along loud-snoring elderly relatives, encouraging me to get my head out of my book and pay attention to sights like the biggest ball of twine.

I’m sixteen. I see Sixteen Candles. Not only is it hilarious, I identify with the main character. Short red hair, funny looking, not noticed by guys? Yeah. Then she ends up with Jake Ryan? It’s the most romantic movie ever, and gives me hope.

I’m almost seventeen, and grounded for something. Staying out past curfew? Wrecking the car? Getting caught drinking? So many possible infractions. My younger sister A. and her friend LT want to go see The Breakfast Club. My parents decide to go too and ask me (probably graciously, in spite of how obnoxious I was at the time, i.e. a 16yo) if I’d like to go. I’m torn. We live in a small, small town. I want to see the movie. I’m furious at being grounded. I risk humiliation if I’m seen at theater with parents and kid sister. I go. I’m enthralled. The movie seems to be speaking just to me. I see my classmates up on screen (CD is Judd Nelson. ML is Anthony Michael Hall. CS is Emilio Estevez. TR is Molly Ringwald. KS is a burnout like Ally Sheedy and will be dead in a few years of a heroin overdose.) I see myself as a mix of the Molly Ringwald character (I cut school to go tanning, not shopping, though) and the Anthony Michael Hall character (I was a “brain,” you see.) On the ride home, I’m silent. I can’t believe how awesome that movie was.

I’m eighteen when I see Pretty in Pink. I wince when Andie is taunted by James Spader. I know a guy like that. I have no prom date. I like the ending; I WANT her to end up with Blaine. The dress was prettier before she messed with it, though. The lights go up. Two rows in front of me is the guy I have a crush on. He says hi. Two weeks later he asks my best friend to prom. She says no. A really nice guy JG and his friend SK ask me and her. We say no, we have plans to go with a group. I will always regret this.

I’m eighteen, and with my friend who’s a boy, C in his car at a drive-in double feature of Ferris Bueller’s Day Off and Pretty in Pink (again). We drink wine coolers the color of Andie’s prom dress and smoke Marlboro Lights. Before the movie we listen to cassette tapes of OMD and Psychedelic Furs. We say we can’t wait for college and to get out of our small town. We think we’ll always be friends. This turns out not to be true.

John Hughes wrote and directed some of my favorite movies. Because of how it got imprinted on me, Breakfast Club will always be a touchstone. His work spoke to me at a time when I could hardly listen to anything. It helped me get through my teens (which wasn’t a sure thing; see paragraph 3). I’m grateful I had those movies, and I’m sad he’s gone.

In “Neo-Neo Realism“, from a recent New York Times Magazine, film critic A.O. Scott resists the easy answer of escapism, for what audiences want in films:

what if, at least some of the time, we feel an urge to escape from escapism? For most of the past decade, magical thinking has been elevated from a diversion to an ideological principle. The benign faith that dreams will come true can be hard to distinguish from the more sinister seduction of believing in lies. To counter the tyranny of fantasy entrenched on Wall Street and in Washington as well as in Hollywood, it seems possible that engagement with the world as it is might reassert itself as an aesthetic strategy. Perhaps it would be worth considering that what we need from movies, in the face of a dismaying and confusing real world, is realism.

He notes that the ancestor of this new new wave of realism is The Bicycle Thief, so anti-escapism isn’t really new. But he offers a number of films in example–Wendy and Lucy, Sugar, Chop Shop, and more–that honor the audience by offering up real characters and not dumbing things down. Meanwhile, they manage the surprising, true-to-life feat of ending on notes of quiet hope, even in the face of tragedy and difficulty.

Scott’s analysis is intelligent and stirring. Suddenly, and as if I needed it, I’ve got a lot more movies I’d like to see. And a lot more little ones that I’m going to have to hunt for in theaters, as these little quiet movies don’t get a lot of screens.

I’m just wondering what comes after the new-new realism? The Grateful Dead song, “New Minglewood Blues”, became “New New Minglewood Blues” then “All New Minglewood Blues”. Will we see an all new realism sometime in the future?

