Todo Tiene Su Como-Se-Llama

Celtic Women

Doug and YouTube recently introduced me to a ridiculously-talented group called "Celtic Woman." After wandering through many of their songs (and listening to a few of them a couple dozen times), I went out today and bought one of their CDs: "A New Journey." I highly recommend it . . . here are a few of my favorites. It's quality stuff.

The Voice

The Spanish Lady

Dulaman

At the Ceili

It Is Finished

Potterheads rejoice! The 7th book is out, most of you have finished it (if you haven't . . . spoiler warning!), and it is a worthy final chapter in an epically-good series that I will relish sharing with fellow readers for some time to come. Rachel, having seen the first five movies and heard the first book read aloud (by me), wormed a partial summary of book six out of me so I could read Deathly Hallows out loud to her. Not what I would have done, but this is the girl that normally reads the ends of books first. I was just glad she didn't immediately jump to the epilogue and then tell me all about it.

I read about half of it aloud, and the rest we read separately. I finished on Sunday and she finished on Monday. Now she's started over . . . she read Sorceror's Stone and about half of Chamber yesterday. She probably would have read more, but I got irritable at about 2 in the morning when she kept exploding with shrieks of hysterical laughter and thrashing about while I was trying to sleep right next to her. I'm such a grump.

Anyway, back to Deathly Hallows. My expectations for this book were absolutely through the roof (no way to keep them down), and they were satisfied. This book has everything: weddings, funerals, high-speed, high-altitude chases, riddles, mysteries, sudden reversals, disguises, duels, a bank job, a battle . . . even a Grail quest! And it fills in perfectly all the gaps that were left in the story and backstory, all the way back to Dumbledore's early career. Awesome.

And, perhaps most important of all, I hope that anyone still saying these books cannot and do not speak profoundly and meaningfully of key Christian truths feels a right stupid git now. Harry selflessly walks to his death at Voldemort's hands and then finds himself in King's Cross for a discussion with Dumbledore about the deeper magic that Voldemort doesn't understand. He then returns to life where Voldemort is all ready to proclaim his triumphant victory, performing the cruciatus curse on Harry's limp body and lifting him into the air three times. Voldemort declares his supremacy to the still-defiant good guys, but they can't be hurt by him or his followers. They are protected from harm by Harry's blood sacrifice. Harry and Voldy then duel and Harry wins the final Hallow from him, becoming the "master of death."

Pretty blatant stuff.

As soon as I finished the book, I started combing the interwebs in search of others who "got it." I particularly wanted to see what John Granger had to say, but he's not covering the symbolism exhaustively just yet. If you start over at his blog, you'll find a fun list of 20 discussion points to look over. I commented on #12 (the Horcruxes and Hallows) because no one had mentioned the Grail aspects of the Quest.

In the meantime, while I await a more complete discussion of Deathly Hallows from Granger, I also discovered this. It's an outrageously long discussion of the Christian elements of Half-Blood Prince that Granger posted on a Barnes&Noble forum. Good reading, but sadly he eventually allowed himself to be drawn down into a rather silly and petty side-debate over the origins of Christianity (and came off rather badly, IMO) before the thread was locked by a moderator a few weeks later. But the initial post is interesting.

"Christianity Today" (long a bastion of enlightened reason regarding Harry amidst a sea of evangelical inanity and insanity) dove right in with a discussion of the latest books Christian elements. Good article.

And they aren't the only ones that noticed. "The Wall Street Journal" commented on it in their review, as well. (Thanks, Martinez.)

John Mark Reynolds at Scriptorium Daily soberly discusses his impressions of the final book and the series as a whole, as a reader who enjoyed them but is unsure of their literary merit or staying power. Here's more of the same from "Rafting the Tiber." Lots of good commentary out there, and I hope to stumble across some more as people have time to articulate.

Meanwhile, two more links: Remember those raving lunatics from "Exposing Satanism" that I discovered a few years back? No? Well, they're still around, but a lot of the stuff from their site isn't around anymore . . . this article is, though. It's good for an outraged laugh (sexual congress with goats?!), and there's some very clever (if self-defeating) symbology work. Reminds me of Dan Brown, oddly enough. And, finally, courtesy of Uncle Doug, here's an interview with Rowling in which she reveals some information that didn't make it into the epilogue. If you're feeling like you need some more closure, definitely check it out.

Darth Maul: Shadow Hunter

(Finished Darth Maul: Shadow Hunter on Monday and I'm flying through The Phantom Menace. Up next is Rogue Planet, and after that Outbound Flight by Timothy Zahn . . . be sure and find yourself a copy of that if you don't own one. Zahn is not to be missed. I'll be breaking for a few days to read Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, so the Zahn book should come up in a little under 2 weeks.)

Darth Maul: Shadow Hunter was written by Michael Reaves and published in January of 2001. It was Reaves first Star Wars book, though by no means his first writing experience in the universe. Apparently he was involved in a few episodes from the Droids and Ewoks TV series. He has since collaborated with Steve Perry on three Star Wars novels (including a forthcoming book on the origins of the Death Star), and he will be responsible for a trilogy centered on Coruscant during the Jedi Purge which will be released during the next two years. Non-Star Wars writings include a long and varied career in television on such shows as Star Trek: The Next Generation and Batman: The Animated Series, as well as many novels and short stories.

The book is set during the few days before Episode I begins, and ends as Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan are en route to Naboo.

Connections: The only ongoing characters with a significant role in the book are Darth Maul and Obi-Wan. I didn't detect any cameos, but several other movie characters make incidental appearances (Darth Sidious, Yoda, Qui-Gon, Trade Federation leaders, etc.). Most of the cast is new and appears only here.

Four Nemoidians are in on Darth Sidious's plot to blockade Naboo, but just before the plan goes into effect, one of them drops out and runs for Coruscant. He is intent on selling the information about the impending blockade (and who is really behind it) to the highest bidder and using the proceeds to disappear into comfortable retirement. With time running out, Sidious dispatches Darth Maul to quickly and quietly plug the leak, but there are a number of factors neither of them have counted on.

Drawn inexorably into the midst of these events are Lorn Pavan, a small-time information broker who has been down on his luck ever since the Jedi ruined his life, Pavan's "business partner" I-Five, a wise-cracking, heavily-modified protocol droid, and Darsha Assant, an untried Jedi Padawan who has just completely flubbed her first important solo mission. These three unlikely companions will match wits with a Dark Lord of the Sith (and worse) deep in the treacherous, terrifying underbelly of the galaxy's capital planet.

This book is pretty great, as Star Wars books go: simple and straightforward, but full of excitement and flavor. Reaves writes very naturally in the lingo, and his vocabulary (Star Wars and non-Star Wars) is large and varied. The story is neatly woven together, and you never know what's going to happen next. There is a genuine tension because the heroes can (and probably will) die. The hair-breadth escapes feel like just that, reminiscent of an Indiana Jones-style "how in the heck can they get out of this?" stunt.

The characters, by the way, are really good. The banter between Pavan and his droid is classic, and Darsha (the amazing fallible Jedi) is a nice change from the usual flat, bland characterization others in her order receive. Speaking of flat, that's what Darth Maul is . . . but it's not Reaves fault (gee, whose fault could it be?). Nevertheless, he portrays the character very compellingly. Maul remains a credibly scary villain even though he fails several times to finish off his quarry because of the way Reaves displays the Sith's incredible arrogance. Sending Obi-Wan to follow in the wake of destruction Maul leaves behind is also a fun move.

There is another character in the book that Reaves does exceptionally well: Coruscant. Reaves really brings the planet to life for us, populating its underworld with strange life forms, street gangs, criminal organizations, tribes of mutant cannibals . . . and surrounding it all an atmosphere of deep-ghetto gloom and grime that exists just beneath the shining surface of the planet's upper-levels. This is not (thank goodness) George Lucas's Coruscant. All in all a bit shallow, but a cracking good read nonetheless.

Grade: A-

Cloak of Deception

(Well, well . . . it's a trend. I finished Cloak of Deception over the weekend, about a week behind schedule, and now I'm halfway through Darth Maul: Shadow Hunter. Next up is the novelization of The Phantom Menace.)

Cloak of Deception was written by James Luceno and published in May of 2001. Luceno has unleashed half a dozen Star Wars novels on the world in the past 7 years, and he's still writing them. This was his 3rd foray. Other writings are largely also playing around in other people's universes: some Robotech books and the novelizations of The Shadow and The Mask of Zorro. In my opinion, his novels are about as distasteful as that resume suggests, but apparently the publishers and large segments of the fan community disagree. Luceno continues to receive juicy sections of the timeline to fill in, including the final book in the ambitious 19-book New Jedi Order series and the two novels that bookend Revenge of the Sith.

The book is set during the Rise of the Empire Era, covering several months beginning about a year before Episode I (or 33 years before Star Wars). It is currently the earliest such novel, although there are scads of junior novels that come before it, most notably the 19-book Jedi Apprentice series, detailing the apprenticeship of Obi-Wan Kenobi ad nauseum.

Connections: Luceno is a big fan of cameos, and several characters who are very important in other books or series make brief, minor appearances in Cloak of Deception. The alien Fosh Jedi, Vergere, forms part of the main Jedi team in the book. She will be captured by the Yuuzhan Vong a few years after this and reappear several decades later to play a key role in the New Jedi Order. Of course, Luceno has a personal interest in giving her extra screentime, as he created her character in the first place for his previously-written NJO novels. Jedi Master Jorus C'Baoth makes a brief appearance in the Jedi Temple. He plays a key role in the exploratory Outbound Flight a few years after this, only to disappear and pop up about a decade after Star Wars as a villanous Dark Jedi in Timothy Zahn's excellent Thrawn trilogy. Finally, Grand Moff Tarkin pops up as a lowly lieutenant governor (and friend of Senator Palpatine) on a backwater world.

Cloak of Deception relates the ridiculously complex backstory of the rising tensions and intrigue between the Trade Federation and the Republic that led to the blockade of Naboo seen at the beginning of Episode I. The cast of characters is enormous, almost to the point of being unwieldy. It includes a large number of Jedi (all recognizable from the movies, save a few notable exceptions like Vergere and C'Baoth), the Neimoidian leaders of the Trade Federation, numerous senators (most notably Senator Palpatine) and other government leaders, members of the Nebula Front (a "terrorist" organization), and various mercenaries. Each of these groups has their own subplot (some have more than one), and these labrynthine little storylines appear to be weaving intricately together into what we hope is a coherent whole . . . but it never quite gels.

