“I love extreme Catholic behaviour before the Reformation. The Reformation ruined everything.” – John Waters

Posted on August 10, 2015 by sheila

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Kim Morgan interviewed director John Waters for the cover-story of September’s issue of Sight & Sound. You’ll have to buy the magazine to read the whole thing, but there’s a generous excerpt over on Kim’s site, and you don’t want to miss it.

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Review: Ricki and the Flash (2015); dir. Jonathan Demme

Posted on August 8, 2015 by sheila

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Preamble: The trailers have been everywhere. For months. With minor tweaks here and there, the trailers give the impression that
1. they are telling the entire story of the movie
and
2. the movie is probably not any good.

Whoever was in charge of those trailers should … well, I don’t want to wish getting fired on anyone … but my ultimate point is that the trailers suck.

Especially since I saw the movie last night.

I have written about trailers before. They are not meant to BE the movie. They ADVERTISE the movie. I understand the difference. But why TRY to create something conventional, uninteresting, as well as misleading? Why is THAT the goal?

These are initial impressions, so they may be a bit all over the map:

All I’ll say is, I went to go see it because Meryl Streep, duh, but also because I had heard some “buzz” from critics I respect, friends and colleagues, that made me not only curious but excited. In general, the reviews have been okay, but when a review says stuff like, “Meryl Streep’s performance, this time, isn’t Oscar-worthy” or whatever (there’s a bunch out there), I don’t read any further than that line. Because there the reviewer betrays that he/she does not understand what an acting career is all about, how it develops, how it even WORKS. How does one write about an entire industry and not understand this? Do you honestly think that every time Meryl Streep acts, she’s “gunning” for an Oscar? Just because you, a critic, are obsessed with the Oscars, because it’s your Super Bowl, doesn’t mean the artists in the industry give a damn about it in the same exact way. How do you think actors think about their work? How do you think they prepare? No, seriously, I’d love to hear.

But a couple of people I really respect have been raving about the thing.

I knew that I would probably like the thing, because Meryl Streep is always interesting to watch.

But what a treat to discover that Ricki and the Flash is a bit of a mess – in a lot of respects – the kind of mess that many MANY movies avoid, the kind of mess I love. A beautiful mess. A human mess. It’s a mess because the emotions it unleashes are huge and intense (especially in the last sequence), it’s a mess because nothing really happens – and the plot is conventional – and yet you still get the sense that EVERYTHING happens and it happens in really unpredictable ways. It’s one of those things that shouldn’t work. But it does. And it’s not just because of Meryl Streep’s performance. This isn’t Meryl carrying an entire movie on her own gigantic star power. It’s an ensemble drama. Streep is always best surrounded by a vigorous ensemble.

There are subtleties of characterization (Kevin Kline is excellent, Audra McDonald really only has one scene, but she is fantastic, and her presence is felt everywhere in the film), and a ton of music (played live. Meryl Streep learned to play the guitar. Watching her mosey through the crowd in a dive bar, playing her electric guitar, getting the throngs worked up, made my WEEK.)

Todd VanDerWerff, in a FB post, remarked a lot about the Midwesten-ness of the film and how important that was, how often folks who refer to middle America as “flyover country” (rude, in my opinion) miss the subtleties in such portrayals. I lived in the Midwest for 5 years – Chicago counts, I suppose – but his comment got me thinking. (I read it after I saw the film.) It was one of the vibes I picked up on (it’s hard to miss). That area of the country is usually condescended to in film, either presented as Utopia Small-Town America or Judgmental Conservative Land. But, you know, it’s a huge region, with lots of different parts, different energies and traditions, and you can see why Ricki (or Linda, her real name) felt she had to flee. You also can see the price this woman has paid for leaving her three kids, for sure. Although there are uptight elements in the Midwest in the film, there is also a lot of chaos and humanity (as there is everywhere. It sounds elementary, but if you’ve seen a lot of films you know how often cliches are utilized.) Ricki’s daughter has gone bonkers after her husband left her. She has stopped bathing. She wears her pajamas in public. Ricki’s ex-husband has pot in the freezer for his migraines, and says stuff like, “I want to keep my cool” when he is the least cool person on the planet. Ricki’s son is gay, and she keeps holding onto the hope that he is bisexual (an interesting opposite of what you would expect: Ricki the wild free soul is not homophobic, not exactly: but she isn’t really supportive either. She’s a bit of an asshole.)