Me, that’s who. I’m a comics geek. I read Watchmen in 1990 and have been an avid comic reader ever since. That’s why I won’t be seeing Watchmen (2009).

Watchmen the book is brilliant. It exploded the boundary, then and perhaps forever, on superhero entertainment and the comics medium. So a faithful adaptation, as director Zack Snyder said he tried to do, misses the point, IMO. It offers superheroes and violence up as entertainment, without the irony.

Instead of investing almost 3 hours and $10 in the movie, read this interview at Salon with creator Alan Moore. (Can’t find the source of the link; sorry. It was probably Morning News or Bookslut) Read the graphic novel. Or go here for a hilarious imagining of what Watchmen might have been like as an 80’s kids cartoon, or to Slate for a parody of what other directors might have done. (Last two links from ALoTT5MA)

My husband G. Grod went to see it last night.

“How was it?” I asked.

“Exactly what I expected,” he replied. “That bad. Now I know.”

Rober Ebert liked it, but it’s clear from his review that he hasn’t read the source material. Part of what worked about recent comic-book movies like Spiderman 2, Iron Man, Hellboy II and The Dark Knight is that they were based on the larger legend, but eschewed existing stories in favor of ones crafted specifically for the movie.

TV critic Alan Sepinwall’s review confirmed my suspicions about the movie. I’ve not yet gone to see any adaptation of an Alan Moore project, though all the graphic novels–League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Swamp Thing, From Hell, V for Vendetta–are among my favorites. Movies and comics are different mediums. Sometimes one can bring something to the other than deepens the story. But with such rich source material as Watchmen, I don’t much see the point.

Because my children are ignoring me and refusing to get dressed, I’m going to ignore them right back. So much for the high road.

The bracket for the Morning News 2009 Tournament of Books is up! Adjust your reading list priorities accordingly. (I’m reading City of Refuge now, which seems bootless, since it’s up against Jhumpa Lahiri’s Unaccustomed Earth.)

At the WSJ, a bunch of financial experts on what to do with your financial stimulus money. Link from Morning News.

At New York Magazine, Nate Silver statistically predicts the Oscar winners.

A List of Things Thrown Five Minutes Ago will be live-blogging the Oscars.

On last night’s Top Chef, Finnish Stefan wore a T-shirt and hat emblazoned with “Suomi”. According to Wikipedia, Suomi means Finnish or Finland. One of the finalists commented that Fabio’s mohawk meant there had been one in every finale. Season four was Richard. Season Three was Dale. I don’t know who it was for the first two seasons.

On Colicchio’s blog at Bravo, he gives more information to the decisions from last night’s New Orleans finale part 1. It’s brief and insightful, plus divulges the technical term pro chefs use for other chefs’ food they admire.

or, why movies are more likely to be great in the theater than at home. (Link from The Morning News.)

Studies have indicated that Elevation is triggered by the stimulus of our vagus nerve, described by Wikipedia as the only nerve that starts in the brainstem and extends down below the head, to the neck, chest and abdomen, where it contributes to the innervation of the viscera. It must be involved in what we call “visceral feelings,” defined as “relating to deep inward feelings rather than to the intellect.”

The vagus nerve would certainly account for what I feel, which is as much physical than mental. For years, when asked “how do you know a movie is great?” I’ve had the same reply: I feel a tingling in my spine. People look at me blankly. I explain that I feel an actual physical sensation that does not depend on the abstract quality of the movie, but on–well, my visceral feelings.

Take-Up productions hits Northeast Minneapolis with its next film series, “From the Vaults of Universal: Seven Classic Film Noirs” at the Heights Theater Monday nights at 7:30 p.m. starting 16 February 2009. Take-Up also has a page on Facebook.