The gist: The Nebula Front has hired mercenaries to carry out various and sundry plots designed to throw both the Republic and the Trade Federation into chaos (piratery, political assassinations and the like). Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan (written with all the depth of a cardboard cut-out) are in full-on detective mode down the trail left by merc leader Captain Cohl and his sidekicks Rella and Boiny (what a wretched name). These three are easily the most interesting characters in the book, for what it's worth.

Meanwhile, the Trade Federation has entered into what they hope will be a mutually benificial relationship with Darth Sidious, but his schemes are quite a bit more sinister than they had expected. One assumes that he and his alter-ego, Senator Palpatine, are pulling all the strings from behind the scenes, but that is far from clear by the end. In fact, not much is clear except that something very complicated just happened and nobody really knows what it was (but some people know that they don't know).

As you can probably tell, I didn't think this book was all that good. It got off to a bad start, dragged heavily in the middle sections, and then picked up towards the climax, but failed to justify itself in the final pay-off. Luceno's writing feels like he is consciously trying to make it sound Star Wars, which just makes it feel artificial. Luceno also gets way too descriptive in all the wrong places. I don't need to know what a Jedi is. I don't need a detailed description of what a lightsaber looks like. There's really no good reason to aim Star Wars novels at someone who's never seen the movies.

On the flip side, after appearances in 3 books by Luceno, I still don't have a very clear picture of what Vergere looks like. The best mental image I can come up with based on his descriptions looks like something out of Dr. Seuss. And speaking of characters, Luceno just can't bring them to life. His alien characters are indistinguishable from his human characters. His Jedi are all the same (and all boring). Poor Obi-Wan literally has no personality at all.

There are some very promising moments spotted here and there. Captain Cohl and his gang are fun, and all of their scenes are good. The climax has a very intense Manchurian Candidate feel to it that I very much enjoyed (I'm not at all sure that it wasn't directly inspired by that film). And there's a great scene where the Jedi accidentally start a slave rebellion. Senator Palpatine feels like a very interesting character here, as we watch him wheel and deal and play political games with skill and style. But (and this, at least, isn't Luceno's fault) knowing that he's just an evil Sith Lord who wants to take over the galaxy for power's sake just drains all the interest right out of his motivations and machinations. Sad.

Grade: C

Darth Bane: Path of Destruction

(I actually finished Darth Bane last Thursday, but I forgot to post about it, and now I'm well over halfway through the next book, Cloak of Deception by James Luceno.)

Darth Bane: Path of Destruction was written by Drew Karpyshyn and released in September of 2006. This is his first (and only) Star Wars book, and almost all of his other work seems to have been in scripting video games. His most prestigious credits to date are Baldur's Gate II and Knights of the Old Republic, both well-liked by RPG fans, as far as I've heard. As of this month, a sequel to Path of Destruction (which was quite well received, apparently) is slated for release in December 2007. It will replace a previously-planned novel by Luceno about Darth Plagueis (master of Darth Sidious). The tentative title is Darth Bane: Rule of Two.

As you might guess from the title of the latter game (and the fact that I'm moving chronologically), this book is set during the days of the Old Republic. You know that whole "A long time ago . . ." schtick? Well, think longer. Path of Destruction is set 1000 years before the events of Star Wars during the earliest of the 6 Star Wars eras: the Old Republic Era (obviously), which covers events from 5,000 to 1,000 years before Star Wars. Path of Destruction is currently the only novel set during this era . . . the remaining 4 millenia being covered by a whole bunch of comic books and a few computer games. Sparse.

Oh, incidentally, the climactic conclusion of Path of Destruction takes place amidst the massive Seventh Battle of Ruusan, the pivotal event that brings the Old Republic Era to an end and ushers in the Rise of the Empire Era. As a result, the planned sequel would not join Path of Destruction in the earlier era and it is likely to remain the lone Old Republic novel for some time to come.

Connections: Jedi Master General Hoth plays a key role in the novel as a hero of the Republic. While not stated explicitly, it is reasonable to assume that the ice planet from The Empire Strikes Back is named after him. The book makes numerous references to the events and characters of the comic books which chronicle the Jedi/Sith conflicts of three and four millenia before. Darth Revan makes an appearance in a Sith Holocron. The aftermath of the aforementioned Battle of Ruusan will eventually lead to the creation of a monument that would later be known as the Valley of the Jedi and play a crucial role in the Jedi Knight computer games.

Darth Bane: Path of Destruction tells the story of Dessel, a dirt-poor miner enslaved in all but name by a huge corporation on a backwater world, and his transformation into Darth Bane, Dark Lord of the Sith and originator of the "1 master, 1 apprentice" rule of the Sith order. Forced to flee his homeworld, Apatros, he joins the army of the Sith in the epic ongoing conflict against the Republic and the Jedi. After repeatedly leading his unit to glorious victories, he is plucked from the ranks and taken to train at the Sith Academy on Korriban before following his own path to Lehon and Ruusan.

Meanwhile, Lords Kaan, Kopecz, and Qordis lead the Sith forces in their galaxy-wide campaign against the Jedi. Ruusan becomes the focus of the conflict, and General Hoth gathers all of the Jedi padawans, knights, and masters into an "Army of Light" to counter the Sith berserkers, assassins, and lords on the other side. The victories, defeats, strategies, and intrigues on both sides make up the other half of the story, periodically breaking up the rise of Bane before the two plotlines converge at the end.

I liked this book a good deal more than I thought I would. It lacked recognizable characters (even Yoda isn't born yet), starred a villain, had rather lousy cover art, and was written by an unknown . . . not a good confluence, generally, but the result isn't half-bad. Karpyshyn does a fantastic job of developing a sympathetic main character whose descent into evil is both natural and understandable because of his personality and the events around him.

And those events certainly aren't boring: intense games of Sabacc (Star Wars poker), space battles, ground battles, commando missions, saber duels . . . all the usual stuff in a well-paced mix. The main character is solid and well-developed, and there is a pretty good cast of supporting characters. Karphyshyn is wise not to attempt too many clever connections with later events; the 1,000-year distance between events would really stretch internal credibility. He stays focused on the subject at hand, and provides some excellent insights into the nature of the Dark Side of the Force (which we rarely see examined in such detail).

Another element that I enjoyed, just as a change of pace from most Star Wars novels, was the large-scale, very literal good-against-evil conflict. There is an archetypal fantasy feel to it all. You've got the Army of Light taking on the Brotherhood of Darkness in what is essentially a very violent philosophical disagreement. The Jedi believe that strength exists to defend the weak. The Sith believe strength exists to acquire power and subjugate the weak. It is a very simplistic duality, but it raises interesting thoughts about what motivates the conflicts and forces at the heart of Lucas's movie trilogies.

So, good story, good main character, competently written, plenty of action . . . a bit simplistic and not hugely memorable, probably not a good entry point for anyone whose only previous experience is with the movies.

Grade: B

Ding Dong!

And back we went to the Dallas area for another evening of live entertainment. This time it was Wicked, first published as book over ten years ago before emerging as a Broadway musical in 2003. Wicked is a fun, clever deconstruction of The Wizard of OZ from the perspective of the witches.

The scene opens with Glenda the Good confirming rumors of the happy demise of the Wicked Witch of the West (Elpheba hereafter). One bold citizen asks if it is also true that Glenda and Elpheba were once friends, and the remainder of the story operates via flashback as we explore the development of these two characters (who first meet at school) leading up to the infamous melting. Along the way, the story tweaks the origins of Dorothy's beloved traveling companions and offers plenty of cool twists and turns, particularly for those familiar with the original plot.

The sets and costumes . . . actually, the entire atmosphere . . . in this production are enchanting and fantastical. The choreography is lively and fun to watch. Most of all, though, the music is pure magic. Probably nearly half of the songs are "my favorite," and even the ones that aren't are really good. I would say that the music is much stronger in the first act than it is in the second (particularly in terms of the finales of each). However, the second act is where the plot kicks into high gear, and it has some of the best non-musical sections.

Of the eight songs I find the most enjoyable, six appear in the first act (and four of those are in the first half of the first act). The second act songs are a lot more about plot development, while those in the first act are more about character development. This is an almost inevitable failing, I suppose, but it is a failing nonetheless. All of the music is good, as I say, but nothing from the second act is stuck in my head right now.

I have to admit that I have a certain fondness for deconstructive reimaginings of familiar stories. Till We Have Faces is, of course, my favorite C.S. Lewis book, and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead is one of my favorite movies (yes, I know it's a play . . . I've never seen it staged). Drawing a relatively minor character out into the limelight and using their perspective to cast a new light on a series of events has got to be one of the most fun exercises in speculative fiction.

Wicked is actually surprisingly similar to Till We Have Faces in many ways, come to think of it. A comparison/contrast between the characters of Orual and Elpheba would probably yield rich results. Both undergo somewhat parallel transformations over the courses of their lives, rejecting the powerful authorities they had once revered. Both have what could be classified as "destructive love" for the people they care about. Throwing these analogous elements into sharp contrast, though, would be the way in which they are viewed and handled within the context of their respective stories. There are obviously very different worldviews at work here, and thematically the priorities are not the same.

Speaking of themes, Wicked explores some very interesting territory. Okay, sure, at its heart I think it boils down to a rather frivolous musical, but there's still a lot going on here. Wicked examines prejudice, honesty, and whether virtue is more than skin-deep. Most of all, though, Wicked is about historiography. Okay . . . not really. Still, it is very aware that history is often, as Napoleon said, "the version of past events that people have decided to agree upon." Or, in this case, the version that people in charge have decided to agree upon.

Actually, what struck me the most was that the difference in perspective between The Wizard of OZ and Wicked comes down to the difference between the way a child (Dorothy) sees things, and the way an adult sees them. Dorothy is an ingénue, and as such she believes that people who are nice to her are good people and people who aren't are wicked people. She cannot tell the difference between the truth and an artful lie (which we already know is the wizard's specialty), and she is very easy to take advantage of.

With that assumption in place, it is not very difficult to believe that this story is more realistic than the other. Wicked simply takes the fantasy material and tacks on the reality that good and evil are rarely as clearly defined as we would like outside of . . . well, fantasy.

