Category: Arts & Entertainment

I spent Oscar night watching good movies on video. I didn’t even know the Oscars were on television until I happened to check the news online and notice that some winners had already been announced.

Out of the 24 Oscar winners, I’ve seen only four of the movies. Of those, I didn’t particularly like Golden Compass, and Bourne won only for technical achievements. I quite liked Ratatouille (even though I’ve never understood why “animated feature” gets its own category, given that there are so few decent animated movies in a given year), and Elizabeth: The Golden Age was okay. The only other winner that I have a particular interest in seeing is Juno. I do want to see No Country for Old Men, and I might watch Once, though I’ve already marked There Will Be Blood off of my “maybe” list. I don’t care how good the acting is if the movie is fundamentally grotesque.

So what did I do while happily ignoring the Oscars? My wife and I watched Feast of Love, which we enjoyed despite some serious problems with the writing (such as the use of a psychic as a plot device), and then we discovered a very fine film: American Pastime.

I’d never heard of this latter film till we saw a preview on another rental. Both my wife and I loved this movie. Okay, part of the plot is somewhat contrived; the interracial romance, the father who just doesn’t understand his daughter, the competition among brothers, and the miracle sports comeback all felt a bit obvious. But I’d rather watch an old-fashioned, heartfelt story than a play of some miserable moral monster. Oscar can stuff it, as far as I’m concerned (though I’ve rarely been much of a fan, as my notes from 2006 and 2004 suggest.) At least Michael Moore didn’t win, which surprised me.

American Pastime is about a baseball team formed in a Japanese-American internment camp. But it’s about much more than that. It’s mostly about a young man’s struggle to deal with racism and injustice. The main character loves jazz and baseball, but his pending college education (on a baseball scholarship) is interrupted by the war and his forced relocation to the camp. Understandably, he feels bitter about this. He and his brother clash — until his brother joins the Army to fight in Germany. And the young man finds a romantic interest in a girl who just happens to be the piano-playing daughter of the camp’s main guard, who just happens to be the star player on the local baseball team. As I mentioned, this sounds like a story-telling setup, but the characters are well developed and believable. The main actors are quite good.

Looking back at 2007, two movies stand out for me. Neither received a single Oscar nomination.

Waitress is a spectacular movie. The Oscar group committed something approaching a moral sin by failing to recognize Adrienne Shelly for screenplay, Keri Russell for best actress, and Andy Griffith for best supporting actor. Waitress is among the great films of the decade, not just of 2007.

Russell plays a waitress (big surprise) who is also a spectacular baker of pies, which reflect her moods. She works at a pie shop owned by Griffith’s character, and Griffith is absolutely superb as the grumpy but perceptive proprietor. He nimbly tightropes between a cynical demeanor and a compassionate heart. The problem is that the waitress is married to a complete jerk — and she is pregnant. This is a love story, but not between the characters of Russell and romantic interest Nathan Fillion, but between the woman and her child. It is a beautiful, gorgeously written story.

Stardust is my other favorite film of the year. I’ve already briefly summarized it:

A young man, trying to win the heart of the local beauty, sees a falling star and pledges to fetch it in exchange for the girl’s hand. But to retrieve the star, our hero must cross the wall that separates England from the magical world beyond. In that world, a fallen star is not a hunk of metal and ash — it is a lovely young lady, in this case portrayed by Claire Danes. Our hero must learn to become a man, save the star, and figure out whom he loves.

This coming-of-age story is a fantasy for grownups. Forget about how silly it sounds to make a star into a girl: it works. And Robert De Niro as the tough-talking (but eccentric dressing) pirate is both hilarious and touching.

Both Waitress and Stardust are such fabulous movies that, of course, neither won even a single nomination from Oscar. (In neither film is a despicable son of a bitch the main character.) But who cares what Oscar thinks: both films earn an Ari.

I was saddened to read of the death of Heath Ledger, who had become one of my favorite actors.

On the very day of the Oscar nominations being announced for 2007, the Australian actor Heath Ledger was found dead in a Manhattan apartment. Born in Perth, in Western Australia, Heathcliff Andrew Ledger would have been 29 this April 4th. First reports of his death mentioned drugs in evidence, but no one really knows enough yet to say anything except how great the loss is. Ever since he played Mel Gibson’s son in The Patriot (2000), it was apparent that his striking handsomeness went hand-in-hand with high ambitions as an actor, courage in the roles he took and a fierce intelligence. He is likely now to be known forever for his cowboy, Ennis, in Brokeback Mountain… At his death he had just finished playing the Joker in a new version of Batman – The Dark Knight – and that may reveal fresh sides to what was a developing career.

A year and a half ago, I wrote:

Previously I predicted that I wouldn’t think much of Brokeback Mountain, the gay cowboy movie. What I did not anticipate was Heath Ledger’s hauntingly sorrowful performance. Yes, the movie is beautifully directed and the rest of the cast is very good, but it is Ledger who makes it a memorable movie. I’ve always enjoyed Ledger’s movies, but his performance in Brokeback is amazing. …

An aside. It occurred to me that, if somebody wanted to spend a lot of money and make even more, they’d hire a competent writer to turn Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead into a full season of television (roughly 22 episodes each 45 minutes in length), then hire Ledger to play Howard Roark…

I also enjoyed Ledger’s Casanova, even though the story of the movie spins a bit out of control.