February 16 7:30 This Gun For Hire (1942) dir Frank Tuttle, starring Alan Ladd and Veronica Lake

*February 23 BURT LANCASTER DOUBLE FEATURE (2 films for 1 $8 ticket)*
7:30 Criss Cross (1949) dir Robert Siodmak, starring Burt Lancaster and Yvone De Carlo

9:15 The Killers (1946) dir Robert Siodmak, starring Burt Lancaster and Ava Gardner

March 2 7:30 The Big Clock (1948) dir John Farrow, starring Ray Milland and Charles Laughton

*March 9 ALAN LADD / VERONICA LAKE DOUBLE FEATURE (2 films for 1 $8 ticket)*
7:30 The Blue Dahlia (1946) dir George Marshall, starring Alan Ladd, Veronica Lake and William Bendix

9:15 The Glass Key (1942) dir Stuart Heisler, starring Alan Ladd and Veronica Lake (Edited: based on the Dashiel Hammett novel that was part of the Coen Brothers’ inspiration for Miller’s Crossing; the other was Red Harvest.)

March 16 7:30 The Phantom Lady (1944) dir Robert Siodmak, starring Franchot Tone, Ella Raines and Elisha Cook

“Smoke up, Johnny!”

As an antidote to yesterday’s lovely article on gift giving to children, the Onion AV Club has “Fifteen Terrible Presents in TV and film”

My worst gift was from my well-meaning dad. I was sixteen and he got me an emergency CB radio for the car if I broke down. He was trying to keep me safe; I wanted a red-striped shirt from the Limited. Ah, youth.

Link from ALoTT5MA

The Film Club is a memoir of Canadian novelist (NOT Pink Floyd guitarist and vocalist) David Gilmour, who lets his 15yo son Jesse drop out of school if he agrees to watch three movies a week together. So begins a wild adventure in parenting. Gilmour starts with Truffaut’s New Wave classic, The 400 Blows. But as almost every review of the book crows, he follows it up with “dessert”, the eminently watchable, if made by sleazy people, Basic Instinct.

I picked the movies arbitrarily, in no particular order; for the most part they had to be good, classics when possible, but engaging, had to pull him out of his own thoughts with a strong storyline. There was no point, not at this juncture anyway, in showing him stuff like Fellini’s 8 1/2. (1963).

It’s this unconventional, anti-film-snob approach to movies that probably helped their film club to work for the next few years. Gilmour never forgot, or stopped trying to impart to his son, that films were created as entertainment. So while Jesse got a full run of classics, like Citizen Kane and Chinatown, he also watched horror films like Rosemary’s Baby and guilty pleasures like La Femme Nikita.

More than a movie memoir, it’s one of parenting, as Gilmour coaxes Jesse through some typically disastrous adolescent romances. Gilmour won’t be nominated for parent of the year anytime, but he’s got the critical basics down: empathy, honesty, and the ability to apologize. As a parent I often wonder if I taught my kids my own foibles, or if they go through them because its in their genes, so the best I can do is help them through it, as Gilmour does with humor and self-effacement in this winning book.

I recently saw Mamma Mia! in the theater, and enjoyed it very much. Afterward, I had the nagging sensation that it reminded me of something from Jane Austen. I began to make a list, and this is what I ended up with:

Did I miss any? As always, if you’re in the mood for more Austen goodness, visit the erudite and entertaining Austenblog.

Thanks to Weirleader, whose html might have worked but I couldn’t make it do so, and my tech support G. Grod, who turned this into a readable table. Let me know if it’s not readable enough.

The Mall of America recently updated its theaters, which are now independently operated. They now serve popcorn with real butter, and apparently have a very swank VIP theater. Link from MNSpeak.

Pet peeve: Minnesota is in the US, folks. And here, we spell it “theater.” So drop the pretentious nonsense that makes googling and finding your THEATER harder (I’m lookin’ at you MOA and Parkway) and use the US, not the English, spelling. Sheesh.

The Minneapolis Heights Theater is screening a double feature of Citizen Kane and The Magnificent Ambersons from Monday October 20 to Wednesday October 22, 2008. You can see one or both for $8. If you go, be sure to get their fabulous popcorn with REAL butter, or a treat from the Dairy Queen next door.