The trailers seem to show a wedding reception, etc., but by the time you get to that scene in the movie for real, you will have forgotten about the trailer and how conventional it all seems. The trailers appear to show the reception as a triumph, Ricki making an emotional speech, everyone cheering, hearts and flowers, Ricki redeemed. It’s much much more complicated than that. And truly emotional, as opposed to bullshit emotional. And that scene requires an understanding of the Midwest – at least this social strata of it. It’s not upper-crust East Coast, with yachts in the harbor. It’s not palatial lush Southern with cut-crystal decanters of bourbon. It’s not chilly-modern Los Angeles with houses high in the hills. It’s Midwestern. It’s a thing. It has its own rhythm, value, look, mood. It’s also like anywhere else: there are children named “Journey,” the bride and groom ask that people make donations to charity in their name, and have a woo-woo preacher who talks about trees and roots in his sermon. You know. There’s that element everywhere too.

Side note, along these lines:
Just look for the bride. The casting of the actress who played the bride (Hailey Gates). Watch the acting of the bride. And most important: Watch what ends up happening to the bride as the reception progresses. It is gorgeous and it comes out of that Midwestern thing I keep talking about. A less-complex film would have kept underlining the point that this woman is uptight and conventional. But it’s infinitely more subtle and human than that. Maybe there’s an innocence there, maybe that’s the word. (I just re-read David Foster Wallace’s essay about 9/11, and how he watched the footage from his neighbor Mrs. Thompson’s house. He talks about “innocence” a lot in that essay. Midwestern innocence. He does not condescend to it or sneer at it. He values it.) What I am saying is: it is specific. It’s not a stereotype. They’re not the same thing.

And it is Ricki walking into that well-established world – usually condescended to or mis-represented in film – that makes the sparks fly. She is not seen as an Angel of Freedom and Do-Your-Own-Thing, she is not an Inspirational Example of Following Your Dream. (It reminds me of a hilarious line from my cousin Mike O’Malley’s movie Certainty: “I wish someone would write a book called ‘DONT Follow Your Dreams.'”) She is not even a Narcissistic Villain. She’s kind of a loser. But she did live her life by her own code. She made choices, and in many respects her life sucks now because of those choices. Her rock star persona is not bullshit. It’s organically who she is. She’s not an adult. She’s willful, self-absorbed, and emotional. She wants to be loved. She knows she has been “bad.” She’s clumsy. She’s a bull-dozer. If you’ve met self-absorbed adults, Ricki makes perfect sense. The movie does not apologize for her or revere her. It’s not a tragedy by any means, but it feels honest.

That’s one of the gifts of Streep’s performance. You don’t feel like she’s a poseur. Or like, if she just put on a nice dress, she’d be beautiful and a good mother. One of the best moments in the film is when she and her boyfriend – played by Rick Springfield – and he KILLS IT – go and buy her a dress for the wedding. They are clearly at a Salvation Army. The dress she buys, people … It is her version of “the Midwest” and it is cheap and tragic. It’s also totally in character. She doesn’t get it altered. She can’t afford it, she wouldn’t even know to do that. Meryl Streep is a beautiful woman and in another film they would have had her show up at the wedding looking gorgeous and “classy” and everyone would do a double-take, and catch their breaths at how beautiful she really is. This is how stars are treated in film. Not here. Ricki is who she is. She’s in her 60s, for God’s sake. She’s not going to change.

The dress. It’s all about the choice of that dress for me. Whatever choice that was, whatever conversations they all had about the dress she wore to the wedding … THAT’S why this movie is good.

And finally: Rick Springfield. There is an intense scene between him and Streep in the kitchen of a bar. She is being an asshole. He has HAD it. I’ve been a Rick Springfield fan since the beginning. I watched him on General Hospital. I had his “Jessie’s Girl” album. Etc. Here, he is lean, handsome, but looks super-used-up. Wrinkles on display, grey in his beard. There’s pain on his face. Pain etched into his lines. It’s a very open performance. But that scene in the kitchen … he RUNS that scene (and let’s face it: Streep has a way of taking over. Just by showing up.) There’s a shot of him (and you can see the back of her head off to the side), and he’s talking about how his kids hate him, still, after the shit he did when they were younger. It’s one shot: he turns his head to the side a bit, for a second, as emotion comes up, and when he turns back to her – his nose has actually turned red, his whole face is red, and he says, “I love my kids.” It’s important that this is one shot: there’s no sudden cut-to-closeup. What happens to Rick Springfield in that moment happens organically, spontaneously. Emotion rises up in his entire body as we watch. The back of Streep’s head is seen to the left of frame, and you can see her nodding at that moment. Nodding at her scene partner, nodding at her boyfriend, either way, who cares.

The whole movie is filled with intense spontaneous moments like that, with emotions too big to be contained by the conventional plot. So when that final sequence comes – and it’s not over right away, that final sequence goes on … and on … and on … and on … and continues on as the credits roll … it’s the catharsis we need, the catharsis that’s been there hovering all along, and we NEED all that time to let it all out.