Chariots of Fire: Best Picture, 1981

The 54th Annual Academy Awards ceremony was hosted by Johnny Carson, and introduced the Best Makeup category (thanks to the outstanding work done on The Elephant Man the year before). Chariots of Fire was nominated for 7 Oscars: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Editing, Best Original Screenplay, Best Original Score, Best Costumes, and Best Supporting Actor (Ian Holm). It lost Best Director to Warren Beatty for Reds. Reds was also nominated for Best Costumes, which is rather ironic. Chariots of Fire had a number of Edwardian costumes reserved for use after Reds (set during the same period) had finished with them. When Reds went over schedule, the costumes became unavailable and other arrangements had to be made. Chariots went on to win the award.

Meanwhile, Best Editing went to Raiders of the Lost Ark (Reds and Raiders were also both Best Picture nominees). Ian Holm lost to John Gielgud for his performance in Arthur. Interestingly, Gielgud also played a minor role in Chariots of Fire as a character who regards Ian Holm's character somewhat disdainfully. Chariots won its other nominations for a total of 4 awards.

The movie follows two very different men, Harold Abrahams and Eric Liddell, who both ran and won gold medals for Great Britain in the 1924 World Olympics in Paris.

Abrahams is an Englishman of Jewish descent attending Cambridge. He is obsessively competitive and cannot conceive of losing. All his life he has felt that he has something to prove, seeing prejudice (real and imagined) against his race all around him. He believes that victory on the racetrack will not only cement his right to be called an Englishman, but that it will justify his very existence. "If I can't win, I won't run," he forcefully declares. But later, in a moment of doubt, he admits to a fellow athlete: "That is your secret, contentment; I am 24 and I've never know it. I'm forever in pursuit and I don't even know what I am chasing."

Liddell is a Scottish Protestant whose parents are missionaries to China. He feels called to follow them there, but first he wishes to glorify God by racing in the Olympics. His sister, Jenny, worries that spending time racing instead of attending to his ministry will damage his commitment to the Lord. His response: "I believe God made me for a purpose, but he also made me fast. And when I run I feel His pleasure." He is truly not interested at all in personal glory. When he wins a race, he capitalizes on the gathering of people to reel off an impromptu sermon (and what a handy metaphor to go from!).

Abrahams finds his perviously unshakeable confidence faltering after he loses a race to Liddell, and recruits a coach to improve his form. As the big race nears, he finds himself intimidated. "I've known the fear of losing but now I am almost too frightened to win," he says. We see the elation of victory rush to his face as he crosses the finish line, but his success leaves him feeling strangely empty. Having achieved his purpose, he begins to feel keenly the void it left behind. Victory for self-glorification has failed to give him meaning.

Liddell faces a very different problem when he discovers that the heat for his race is to be held on Sunday. He will not run on Sunday, standing firm on that principle even when pressured by a small group of the nobility and the prince of Wales himself. He recalls not only the worries of his sister, but also his privileged position as a very public representative of his faith. And, most of all, he believes in the importance of following his convictions about God's law, even if no one is watching. People are watching, though, and soon his principled stand is receiving world-wide press.

His countrymen and his fellow Christians have every reason to be proud of him, but there is still the matter of his being able to run. This is solved when a fellow member of the British team offers Liddell his spot in a different race. Just before the race, one of the American runners hands Liddell a paper with 1st Samuel 2:30 scrawled on it: "He who honors Me, I will honor." Liddell goes on to win the race in his own strange way: head thrown back, mouth wide open, hand clutching the note. And then, elated but without missing a beat, he goes on to become a missionary to China. His entire life's focus is to glorify God, and there will always be ways to do that.

Abrahams lived until 1978, and stayed involved in athletics throughout his life. His funeral bookends the flashbacks that make up the bulk of the movie. Liddell died in a prison camp in China near the end of World War II. As Chariots of Fire informs us just before the credits, "All of Scotland mourned."

My one complaint would have to be directed at the music. Shocking, right? I mean, the opening theme of Chariots of Fire is legendary, and the score won an Oscar. There are parts of it, indeed, that are quite excellent, but overall I found it intrusive. More than anything else, the score grounds this movie solidly in the decade in which it was made. So much synthetic music; so very 1980s. If they had just done the same things with more conventional instruments, there wouldn't be such a jarring sense of anachronism. I have always felt that with a historical movie like this, the music playing over scenes should not be something that the characters would be confused or baffled if they heard. It ought to fit somehow with their time and place, either in style or instrumentation.

Nevertheless, this is a pretty good movie, made all the more excellent by its thematic elements. It manages to come across more as historical fiction/biopic material than as inspirational sports movie, which is all to the good. This may be the closest thing to a Christian movie that has won or ever will win an Oscar, with the possible exception of A Man for All Seasons (in fact, producer David Puttnam was searching for a story about conscience in the same vein as that film when he stumbled across the story of Eric Liddell in an Olympic trivia book). The lead actors get completely lost in their characters, and all of the performances are marvellous. Chariots of Fire also truly evokes its period setting, and I was particularly impressed by the difficulty of reproducing so convincingly the Olympic games of 80 years ago.

As for the other movies that came out that year, they're a pretty rum bunch (as you might expect from the early '80s). The only other truly great movie I've seen from this year is Raiders of the Lost Ark, which is certainly a heavy contender, but perhaps not quite as worthy of the Best Picture award. That aside, I don't think anyone will argue with me when I say that Raiders should have won Best Original Score. The themes from that movie are even more popular than the still well-known Chariots theme, and John Williams never made the desperate mistake of abandoning the traditional symphony orchestra when scoring movies.

To Days of Inspiration

At nearly 4:00 on Saturday afternoon, Rachel and I set out with Gallagher and Becca in one car, following Anna, Scholl, Randy, and Barbour in another. We were all headed for Fort Worth to catch a live performance of the Broadway musical Rent at 8:00. I passed the time with an excellent history of the composition of the King James Bible and an entertaining history of Christian rock while the Rent soundtrack played in the background.

Then we ran into a bit of trouble in Dallas. Namely, that we weren't supposed to be in Dallas. It turns out that there is a grouping of street names in Dallas identical to several of the street names surrounding our destination in Fort Worth. Lame. Fortunately, after a hurried consultation revealed a set of directions on our parking passes, we had just enough time to book it over to our actual destination, find a small pizza joint, and bolt down a large pepperoni pizza before the show began. Afterwards, we searched diligently until we found a Steak 'n Shake, and between this, that, and the other, we didn't get back to campus until 3 AM.

The show was magnificent. I own the movie and the abridged movie soundtrack, but I thought this was much better in some ways. It wasn't quite as good in others . . . Mainly, if I hadn't seen the movie first, some things might have been difficult to follow. But I had, so that wasn't really a problem. The movie version also cut out several numbers, including a really great song called "And It's Beginning to Snow" that is one of my favorites. I thought the actors really got into their roles more on-stage, and there was an emotional electricity that was lacking in the screen version.

The musical is based on La Vie de Bohème. It follows a group of starving artist types living in New York City as they struggle to survive and create over the course of a single year. It is not the sort of musical that I think a conventional Christian worldview incorporates easily, with what could easily be perceived as a glowing endorsement for Bohemianism (a rejection of society's values in all forms), open approval of homosexuality, advice to live by the whims of the moment without regard for consequences, and so on.

In spite of this, or perhaps because of it, I think Rent has a great deal to offer a Christian audience: artistically, intellectually, spiritually, and (of course) thematically. Allow me to explain.

First, Rent is a really good musical. It's not my favorite ever, but it's one of them. It has a well-developed cast of likable characters and a rich setting. The songs are all horribly catchy, and there are several real show-stoppers mixed in amongst many are just pure fun. Just about anyone should be able to appreciate its merits on an artistic level alone, to say nothing of the rest.

Second, Rent has a great deal of valuable insight into the culture it is examining. I think all too often we dismiss the value of understanding cultures that we should be reaching out to. It is perhaps easier to recognize the importance of this when in a foreign country, since we have to learn a whole new language with its own idioms and history in order to even communicate. But why would anyone suppose that those principles don't apply just as much when reaching across worldviews as when reaching across the world itself?

As such, if you're interested in the philosophy and subculture represented in Rent, the musical is a great place to begin. At the least it would be worth experiencing as a point of entry with the show's large and growing following. A whole lot of people are attracted by something that they see here. Maybe it's worth figuring out what that is.

Third, if you watch Rent and come away (like the Plugged In reviewer did) with only the sense that you've just watched a commercial for a lifestyle you don't agree with . . . Well, congratulations on your ultra-shallow analytical skills. This may be an expression of the Bohemian lifestyle, certainly, but it is hardly a glorification of it.

These people's choices have not been affirmed by society or circumstances, by any stretch of the imagination. They've obviously had a lot good times in the past, but by now they are definitely on a downward spiral. They live, starving and freezing, in the worst conditions. Two of them suffer from the consequences of destructive addictions. Four of them are dying of AIDs. Almost all of them carry the scars of fractured or fracturing relationships. This willingness to take such a raw and honest look at the realities of this life smacks of a certain commitment to truth.

This is a commitment sorely lacking in a good 99% of Christian movies, which do not care to acknowledge the fact that, regardless of your lifestyle or religious affiliations, life is not all cotton candy and fabergé eggs. In fact, Rent's gravest misstep comes when it succumbs to that same hollow formula at the very end. The moment rings incredibly false, all the more so because it has rung so true up to that point. We are happy that the story has ended well, but really, who could see it for the first time without rolling their eyes when Mimi invokes the hackneyed "light at the end of the tunnel" gag. It cheapens everything the musical has accomplished. Despite that, there is a great deal of value in the truth of what we have seen before this.

Finally, I would say that the central narrative tension of Rent (although it is rife with subplots) is the question of relationships (especially the one between Mimi and Roger). Angel and Collins have the perfect relationship: a selfless commitment to the other person that doesn't dwell on the past or the future. They serve as a contrast to Roger's fear and Maureen's unwillingness to give up playing the field. Mimi and Roger meet just after Roger has declared his deepest desire: to leave behind just one song to be remembered by, so his life (a mess of drugs and death and AIDs) won't have been a complete waste.