Is it wrong that I think the Pumpkin Pie Blizzard sounds really good? Even I, though, the mistress of overkill, think buttered popcorn and a blizzard is over the top.

Julie Taymor, who did a stunning adaptation of the harrowing Titus Andronicus, is set to adapt Shakespeare’s The Tempest for film. Russell Brand, of Forgetting Sarah Marshall, is set to play the drunken clown Trinculo.

You’ll never guess who’s going to play Prospero.

Can’t wait. Even if it’s a mess, it’ll be a gorgeous one. (Link from Entertainment Weekly)

Stefan Kanfer, at the City Journal, on films in black and white (Link from Arts & Letters Daily):

Gregg Toland, the greatest cinematographer of his generation, never shot in color. He and his A-picture directors, including John Ford, Orson Welles, and William Wyler, preferred to give audiences the sense that they were watching a suite of etchings. Who needed color when the haunting landscapes of Wuthering Heights materialized on screen, as if photographed in Emily Brontë’s nineteenth century? Or when Citizen Kane’s deep-focus montages breathed life into the story of a fatally ambitious press lord?

Those of us in the Twin Cities are fortunate to have a good cinema culture that screens many of the black and white films Kanfer mentions. If you don’t have access to film revivals, though, TCM and Netflix do an outstanding job of making these films easily available.

Is it me, or are photos of Claire Danes with her costar Zac Efron from the upcoming film, Me and Orson Welles, more than a little reminiscent of those of Angela and Jordan Catalano from My So-Called Life?

There was much crying and screaming at bedtime last night. I wonder, is the “price” of a good day a difficult bedtime? We met friends at the pool, then met them again later for burgers, hot dogs and great french fries at the Bulldog NE, picked by Minnesota Monthly as having the best burger in the state. After that, bedtime was challenging. But once Drake and Guppy were _in_ bed, they stayed there and fell asleep quickly, so G. Grod could watch a bit more of Branagh’s Hamlet. I’m not sure how I made it through all four hours in the theater when it came out. I can’t make it through an entire hour without nodding off. Then again, I was unmarried, without kids and twelve years younger in ‘96.

Half-Price Books (a US used book, movie and music store) is having a sale over Labor Day Weekend with an extra 20% off everything in the store, which is almost all at least half price already. Our little family brought home quite a stack of books and dvds last night; a pic to come, I hope.

I love the films of Baz Luhrmann. When I saw the trailer for his upcoming Australia, and heard the accompanying music, from one of my favorite films, Branagh’s Henry V, I got pretty excited. I know the music won’t necessarily be in the film, but the trailer + the music was quite stirring.

Sad news for fans of Ebert, Roeper, and fans of good film reviews. They are officially leaving At the Movies, the show that introduced Ebert, Siskel and the Thumbs Up and Down ratings.

Richard Roeper joined Roger Ebert on the show after Gene Siskel’s death. Ebert has long been absent from the show for health reasons. Several guest critics have filled in, but only a few have even come close to Ebert’s high standards of review, in my opinion: New York Times’ A.O. Scott, Village Voice’s Robert Wilonsky, and Chicago Tribune’s Michael Phillips.

Ebert and Roeper will continue to review movies in different media formats, such as Ebert’s site.

I Watch Stuff has the trailer for the movie adaptation of Kate DiCamillo’s Newbery-award winning book, The Tale of Despereaux: Being the Story of a Mouse, a Princess, Some Soup and a Spool of Thread.

I was surprised how cutesy this preview looked. The book is quite dark, even violent at times. DiCamillo is an advocate of not writing down to kids; she trusts her readers with stories that include life’s difficulties and injustices, as well as hope and redemption. I hope that this adaptation is more true to the book than the preview indicates.

Correction added later: The animation for the Despereaux movie is not done by the same team who did the bizarrely beautiful Triplets of Belleville. (Thanks to Camille of Book Moot for giving me the heads up that this had changed.) The directors previously worked on Flushed Away, Seabiscuit and Pleasantville. Check out the cast of voice talent, though. It’s impressive.