The movie I’ve been most looking forward to is Dark Knight. Judging from the previews, Ledger’s performance is stunning. I’m still looking forward to the movie, but now I’ll have to watch it with more than an undercurrent of sorrow.

I was pleasantly surprised by the movie, The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio (reviewed at Rotten Tomatoes), which I’d never heard of till I saw the video on the shelf. Based on a true story, it follows a woman living in the ’50s and ’60s who keeps her large family ahead of her careless husband by entering — and winning — contests that involve writing clever marketing lines. The acting of Julianne Moore as Evelyn Ryan, Woody Harrelson as the husband, and Ellary Porterfield as one of the daughters is absolutely top-notch.

The reason that I’m reviewing the film at this web page (which is after all dedicated to matters of religion) is that that religious themes run through the story. Ryan and her husband are Catholic. The husband has some major problems; in particular, he spends a large chunk of his weekly paycheck on booze, and he is prone to rage when he drinks. For example, at one point he beats on a just-won freezer with a frying pan; later, he throws food from the freezer out into the yard. Early in the movie, Ryan talks with a priest, who advises her to try harder to create a good home for her husband. Ryan doesn’t seem happy with this advice, but she follows it, even though her husband deserves nothing but divorce papers.

Moreover, the film encourages viewers to pity and forgive the husband based on three facts. First, he lost the quality of his voice and thus his singing career in a car crash. Second, he feels bad that he’s not the sole bread-winner of the household. Third, in his old age he takes real steps to make up for his earlier behavior. The husband is not irredeemably evil; he is merely a lout. And divorce is not easy for a woman with ten children to care for. Nevertheless, Ryan seems to stick with her husband because of Christian charity, not because he deserves the marriage.

Ryan (along with the film) confuses the issue of forgiveness (which properly must be earned) with the issue of holding true to one’s values and not falling into bitterness (which may or may not involve forgiveness). Also, Ryan enjoys more good luck (in winning various prizes) than most women in her position would find (even though Ryan’s success is based also on her skill with words).

The reason that I basically enjoyed the movie is that Ryan shows a powerful and positive spirit. Despite her setbacks and her husband’s behavior, she consistently seeks the joy of life. She maintains a strong, loving, and supportive relationship with her children, which comes out especially in the scenes with her daughter “Tuffy,” who later wrote the book on which the film is based.

I’ve been thinking about The Wendell Baker Story, off and on, since I saw it yesterday. That confirms my thoughts that the movie, which few people have heard of, might be worth a second glance. On the whole, it’s not a spectacular film (it earned a 45 percent fresh rating from Rotten Tomatoes), but it shows flashes of poignancy and heart. After a slow beginning, the film introduces older characters played by Kris Kristofferson, Harry Dean Stanton, and Seymour Cassel. The relationships among these characters, and between them and the lead character of Luke Wilson, give the comedy a soul of benevolent dignity. I especially enjoyed the performance of Kristofferson. Wilson wrote the screenplay, and his brothers Owen and Andrew join the project.

Take a moment to get your mind off of that movie, because, while I’m discussing movies, I thought I’d warn readers about a repulsive, disgusting film, Year of the Dog. I regard it, along with I Heart Huckabees and The Butterfly Effect, as the three worst, most nihilistic films I’ve ever seen.

Recently my wife and I put Babel in the DVD player. We were treated to a preview of another movie, I think called Perfume, in which the main character murders women and turns them into perfume. Lovely. So I was already psyched for Babel. In the early scenes of that movie, a young boy in a desolate land masturbates on a cliff, then shoots a bus with his family’s new rifle. That was enough for me. We popped out the video. I had already seen the preview, so I got the idea that the next two hours of the film are devoted to the husband of the shooting victim trying to find help for his wife. No thank you, and again I thank you.

Thankfully, we had also rented Stranger than Fiction, which I thoroughly enjoyed even more than I had on a previous viewing. Will Farrell is a genius actor of physical comedy. In this film, Farrell plays an IRS agent who initially leads an entirely routine life devoid of meaningful values. Then, one day, he begins to hear a narrator describing his life. As he anxiously tries to figure out what’s going on, he begins to reevaluate his life and do the meaningful things that he truly wants to do. I like the movie because it is bright and positive and caring and funny — all of the things banned from so many other Hollywood movies these days.

We also watched an old film called Executive Suite. I forget who recommended it. It is another film we truly appreciated. Yes, it’s a bit dated; all the executives are white males (and all served by female secretaries) and the title sequence is quite jarring. Yet it is spectacularly acted and well written. It’s the story of the struggle to replace the head executive of a furniture company after he dies. Contrary to Oliver Stone’s commentary — and I have no idea why his commentary appears on the video, as he had nothing to do with the film — the film is not a critique of business profits. (I listened only to a few minutes of his commentary.) Instead, the film is about producing something of quality, something you can believe in and sell with pride, and something that will serve the company’s long-term success, not just its short-sighted balance sheet of the month. There are a some problems with the ideas conveyed by the writing. For example, three of the seven executives are quite horrible, which is more than any business could plausibly sustain, and the other four are overly tolerant of their behavior. Nevertheless, the climactic speech is among the most rousing and morally inspiring conclusions to any movie I’ve seen. Furniture boring? Not in this film.