Throughout the couple's long coming to terms, he hangs on to that desire as he has first expressed it, unwilling to give it up. The creative process is a convenient excuse for him to insulate himself from more painful relationships. But what he finally realizes (almost too late) is that he has not only cut himself off from a relationship that is more fulfilling even than an artistic legacy, but in so doing, he has cut himself off from the source of his art itself.

Take a chance on love first and everything else will be added unto you. Tomorrow is not soon enough, because today might be the last day you have. It's not so much about disregarding consequences for impulsive behavior as it is about taking advantage of every fleeting moment you have. We may not have a system by which to measure the value of how someone spent their life, but if they have at least truly loved and been loved, then they haven't wasted their time.

A Double Dose of Dopey Derring-Do

It's high time for a real post. I have been throwing all of my writing energy in other directions for the past week and a half, but now I'm back again. I saw two movies . . . when was it? Gosh, two weeks ago now . . . that I wanted to write about, because they were basically from the same genre and shared some of the same flaws from that genre. I rather enjoyed the first and squirmed uncomfortably during most of the second. They were Curse of the Golden Flower and 300.

Curse of the Golden Flower was just an outrageously fun movie in the vein of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and Hero (but not as good as either of those) in terms of genre conventions (but without any flying). If you can't deal with the silliness inherent in the outrageous (but frickin' cool) acrobatics and ridiculous overkill (like the arrows in Hero), then this really isn't for you. I think that's a shame, personally, since I believe the heavily stylized should never be judged by its resemblance to reality. It's like hating a piece of modern art because it doesn't look like what it's supposed to be. You can hate the style if you must, but don't complain that it's unrealistic.

Anyway, Golden Flower is a sumptuous production, beautiful to behold. The costumes got an Oscar nod, and the sets and art direction are rich and ornate to match. It wouldn't be hard to sit and drink that in and enjoy it without paying any attention to the plot or the dialogue.

As for said plot, it basically boils down to this: The emperor of China won't be dead anytime soon, but he's got his eye on the question of succession. He brings the whole family (three sons and an estranged wife) together on the eve of an approaching holiday to have a little fun (sound familiar?). Golden Flower basically combines the scheming and intrigue of The Lion in Winter with the violence and high body count of Hamlet and tosses in a dash of the madness of King Lear and plenty of Oriental flair to produce something that is less satisfying than any of them, but still a heck of a lot of fun without taking itself too seriously.

See, the emperor is slowly poisoning his wife with a medicine that will eventually drive her insane. The empress has been having an affair with the oldest son (who is a product from an earlier liason of the emperor's). This earlier liason is now the wife of the ingratiating court physician, who is working with their daughter to produce and serve the empress her medicine. Said daughter, meanwhile, is in love with the oldest son (both being completely unaware of the looming shadow of incest).

The second son, oldest child of the empress, will soon be receiving the title of crown prince now held by his older half-brother, but feels compelled to join his mother in a rebellion against the emperor in an effort to save her sanity. And on and on it goes as the intrigue swirls in tight circles, revelations and counterrevelations are made, and the whole Forbidden City becomes a giant battlefield in reflection of the chaotic relationships between the members of the royal family.

Golden Flower in a nutshell: Imagine Ophelia going crazy and getting killed by ninjas instead of by a pond.

As for 300, well, that's a very different story. I'll try not to let my critique of the movie turn into a critique of the movie's fans. However, if I do and you are one, understand that I'm not talking about anyone I know, I'm talking about a vague, hypothetical "average movie-goer." With that disclaimer in place, I will accuse anyone who takes offense of having a guilty conscience . . . but feel free to defend the thing, if you can.

For those of you who are spelunkers, 300 is a movie based on a comic book inspired by a '60s movie about the Battle of Thermopylae (during which a ridiculously outnumbered Greek force held off the Persian army for three days). As such it would be fairly disingenuous to engage in a rigorous historical critique, since none of the filmmakers are officially pretending that this is historical. At the same time, there is a definite historiographical perspective at work here, and it is none too subtle (or, to me, palatable).

I'd be lying if I said I didn't think the movie had some pretty cool parts, but there were much longer stretches during which I was fantastically bored. And, over and above everything else, I had a distinct sense throughout that somebody was coming after my brain to scour it with lye soap and steel wool. 300 is intellectually idiotic and ideologically iniquitous, and for things I hate it's hard to beat the festering combination of dumb and preachy.

Nearly every spoken word in 300 is so disconnected from its actions that one would almost suspect it of having been completely redubbed by the studio months after production wrapped. Imagine walking into a movie theater of the future and seeing a member of the KKK in full regalia stand before a burning cross and give an impassioned recitation of Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech as the soundtrack swells gloriously. That is how confused this movie is. Picture flipping through channels and seeing a televangelist fornicating on-stage while he preaches a sermon on sexual immorality. That is how revolting this movie is. There is a values system at work here that is outrageously simplistic, deeply offensive and fantastically off-base.

Morality in 300 is literally only skin-deep. If you are a good person, you are also a good-looking person . . . If you are an evil person, you look like a freak of nature . . . or vice-versa. The looks may well be the cause and the behavior may be the effect as far as we are given to understand. What is completely disorienting, though, is that what sane, civilized people recognize as good and evil are mixed together like a chocolate and vanilla swirl, and every Spartan gets to snack on a tasty scoop of ambiguity.

Let's review: The Spartans stand for truth, justice and the American way. Their government is some sort of happy enlightened monarchial republic thing where women have a voice. They prize freedom and courage and masculine virtue. They also have legalized baby murder. Their male children are torn from home at the age of seven, brutalized and brainwashed in preparation for a lifetime career based on the idea that there will always be someone to dismember. Meanwhile, the most beautiful females get shipped off to spend their lives in a drug-induced haze of sexual exploitation at the hands of the corrupt, diseased and lecherous priesthood. But hey, at least they hate faggots.

And those are just the heroes. I'll choose to ignore the Persians as a sodden mass of underdeveloped cannon fodder. They aren't villains, they're target dummies. For the most part, their sins are no different from the sins of the Spartans, they are merely carried out on a much grander scale. Seriously, the Persians don't do anything that the Spartans don't do, they just do a lot more of it and it looks wierder. Perhaps their only unique crime is in being too inclusive. Anyone can join the Persian Empire; true Spartans insist on racial purity.

So, forget the Persians. Let's talk for a moment about the only two interesting characters: Theron and Ephialtes, the Spartan traitors. Theron is a namby-pamby peacemonger. This is reason enough to hate him, certainly, but we find out later that this is actually because he has cannily sold out the Spartans to the Persians. In the end, it seems that he is an evil hater of freedom because he is a thinker and a talker instead of a fighter. I couldn't shake that feeling everytime he slunk onto the screen.

Ephialtes looks like some sort of hideous hybrid of Quasimodo and the Elephant Man. He is an outcast whose parents were forced to flee Sparta rather than have their infant child dashed against the rocks (now there's an enlightened free society to give your life for). His father taught him how to fight, and he is nothing if not courageous. But King Leonidas won't accept his service . . . he's too short to be of any use in a phalanx. Ironically (moronically?), the Spartans go on to break formation during virtually every battle sequence so they can grandstand solo, so there was really no reason to shut Ephialtes out.

Rejected outright by the Spartans, the bitter Ephialtes naturally goes straight to the Persians and delivers the tactical weak spot to them. The muted implication surrounding the character is that he stands as a vindication of the policy of infanticide. If his parents weren't so weak and compassionate, his tragic existence would never have brought about such an unfortunate outcome.

There was a rather "healthy" discussion about which of the two movies was better (worse?) after we saw them. For me it boils down to this: Curse of the Golden Flower has a charming literacy going for it, whatever its flaws. 300 relentlessly subverts its own perverted logic while affirming the most loathsome elements of jingoistic machismo.

Tom Jones: Best Picture, 1963

What an incredibly strange batch got hauled in at the 37th Annual Academy Awards (hosted by Jack Lemmon). Tom Jones was nominated for 10 Oscars: Best Picture, Best Director (Tony Richardson), Best Original Score, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Actor (Albert Finney), Best Supporting Actor (Hugh Griffith), Best Art Direction (Color), and 3 for Best Supporting Actress (Diane Cilento, Edith Evans, Joyce Redman). It won the first 4. Ironically, the winners were not present for the first 3 of those 4 awards, and they were accepted by someone else.

As for the rest, Best Actor went to Sidney Poitier for Lilies of the Field, Best Supporting Actor to Melvyn Douglas for Hud, Best Art Direction to Cleopatra (starring Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton) and Best Supporting Actress to Margaret Rutherford for The V.I.P.s (also starring Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton). 1963 was one of those years where Oscar didn't pick many movies that people would remember favorably (if at all) . . . an off-year (awful year?) if you will.

Tom Jones is based (heavily or loosely, I do not know) on Henry Fielding's massive 18th century novel of the same title. Clocking in at just over 2 hours, the movie maintains a relentlessly frenetic pace as much for slapstick effect as to cover even just the bare bones of the original plot. Squire Allworthy, a bachelor living with his spinster sister, retires to his bedroom one evening and discovers an illegitimate infant boy occupying his bed. Blame for the child's existence quickly falls on Jenny Jones, a household servant, and she is promptly exiled along with the local barber accused of being the father. Squire Allworthy adopts the baby, dubbing him Tom Jones and raising him as his own (sort of).

Before long, the squire's sister marries and has a son of her own, Blifil, and the two boys grow up together. Tom is a rollicking, lusty lover of fun and sport, while Blifil is a model student and a prim, stuck-up prig. Both men love Sophie Western, but she only cares for Tom . . . this is unfortunate since he can't seem to keep his pants on around a large segment of the local female population. Blifil soon exposes Tom's wicked ways and he is exiled, leaving Blifil the logical choice to marry Sophie and unite the estates and fortunes of Squires Western and Allworthy. Sophie, horrified, runs away with her cousin, Mrs. Fitzpatrick, and half the major characters follow in hot pursuit.

Meanwhile, Tom falls in with all sorts of entertaining people, and starts bed-hopping again. Everyone winds up in London for a long interlude of dancing around social conventions and whatnot. Tom carries on more affairs and gets in more trouble, and finally all sorts of revelations are made just in time for a climactic last-second rescue from the gallows and a happy ending for Tom.

Tom Jones is chaotic and unfocused, and its pacing is a disaster. It has definite flashes of genius, and a good deal of honest hilarity. However, by the time the ending rolls around, it is difficult not to feel that the film has long since worn out its welcome. Far too much screentime is taken up by material that is either boring or irritating.

Albert Finney is fantastic in the title role, charismatic and fun throughout. His performance here is certainly far better than the one that would get him his next acting nomination over 10 years later (as Hercule Poirot in Murder on the Orient Express). Finney inhabits and possesses his character completely, and it is difficult not to find at least a little enjoyment whenever he is on screen. Tom Jones is also blessed with some magnificent set pieces, including an enormous, rollicking and elaborately-staged fox hunt featuring some great aerial shots of the action and a rich and magnificent costume ball full of rich and fantastical outfits of all kinds.

The movie further benefits (occasionally) from a style that rarely takes itself seriously, lampooning older movie conventions along the way. Tom Jones opens like a silent film, complete with melodramatic music and title cards, and isn't above frequent slapstick and "Keystone-esque" sped-up chase scenes. Like much of the repertoire of Monty Python (which Tom Jones almost seems to foreshadow from time to time) some of this works extraordinarily well while some is just too silly or outrageous to elicit more than a groan . . . and it is often not clear why some things work and others don't.

Ultimately, though, it's all just too much. Tom Jones drags too often, and in all the wrong places. Perhaps if an additional half-hour of subplots had been shaved off, or if the characters weren't so constantly interacting at a fever pitch, it would be an easier movie to watch and enjoy. There are certainly plenty of glimmers of a much better movie showing through beneath its exhausting and campy tone.

I've only seen three of the movies involved in the 1963 awards (besides Tom Jones), but it seems to have been something of a year of "ultimates," particularly in terms of ensemble casting. The three I've seen are The Sword in the Stone, It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World, and The Great Escape. And I've seen a handful of others that weren't noticed: Hitchcock's campy The Birds, Peter Sellers' hilarious The Pink Panther, and Audrey Hepburn and Cary Grant's magnificent pairing in the comedy/romance/thriller Charade.

It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World may not be the funniest comedy you've ever seen, but at 192 minutes, it's probably the longest. And it probably has the most epic all-star and comedic cast you're ever likely to find on a single screen: Spencer Tracy, Milton Berle, Sid Caesar, Ethel Merman, Mickey Rooney, Phil Silvers, Jonathan Winters, Jim Backus, Andy Devine, Peter Falk, Buster Keaton, Don Knotts, Carl Reiner, Jimmy Durante, Jack Benny, Jerry Lewis, and the Three Stooges. I remember watching the final climactic scene (a masterpiece of juvenile slapstick) over and over and over again when I was younger. Mad World was nominated for 6 Oscars and won 1 (Best Sound Effects, now Best Sound Editing). It lost Best Original Score to Tom Jones.

Then there's The Great Escape, the ultimate prison camp movie. Steve McQueen, James Garner, Richard Attenborough, Charles Bronson, Donald Pleasence, James Coburn, et al came together for a fantastic film with lasting appeal . . . and Oscar missed the boat altogether. The Great Escape was nominated only for Best Editing and lost to another ultimate: How the West Was Won. That film was nominated for 8 awards, including Best Picture, and won 3. It featured performances from Henry Fonda, Gregory Peck, Jimmy Stewart, John Wayne, Debbie Reynolds, Eli Wallach, Richard Widmark, Agnes Moorehead, and Spencer Tracy (as the narrator). And, of course, there's the infamous Cleopatra, widely considered to be one of the most ostentatious failures in movie history. However, it still racked up 9 nominations (including Best Picture) and 4 wins.

Selecting from an admittedly limited pool, my pick for best of 1963 would fall on either The Great Escape or Charade.

Scent of a Woman

This is actually a discussion of my experience watching Perfume: The Story of a Murderer, but I couldn't resist that title. The film was an enrapturing story full of thought-provoking beauty; a moving fable on the power and meaning of love, prone at times to displays of what many might consider profoundly disturbing excess. Perhaps they would be right, perhaps not. But I doubt that I shall be allowed the experience a second time, and so, like Jean-Baptiste Grenouille (the title character), I will try to preserve it here.

Unlike Grenouille, I don't think I'll need to kill anyone, but it will be necessary to reveal the ending. I don't think that should stop anyone from reading this. For most, you will finish reading about the movie here and know that you're never going to go see it. For the rest, I don't believe that knowing how the story plays out in advance has any effect on the enjoyment of this particular movie. I went in knowing all about it because I felt the need to read up on it heavily before deciding whether to go see it. I should note one source in particular, this essay from from Metaphilm. Its observations on Grenouille as a Christ figure heavily informed my viewing. However, aside from that guiding framework, the thoughts here are my own unless otherwise noted.

Perfume was directed by Tom Tykwer, director of Run, Lola, Run. In terms of style, I don't think any two movies could be more different. Where Lola's frantic, music-video pace leaves audiences gasping for breath as they struggle to keep up with the mad dash, Perfume lingers seductively amidst breathtaking sets and locations. The film is based on Das Parfum, a 1985 novel by Patrick Süskind that filmmakers have been begging to adapt for two decades. Stanley Kubrick declared it to be completely unfilmable.

Tykwer's Perfume is the most expensive German movie to date (it's in English, by the way), with a total unknown (Ben Whishaw) in the lead role. John Hurt provides his always reliable narration skills, Dustin Hoffman appears as aging Italian perfumer Baldini, and Alan Rickman shows up as Richis, Grenouille's self-appointed arch-nemesis. John Hurt narrates. The only other player American audiences are likely to have seen before is Rachel Hurd-Wood, who played Wendy in 2003's Peter Pan, and here portrays Richis' daughter and Grenouille's prime target, Laura.

The film opens with a young man, Jean-Baptiste Grenouille, being hauled out of a dark cell onto a balcony. There, in the middle of the night and in front of a howling mob, a sentence of execution is announced. The setting is the 18th century, somewhere in Europe. Flashback a few decades to Paris, where a stinking fish merchant gives birth to a baby boy amidst the rotting remains that litter the floor of her stall.

The woman has already experienced four still-births, and she has no reason to expect this to be any different. Unfortunately, this numbed sense of resignation will be the death of her. The infant is, in fact, alive, a fact that is soon discovered by everyone around her when it begins squalling. The mother is perhaps the most surprised of all to hear the cries of a living baby emanating from just under her feet, but that doesn't save her from an appointment with the gallows for attempted infanticide.

The child, who will somehow acquire the name Jean-Baptiste Grenouille, goes to an orphanage. Immediately, everyone around him can tell that there is something different about him. They are unnerved by him, and from the very beginning he is emotionally severed from the rest of humanity. What truly sets him apart though, is his mutant-like sense of smell.

Grenouille's nose can distinguish between an infinite quantity and variety of smells at a phenomenal distance, and can even (for instance) smell an apple that someone has just thrown at the back of his head in time to dodge. Perfume is 2.5 hours of tightly-packed narrative that would take far too long to summarize completely. It essentially consists of three acts and a final denouement, with the transition between each marked by a moment of discovery.

He moves from the orphanage to a tannery, and from there to become the apprentice of a perfumer after a chance encounter on the street leaves him determined to learn how to preserve scent. A girl selling fruit draws Grenouille helplessly towards her. He approaches her haltingly from behind, drawing her scent in, and stops just behind her. Naturally, this behavior startles her, especially when he refuses to speak and she hurries away. He follows her to a secluded spot and sneaks up on her again.

His actions are intensely creepy, but purely innocent. He doesn't know, has never had a way of knowing, what normal human interaction is like. He is used to being ignored or feared, and it doesn't occur to him that he might have the ability to put people at their ease. Maybe he can't.

In any case, the girl is frightened enough at finding this shady character hovering just over her shoulder that a scream escapes her. Grenouille, equally frightened, grabs her, covering her mouth and nose with his hand. His grip tightens as a passing couple pauses nearby to flirt, and by the time they are gone, the girl is dead. His sadness quickly turns to complete devastation when he realizes that her scent has dissipated with her life, and is now gone for ever. This moment will haunt his dreams and drive his obsessive quest to preserve scent.

Baldini informs him that all perfumes consist of 3 chords, with each chord composed of 4 notes (or scents). The ancient Egyptians, he is told, believed that the ultimate perfume would also require a final 13th note to achieve perfection. Aside from this bit of foreshadowing, his time with Baldini reveals only that the perfumer will be unable to teach him what he wants to know. For that, he will have to travel to Grasse, semi-utopian capital of the perfumers' art. He sets out, armed with journeyman perfumer papers, and along the way he discovers for the first time that he has no scent of his own. He is a soulless void within his own frame of reference.

In Grasse, Grenouille manages to discover a process whereby he can distill a small vial containing the essence of a human being. The process is not fatal, but it would require the complete trust of another human being, something Grenouille has no idea how to gain. So he kills. It begins with prostitutes and the like, while he is conducting his experiments, but once his process is perfected, he targets only the most beautiful women (mostly the daughters of the local gentry). Before long, Grasse is in an uproar. Curfews are imposed, men roam the streets in mobs after dark, and the local priest prays fervently for salvation from heaven . . . all to no avail.

Slowly, Grenouille's box of vials begins to fill up. There are 13 slots, and the women of Grasse are dying to fill them. The final slot is reserved for Laura, who (we are given to understand) possesses a scent of the quality of the girl Grenouille accidentally killed back in Paris. Unfortunately for Grenouille, Laura's father is the only worthy adversary he has. Richis is a formidable opponent, but Grenouille inexorably tracks them wherever they go, and inevitably gets what he wants even as everything falls apart around him and people realize that he is the serial killer. He completes his perfume just seconds ahead of the arrival of the posse from Grasse.

Grenouille is to be strapped to a cross, beaten with an iron bar, and left to bleed to death. As he is driven to the execution block in a carriage, we know that he has already unleashed his perfume on the jailers. The courtyard is packed to the brim . . . standing room only, people covering the balconies and rooftops in all directions. And the sense of hatred for Grenouille is palpable. We see him dab a few drops of perfume on himself and his handkerchief before he steps down. The crowd is loud, but everyone near the accused is strangely silent. He steps up to face the executioner, an imposing figure with the customary black hood . . . and the iron bar falls to the ground as the executioner drops to his knees. The hood comes off, and the executioner cries out, "This man is innocent!"

Most of the crowd is dumbstruck, but those standing closest understand. The handkerchief emerges from Grenouille's pocket and he salutes the crowd with it on each side. We can almost see the scent traveling outward as row after row of people arch their backs and squeeze their eyes shut in ecstasy. Within seconds the entire plaza has fallen on its collective face to worship the man they all hated. But now they feel nothing but love, and the effect has transformed every face in the crowd. Grenouille lifts the handkerchief high above his head, and allows the wind to catch it and carry it slowly over the people's heads.

Hands reach out to grasp it as it flies just beyond their reach . . . floating slowly like a baseball foul landing in slow motion in a crowded stadium. A dozen arms reach out for it as it floats within reach, the crowd surges, and for a moment it looks as though there will be a riot. But there isn't. Instead, the crowd quite literally explodes into an outpouring of love. At least, that is the idea . . . how do you show that? How do you show that an entire crowd has just been swept away by transcendent love for one another? Well, in this case, with the largest orgy scene ever filmed.

I don't want to dwell on this, but I couldn't help but be somewhat impressed by the planning it must have taken to get 700 people to have an organized orgy in a courtyard with the cameras rolling. It is perhaps hard to imagine, but the scene wasn't titillating. The transformation scene in Orlando is the linchpin of that movie, and it is crucial that it be simulatenously graphic, artistic, and tasteful for the scene to work (and it does). The same principle applies here, just on a larger scale. It is a powerful scene, but the most incredible part is yet to come.

Richis, thanks perhaps to a much deeper hatred, is the only one unaffected by the perfume, and he approaches Grenouille with sword drawn and ready. Richis makes it all the way up the steps of the platform before he, too, is overwhelmed. Grenouille murdered his only daughter, but Richis' hatred is no match for the power of love that has been unleashed upon the city. The sword falls and Richis' knees bow. Tears gush from his eyes and he embraces Grenouille about the waste, begging for forgiveness.

And at that moment, Grenouille, experiencing love for the first time in his life, realizes its true power . . . and its true nature. He flashes back to his first fateful encounter with the Paris fruit vendor, but things are different. He sees himself approach her with love, as one human being to another, and he sees her reciprocating. He realizes that he could have had what he wanted all along, but had it on his own merits, had he been willing to win it over instead of wrenching it violently away. He has been a consumer and a destroyer because he didn't know of any other way to achieve the love and the connection that he didn't even realize he desired. And, flooded with this new knowledge, Grenouille begins to cry.

Grenouille leaves Grasse behind him and sets out to return to Paris. The world is at his feet. The narrator tells us that Grenouille could do anything: He could show up at Versailles and ask the king of France to kiss his feet. He could write a perfumed letter to the pope and have himself declared the new messiah. He doesn't want any of that. With the power to command the love of all humanity at his fingertips, he feels strangely empty, for he still lacks the simple power that other humans have: to command the love of another person because you have earned it on your own merits.

Arriving back in Paris, he stumbles upon a group of beggars who are warming themselves around a fire. He pulls out the vial of perfume, and deliberately dumps it over his head. In seconds, the beggars are swarming around him, and in minutes they have devoured him (body and blood) so that there is nothing left. They go away transformed by this strange communion, each feeling that they have committed an act of purely selfless love for perhaps the first time in their lives.

I am rather tired at the moment. Watching Perfume was a bit of a draining experience, and writing about it was even more draining. I'm going to be lazy and let that essay I linked from metaphilm conclude my thoughts for me. I expect Perfume to return to my mind at some unexpected time in the future and grant me a new insight into something as yet unforeseen, or at the least a thought-provoking connection with something else I may be writing about. But for now, the thoughts offered by Tim Stanley (even if I'm not sure I'm in full agreement) will more than suffice:

The perverse and heretical interpretation of Christianity’s central figure could cause the Christian to blow this film off. But the reason I believe Perfume is so important is that its savior is so absurd. The great danger that faces Christianity today is the assumption that its truth is mundane, if not completely normal. As Slavoj Žižek has recently been writing, nothing could be further from the truth. In his essay “The ‘Thrilling Romance of Orthodoxy’” in The Puppet and the Dwarf: The Perverse Core of Christianity, Žižek argues that “far from being boring, humdrum, and safe, the search for true orthodoxy is the most daring and perilous adventure.” In other words, orthodoxy is out of the ordinary, if not absurd. Does not the Christian tradition feel this every time it attempts to express itself in secular society today? The power of Perfume is that it allegorically reminds us how strange Christianity’s central character is—even if this is done by depicting him in one of the most sinister ways possible.

The fact that Christians worship a human man who was crucified as a criminal is all too easily tin-foiled over like the wrapper on a Cadbury egg. How do Christians celebrate the Eucharist without even the slightest disgust recorded in John 6.56 after Jesus announces, “Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them”? Have Christians lost the revolutionary feeling in the command to love their enemies? Such an ethics is utterly absurd after the Holocaust. How do Christians love Hitler?

Like all good jokes told too many times, Christianity can easily lose its impact and timing. It is because of films like Perfume however, that Christian orthodoxy can regain a sense of the power of a radical punch line. Christians believe Jesus really did die on the cross. The Eucharist really is a taste of the divine. Loving your enemies really is the heart of Christian ethics. Now more than ever will the Christian tradition look back to the brilliant comic genius of St. Paul: “For the message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God” (1 Corinthians 1.18). Or, more appropriately in this context, as he told the same church later,

“But thank God! He has made us his captives and continues to lead us along in Christ’s triumphal procession. Now he uses us to spread the knowledge of Christ everywhere, like a sweet perfume. Our lives are a Christ-like fragrance rising up to God. But this fragrance is perceived differently by those who are being saved and by those who are perishing. To those who are perishing, we are a dreadful smell of death and doom. But to those who are being saved, we are a life-giving perfume” (2 Corinthians 2.14–16, NLT).

The Departed: Best Picture, 2006

The Departed was nominated for 5 Oscars at the 79th Annual Academy Awards: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Editing, Best Adapted Screenplay, and Best Supporting Actor (Mark Wahlberg). It lost only the last, to Alan Arkin for Little Miss Sunshine. It is the 4th Martin Scorsese film that I have seen. I really thought Taxi Driver, an urban story of isolation and twisted virtue, was an excellent and amazing film. It was nominated for 4 Oscars and won none. Gangs of New York, a sprawling historical tale of rival Irish gangs and political corruption set against the backdrop of the Civil War, was pretty good, but perhaps overlong. It was nominated for 10 Oscars and also lost every single one. The Aviator, as I've mentioned recently, I disliked a great deal. A vast biopic of wealthy eccentric Howard Hughes, it was definitely overlong. It was nominated for 11 Oscars and took 5.

The Departed is the story of two men of Irish descent, Billy Costigan (Leonardo DiCaprio) and Colin Sullivan (Matt Damon), who join the Boston Police Department at around the same time and become involved in an investigation hoping to take down Irish mobster Frank Costello (Jack Nicholson). Costigan is recruited by Dignam (Wahlberg) and Captain Queenan (Martin Sheen) to go undercover and get as close as possible to Costello. Meanwhile, Sullivan, befriended by Costello at a very young age, is busily feeding him information from inside the force. Naturally, it is only a matter of time before the two moles become aware of each other's existence and each is forced to attempt to be the first to discover the other's identity. Meanwhile, unbeknowst to them, they have both fallen in love with the same woman.

This is really an excellent and carefully-crafted set-up, with an equally great cast. It is truly surprising that Wahlberg was the sole acting nominee, because there is fantastic work here all around. Nicholson, as usual, is outstanding, as are both DiCaprio and Damon. In fact, I think this may be my favorite DiCaprio performance to date. I'm surprised Nicholson didn't get a nomination for his performance. Maybe they thought, with 12 previous nominations and 3 wins behind him, why bother? Then again, Meryl Streep got nominated. In any case, I found the characters very believable and compelling, and I was very caught up in what was going on. I didn't get bored or feel the need to check the time at all.

Of course, part of that strength lies as much with the screenplay as the performances. There is a lot to like here with the slow building of very palpable tension, several surprise twists scattered liberally throughout, and cat-and-mouse antics that are as original as I've seen in recent memory. The ultimate fate of the characters is unpredictable, not because the ending cheap-shots the audience out of nowhere (it doesn't, really) but because the movie appears willing to let the story play out naturally instead of contriving a particular ending.

Nevertheless, it has its failings. They are, perhaps, not very significant alone, but together they make this film far from perfect. As great as the story is, I got the very distinct feeling as it drew to a close that the manner in which things played out would fall apart if I were to watch the movie again. A few things didn't quite add up. I was never sure, for instance, how Costigan wound up seeing the same woman that Sullivan was dating. I'm willing to overlook the improbability of it because it added so much to the story, but it seemed much too convenient. I can't discuss other developments in detail for fear of giving away the movie, but there were a number of inconsistencies and one or two major events that didn't seem plausible to me. These occurred mostly in the last 20 minutes of the movie.

I'm not sure where fault for my larger complaint should lie: with the editing, the directing, or the screenplay. Perhaps it is a combination of all three. Gallagher walked in and joined us after the movie had been going for about half an hour, and he said at the end that he didn't feel like he had missed anything. In a movie where so much depends on character development and small details, being able to miss a good 20% of the runtime with no loss to understanding seems to me to indicate self-indulgence on someone's part. Leave more on the cutting room floor.

Actually, the movie had been playing for at least fifteen minutes already and we felt we were "in the thick of it" ourselves when suddenly the screen went black and "The Departed" flashed in front of us. Someone observed that that was one heck of an opening sequence. Waiting that long to announce the film's title is stupid, and I can think of no good reason for it. It breaks the flow. Really, thinking back, it's a testament to the movie's excellence in other areas that I wasn't more distracted throughout.

There were a number of weird, almost dreamlike breaks that cut in on the actual narrative here and there and disappeared just as quickly; things like Nicholson's character spraying cocaine through the air while a scantily-clad hooker looked on. These brief cuts were irrelevant to whatever was going on before, were gone as quickly as they appeared, and didn't seem to relate to anything that came after. Sloppy and surreal, a bad combination. They didn't happen often, but they shouldn't have happened at all.

That brings me to my final praise/complaint: the music. The music was great. It really was. The main theme was a haunting piece that came across as The Godfather with Celtic overtones, and a lot of the other music was fun Irish punk rock type stuff reminiscent of Flogging Molly. So, it sounded good and it fit very well with the mood and tone of the film. Props to the composer. But I have seldom heard music used so ineffectively and intrusively in a movie. At completely random times for no reason at all the music would fade out, grow suddenly louder, or cut off completely and abruptly (mid-note and mid-scene) for a few seconds before jumping back on at full volume. It was incredibly annoying and distracting, and I thought it was tacky and pretentious.

I would call The Departed a truly high-quality film experience that doesn't stand up well under very close scrutiny. Gallagher wondered aloud at the end how this movie stood up against Snatch and The Boondock Saints. At first I thought he was talking about general quality or something similar . . . he was actually talking about f-bombs. I guess there were quite a few. Randy and I didn't really notice after the first few, and I still don't have vivid memories of there being a great many, but there were. I guess that's a testament to how comfortable I am watching movies with everyone that was in the room (I only notice things like that if I feel like someone in the room is noticing . . . and disapproving).

Anyway, Gallagher was inspired to check, and discovered that there were 237 uses of the f-word and its various derivations. That's approximately one every 40 seconds for two and a half hours. In case you were wondering, The Boondock Saints has 246 f-words, or one every 28 seconds or so, while Snatch weighs in with a paltry 153 for an overall concentration comparable to that of The Departed. I was quick to point out that Gallagher has never seen a Quentin Tarantino movie. Pulp Fiction has 271 (1 every 34 seconds), and Reservoir Dogs has 252 (1 every 24 seconds).

Having since investigated the matter on the internets, I find Casino with 422 (1 every 25 seconds) and Twin Town with 320 (1 every 19 seconds). Both are blown completely out of the water by Nil by Mouth with 470 (1 every 16 seconds), which (incidentally) stars the guy who plays Nicholson's right-hand man in The Departed. I should point out, in closing, that 2005's documentary F*ck contains an astounding 857 f-words (no, I don't know if that is counting the title), cramming in 1 for every 7 seconds of runtime . . . but that's not really fair. As the word is the subject of the documentary, the uses can't be considered completely gratuitous. In any case, point taken. The Departed definitely holds the record number of f-words for a Best Picture winner, since Pulp Fiction lost to Forrest Gump in 1995. But really . . . who's counting?

As for the other serious contender for the Best Picture award, you may have noticed that I saw Babel last week. What a powerful and aptly-named film this is. In the midst of Morocco, a goatherd buys a high-powered rifle from a friend to help rid himself of a jackal problem, and sends his young sons out to tend the flock. Playing around with the weapon, one of them shoots an American tourist (Cate Blanchette) in a passing bus. Hours from civilization, her husband (Brad Pitt) rushes her to the nearest approximation to a doctor in a local village and starts frantically phoning his embassy.

Meanwhile, the couple's two children back in California are being cared for by their housekeeper of many years, and illegal immigrant from Mexico. Her son is going to be married back in Mexico, and with her employers' return delayed and no one to watch the children, she takes them with her to the wedding. On the other side of the world, in Japan, the deaf/mute daughter of a wealthy businessman has just lost her mother, and is searching desperately in all the wrong places for some kind of satisfying emotional connection to another human being. The international incident in Morocco, a tragic accident that is rapidly being blown out of proportion, will have a profound impact on the lives of the characters in Mexico and Japan.

Transpiring in at least 5 languages (counting sign language) and jumping rapidly between the dirty streets of Mexico, the techno-pop Japanese night life, and the primitive desert of Morocco, Babel is like a very concentrated shot of culture shock. The film poignantly illustrates the impossibility of communication across thick barriers of language and culture, and the tragedy of this breakdown in human connection, while at the same time hinting that there may be hope for those with the humility and the sensitivity to try to build relationships. It is a message that is both timely and timeless.

Babel only won Best Music (Score) out of its seven nominations, an award I still think should have gone to Pan's Labyrinth. However, as to the rest, I suspect that it split its own Best Supporting Actress vote, allowing Dreamgirls to walk off with it. Both Adriana Barraza (as the Mexican housekeeper) and Rinko Kikuchi (as the deaf/mute Japanese teen) did incredible work. Because of the masterful way in which it splices and weaves its four stories together into a unified whole, and jumps between them in a way that is both startling and artful, I don't understand why Babel lost Best Editing to The Departed . . . especially considering the flaws I already pointed out in the latter.

I feel that Babel is a genuinely important film with a positive and vital message that should speak to anyone anywhere in the world. The Departed is smart and well done . . . great filmmaking, to be sure. But ultimately I think The Departed is entertainment where Babel is art. Babel is highly original and worthy of imitation . . . The Departed is imitation; a nearly identical remake of Hong Kong's Infernal Affairs (2002) done over with a new location, an all-star cast and a less meaningful ending. What does that say about where Best Picture and Best Director should have gone? Well . . . there it is.

Demagogue in Denim

Today I saw A Face in the Crowd, a 1957 film I had never heard of five days ago, and it blew me away. It was directed by Elia Kazan of A Streetcar Named Desire and Baby Doll (which I loved), and On the Waterfront (which I rather keenly disliked), as well as A Tree Grows in Brooklyn and East of Eden (which I should probably see someday). It features the big-screen debuts of Andy Griffith and Lee Remick, as well as Walter Matthau only a few years into his movie career (I believe this was his first non-Western film role).

A Face in the Crowd is about a wandering Arkansas alcoholic with a guitar and a boatload of charisma who rockets to fame as a TV personality, and eventually becomes a potent political force before his mean arrogance brings him crashing back down. The structure is very similar to 1949's All the King's Men (and probably many others), but much better here. The cinematography, sets, writing, and most especially the acting are top-notch. This film bombed with audiences when it was first release, and was completely ignored at the Oscars (notables that year include The Bridge on the River Kwai and 12 Angry Men). This is rather too bad, as the film is a masterpiece and a true classic. It doesn't deserve this obscurity.

You've never seen Andy Griffith like this, and after this movie, you never would again. Griffith stuck to much safer roles following A Face in the Crowd. His character, Lonesome Rhodes, is volatile, mean, and sexually charged, but also fascinating and magnetic. I would never have guessed that the man who went on to play the beloved sheriff of Mayberry for many successful television seasons had this sort of persona lurking inside.

I was also amazed by the movie's continued relevance after 50 years. With television still a growing phenomenon in the late '50s, this movie was way ahead of its time (a recipe for box-office disaster, I suppose). It put me in mind of such phenomena as (for instance) the influence of Fox News over red state America. Regardless of whether a liberal bias exists in the media, there is no doubt that conservative America gets its opinions from the boob tube, and this movie shows that they have for as long as that medium has existed (remember McCarthy?).

It is a riveting and worthwhile experience for any film buff or student of cultural history, and I'm so pleased it caught my eye when I was checking in the VHS copy at the library earlier this week.

A Fairy Tale with Fangs and Horns

Do you remember the original Grimm's Fairy Tales? Good people died. Children got eaten. And even when the story ended well, it probably traumatized you somewhere along the way. This is the spirit in which El Laberinto del Fauno, or Pan's Labyrinth (written and directed by Mexican filmmaker Guillermo del Toro, best known in this country for 2004's Hellboy), was conceived. It is a marvellous and breathtaking creative effort, introducing conventional fairy tale elements into one of the most important ideological conflicts of the twentieth century to produce an enchanting and terrifying fable for adults.

It is the summer of 1944, and Ofelia, a young girl, is traveling to northern Spain with her very pregnant mother so that they can be near her new stepfather, Capitán Vidal, when the child is born. Vidal is a brutal military officer in the Spanish army who has been stationed in the area to eradicate a small rebel militia that is hiding out in the woods, stubborn holdouts from the Spanish Civil War. Ofelia is a bookish kid, used to enduring the usual admonishments that she stop filling her head with nonsense.

Her active imagination is in little danger of starvation in her new surroundings, however. The run-down mill where Vidal has set up his base of operations is right next to an ancient and mysterious stone labyrinth. She has been at the mill for less than 24 hours, in fact, before she receives her first midnight visit from a fairy who leads her deep inside the labyrinth for a meeting with a very shifty-looking faun. The faun reveals that Ofelia is, in fact, the long-lost princess of a fairy kingdom, and in order to return there she must prove herself by completing three tasks of increasing difficulty before the next full moon.

As Ofelia begins her quest, Vidal sadistically tightens his grip on the local community to increase the pressure on the rebels, members of his household play their own dangerous game of aiding the enemy, and Ofelia's mother experiences frightening complications to her health as she prepares to give birth. If ever a child needed a fantasy world to escape to, Ofelia certainly does, but in an interesting twist, the horrors of her tasks parallel the atrocities committed by her new stepfather. Before she can truly escape, she will have to face terror and evil head on.

The film is very dark, both in content and visuals. The people behind the camera seem grimly determined to hold each shot during the film's most gruesome moments long past the point where most movies (and, indeed, most moviegoers) would have gladly turned away. What some might view as a lack of restraint, and possibly even good taste, on the part of the director is also incredibly effective in communicating the stakes to the audience. The characters are right there in the midst of it, and all but the most desensitized of viewers will be forced to invest heavily in their plight or walk out.

Additionally, of course, there is an element of contrast at work here. Ofelia's innocence and the virtue of the rebels and their allies are thrown into sharp relief against the background of evil, both human and monstrous, which they struggle against. Nor is Ofelia helpless in this struggle, although she may seem young, weak, and naive. Underscored by the film's tagline: "Innocence Has A Power Evil Cannot Imagine," this theme is developed throughout Ofelia's adventures. The more terrible evil is shown to be, the more potent the force that defeats it will seem.

Pan's Labyrinth has been nominated for Best Foreign Film, Best Original Screenplay, Best Music, Best Cinematography, Best Art Direction, and Best Makeup. While I would not be surprised to see it win any (or all) of the above, it is up against a number of worthy contendors. However, it would be positively wrong for another entry to come out on top in the latter two categories. Del Toro's fantastical creatures have an amazingly palpable screen presence, rivaling anything from the WETA or Jim Henson creature workshops. Although Del Toro's vision lacks their menagerie-like variety and enormous cast of hundreds, its high quality more than compensates for the low quantity. The denizens of the labyrinth live, breathe and move flawlessly and believably, every bit as alive and real as the human characters. One of the them in particular is among the most terrifying things I have ever seen.

This film is suffused with a powerful combination of delightful wonder, harrowing thrills and moving human drama. It emerges from a rich heritage of fairy tale literature without seeming bland or derivative, sure to leave its own unique mark on a tradition that, apparently, is far from extinct.

2007: An Oscar Primer

This year's Oscar nominations were released today, leaving me just a month and change to (if I can) hurry and see all the Best Picture nominees I missed. This year that happens to apply to four out of the five. And the only one I have seen I am, quite frankly, a bit shocked to find on the list: Little Miss Sunshine. I liked it, but . . . it is very indie and the thought that it might be Best Picture material never occurred to me.

The other 3 nominations it scooped up are for Best Supporting Actor (for almost 73-year old Alan Arkin) and Best Supporting Actress (for 10-year old Abigail Breslin) and Best Original Screenplay. Wow. Winning Best Supporting Actress would tie Breslin with Tatum O'Neal as youngest Oscar winner (not counting Shirley Temple's "honorary Oscar" which she got at age 6). Meanwhile, while Alan Arkin is not quite the oldest Oscar winner, I wouldn't be surprised to find that this represents the greatest age disparity between acting nominees from a single film (or even in a single year).

The other nominees for Best Picture are:

-Babel, one of those long movies with several interlocking stories and an ensemble cast (like Magnolia, Crash, Syriana, and so forth). This one is from a Mexican director who also did 21 Grams (same genre, I saw it and thought it was quite good, but very difficult and disturbing) and Amores Perros (which I didn't see, but which apparently made quite a big splash). It netted 6 other nominations as well: Best Director, Best Editing, Best Original Score, 2 for Best Supporting Actress, and Best Original Screenplay (in other words, there is only one category where Little Miss Sunshine does not face competition from Babel).

-The Departed, a Martin Scorsese-directed crime drama/thriller with a killer cast, adored by critics and several of my friends alike, which I really had no interest in seeing. I guess now I will. I'll probably like it, too. The Departed scooped up four other nominations: Best Director, Best Editing, Best Supporting Actor, and Best Adapted Screenplay. Apparently, Jack Nicholson's exclusion from an Oscar nod for his role was a surprise. I wouldn't really know.

-Letters from Iwo Jima, Clint Eastwood directs, Steven Spielberg produces, and the subject is World War II. The reviews practically write themselves, right? This one slipped by completely under my radar as a rather late release among the other nominees, but I probably wouldn't have seen it anyway. It, too, has 3 additional nominations: Best Director, Best Sound Editing, and Best Original Screenplay.

-The Queen, a dry-looking biopic (despite apparently great performances) focusing on Elizabeth II in the days following the death of Princess Diana. It might be rather good, actually. The Queen also has five other nominations: Best Director, Best Costume Design, Best Original Score, Best Actress, and Best Original Screenplay.

A major surprise is the exclusion of Dreamgirls from the Best Picture category. It has received eight other nominations, making it the most nominated film this year: Best Art Direction, Best Costume Design, 3 for Best Original Song, Best Sound, and Best Supporting Actor (Eddie Murphey's first nomination) and Best Supporting Actress.

There are a few others with several nominations but no Best Picture attention: Blood Diamond has 5 nominations and I'm still not very interested in seeing it. Pan's Labyrinth has 6 nominations, including Best Foreign Film. This film currently represents the only reason that I hate living in Longview (these things come and go). I have been desperate to see it for months, it still hasn't come out here, and it likely won't. As of this moment, I am seriously considering going to Shreveport to see it (or somewhere closer, if I can find anywhere).

Will Smith and Forest Whitaker have both received their first nominations (for Best Actor) in films I still would like to see: The Pursuit of Happyness and The Last King of Scotland. Meanwhile, Leonardo DiCaprio has received his 3rd acting nomination (for Blood Diamond), so far without a win. But that's nothing; Peter O'Toole's nomination this year (for Venus) represents his eighth nomination without a win (his first was, of course, for Lawrence of Arabia, which he lost to Gregory Peck in To Kill a Mockingbird). This is O'Toole's first nomination in nearly 25 years. However, he did receive an honorary "throw-me-a-frigging-bone-here" Oscar a few years ago.

The Best Actress category is largely a clash of Oscar veterans. You've got Dame Judi Dench, this is her 6th nomination (she's won once). Then there's Helen Mirr (of The Queen). This is her 3rd nomination, no wins yet. I've seen both of the previous movies she was nominated for (The Madness of King George and Gosford Park) and both are very good. Then there's the obligatory semi-annual Meryl Streep nomination. Streep already held the record for number of acting nominations, and this is her fourteenth. She has won twice, but she's received a nomination pretty much every other year since the late '70s. The only other actress who even comes close is Katherine Hepburn with 12 nominations, and I doubt she'll be closing that gap any further. Finally, there is Kate Winslet, who I would very much like to see win. This is her 5th nomination, with no wins yet.

Other nominees that I have seen:

-Children of Men, 3 nominations
-The Prestige, 2 nominations
-The Illusionist, 1 nomination
-Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest, 4 nominations
-Borat, 1 nomination and by far the biggest Oscar groaner this year. To add injury to insult, the nomination is for Best Adapted Screenplay . . . as if that movie had a screenplay.
-Cars, 2 nominations
-Superman Returns, 1 nomination
-Water, 1 nomination (for Best Foreign Film; this is quite possibly the best film I saw last year). Interestingly, this is the first year that it would have been possible for Water to even be nominated. The film was entered by Canada, but it is not in one of the primary languages of Canada. The rules were changed just this year to make that no longer a problem.
-"No Time for Nuts," nominated for Best Animated Short. I was actually surprised to discover that I'd seen something from this category. It was on the DVD of Ice Age 2 that I saw. It features Scrat, who stumbles across a small time machine and ends up chasing his acorn across history. It was rather amusing.

Other nominees that I would very much like to see:

-The Curse of the Golden Flower, 1 nomination
-Marie Antoinette, 1 nomination
-Apocalypto, 3 nominations
-Jesus Camp, 1 nomination (for Best Documentary; I hope it beats An Inconvenient Truth, but I won't hold my breath).
-Deliver Us from Evil, 1 nomination (also for Best Documentary, ditto above)

Let's see . . . oh yeah, haphazard and worthless predictions:

Best Picture: Probably The Departed, ideally let's say Little Miss Sunshine (but I really should actually watch some of the others)
Best Actor: Forest Whitaker
Best Actress: Probably Helen Mirr, ideally Kate Winslet
Best Supporting Actor: Alan Arkin
Best Supporting Actress: Abigail Breslin
Best Director: Alejandro González Iñárritu for Babel
Best Cinematography (since I've seen more from this category than any other): Probably Children of Men or Pan's Labyrinth
Best Foreign Film: Again, I really need to see Pan's Labyrinth, but if it is as excellent as I've heard, this should be a toss-up between it and Water.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is my rundown on the 79th Annual Academy Award nominees. I have some stuff to watch.

Dystopian Fun for Everyone

(Rachel's review)

I went to see Children of Men about a week ago. I'd had my eye on it since I first saw the trailer: novel, thought-provoking concept, respectable cast, directed by Alfonso Cuarón (helmer of the only truly stand-out Harry Potter movie to date). So, when it opened in Longview, we were so there, and I, for one, was not disappointed.

This film has gotten a lot of criticism for things which I feel have nothing to do with how well it played on the big screen, so I won't discuss them right away. It gets so much right: locations, technology, atmosphere, attitudes. From the large to the small, Children of Men convincingly transports the audience to a 2027 where no human pregnancy has occurred in over 18 years. Cuarón is very comfortable working with dark, gloomy material, as is his leading man, Clive Owen. Very ably backing him up are Julianne Moore, Michael Caine (always excellent), newcomer Claire-Hope Ashitey, and a growing favorite of mine, Chiwetel Ejiofor (Serenity, Amistad). Seriously, every time this guy pops up in a movie I'm watching, it happens to be a really great movie.

There are also some bold storytelling choices here that shatter the predictability of the plot. No character is sacred, and there is a very real tension throughout most of the movie as the ultimate ending remains very much up in the air right down to the final moments. Every time things seem to be moving comfortably down a particular path, there is a sudden reversal that throws everything into disarray. There is some really great work here in the action sequences as well, including one of the most intense car chases I've ever seen, during which the car's speed never exceeds 20 mph!

Of course, the thing everyone is talking about is that (I believe) 7-minute unbroken shot that takes place in the midst of a chaotic urban battle near the end of the film. It is indeed impressive, although I barely noticed that the camera hadn't cut once until the scene was probably a little over half over. It is a major undertaking to get everything to work perfectly during a shot that requires so much in the way of explosions, gunfire, and rapid but smooth camera movement, and it is carried off fairly well. However, I've seen Russian Ark, a movie which consists of a single 96-minute take involving 2000 actors costumed and scripted to cover 300 years of Russian history, and three live orchestras performing massive ballroom sequences . . . It makes 7 minutes of pitched battle seem a tad less worthy to write home about.

About halfway through the sequence in Children of Men, blood spatters on the camera lens (this was what first drew my attention to the lack of cuts), and as I watched I found this extremely distracting and annoying. A few minutes later, it suddenly disappeared and I assumed that there had been a cut even though I could not in any way detect one. A few days later, I read this about the filming:

Cuarón had access to his location for the shot for just a few weeks, and his crew used up all but the last two days simply preparing for the long sequence. The first take, which took all of the first day, was a disaster from start to finish. The second, which took up most of the second day, was ruined when the cameraman tripped. Each ruined take would require several hours for the crew to set everything back up and try again, so when the third take began, the sun was literally setting on their final day to use the selected location. No pressure.

With the fate of the scene hanging in the balance, filming began, but then one of the fake blood packets on a dying bystander exploded too close to the camera, spattering the lens as I described above. Disgusted, Cuarón yelled "Cut," but fortunately the sound of an explosion drowned him out and no one heard. He sat through the rest of the sequence, and then Owen and the cameraman came over, elated at their success. He quickly pointed out that, certainly everything seemed to have gone well, but the scene was ruined by the blood. Both Owen and the cameram