I’m going on a trip this weekend, but just wanted to jot these thoughts down while they are fresh. I was expecting to go into Ricki and the Flash in a forgiving mood. To meet the movie halfway. To overlook things, and focus on the performances (which I knew would be good.)

Within the first couple of scenes, that vibe vanished. And I got caught up in the story. I knew how it would go. You can see it from miles away. But it didn’t matter. It is a specific story, told on a human level. The emotion is earned. The film is left with loose ends.

Catharsis isn’t built to last into Happily Ever After. Catharsis is momentary. It has the potential to change everything. But who knows if it really will.

Ricki and the Flash gets that too.

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Review: The Gift (2015)

Posted on August 7, 2015 by sheila

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Actor Joel Edgerton (whom I have had a crush on since Zero Dark Thirty) steps into the director’s chair with The Gift, also acting, and he also wrote the script. It’s terrific! Great psychological thriller, with excellent performances from Edgerton, Jason Bateman, and Rebecca Hall.

My review of The Gift is now up at Rogerebert.com.

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Review: The Diary of a Teenage Girl (2015)

Posted on August 7, 2015 by sheila

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This movie has been extremely buzz-y and that can be a good/bad thing. It’s a movie you’ve heard a lot about before you go into it. I avoided reviews and think-pieces (it’s already generated a few: and, side note, can we please stop with “think-piece”? How about good old-fashioned “essay”? I am as guilty as anyone for submitting to the over-complicated word-trend. I hereby declare NO MORE.) There will definitely be a controversial reaction to the film (or, it’s already happening) due to the May-December – so May-December that it’s ILLEGAL – romance.
Is art required to provide moral conclusions? Should art point downwards at certain behavior with a neon sign saying, “This is bad? Don’t do this?”

Exhibits A and B: my thoughts on Wolf of Wall Street and Observe and Report: both films aroused similar brands of controversy as Diary already has.

I go into all of that in my review of Diary of a Teenage Girl over at Rogerebert.com.

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R.I.P. Robert Conquest

Posted on August 6, 2015 by sheila

Robert Conquest, one of the most important and influential historians of the 20th century (who started out as a poet, the guys he palled around with were Kingsley Amis and Philip Larkin) has died at the age of 98. His books about the Stalinist purges and the Soviet Terror and the Ukrainian famine came out before perestroika or glasnost, before there was anything even close to accuracy in numbers. He relied on samizdat literature, rumors, the little information we had, as well as his own uncanny sense of how to read between the lines of the bureaucratic double-newsspeak (ie Lies) coming out of Russia. You can read the obituary at the New York Times. What a life. What a mind. His books have been enormously important to me, and I’ve read them multiple times.

His great book The Great Terror was originally published in 1968. There he described the scope (as he could guess at it, anyway) of Stalin’s Terror, and the sheer numbers reached an almost otherworldly level. So otherworldly that Conquest was criticized for being overdramatic, for inflating the numbers, for being a reactionary. (Ironic, since Conquest was a Leftist, in the terminology of the time.) When the Soviet Imperium collapsed, and the archives opened, Conquest went back to work, poring through all the information, in order to come out with a new edition of The Great Terror. He found that his initial guess of numbers killed during Stalin’s regime was probably off (as in under-estimated) by about 10 million, maybe more. The numbers were otherworldly whatever way you look at it: 10 million, 20 million … I mean, what does that even look like? The Left hated him because he claimed, and strongly, that Stalin’s Terror was not because Stalin was a bad apple who ruined the Utopia they still believed in, but that the system was set up from the beginning to create a Stalin. It encouraged the One Strong Man. Just as Orwell laid out in 1984. (Another common attitude ran along the lines of, “If only someone had told Stalin about what was happening!” Not the brightest bulbs.)

As Robert Conquest prepared to publish the new edition of The Great Terror in 1990 with numbers updated and confirmed, his pal Kingsley Amis joked that the new edition should be called I Told You So, You Fucking Fools. (I had always heard that that crack came from Conquest. It’s a legendary comment among Conquest-o-philes.)

The book is not just interesting, it is also beautifully written, and contains a lot of unforgettable passages. One of the most chilling sentences that I remember (it’s been a while since I read it) comes after a long paragraph describing Stalin’s cohorts racing around in a frenzy trying to save their asses and complete their tasks, still believing that the regime they worked for was logical. It may be brutal, but at least it was logical. And Stalin’s Terror would eventually burn itself out, right? And they could get back to the work of government and bringing their revolutionary ideas to some kind of workable fruition. Conquest wrote: “They didn’t understand Stalin yet.”

Conquest’s work continues to be disputed, and the conversation is always an interesting one. I am missing Christopher Hitchens so much right now, because what an obit he would have written. Now that we know more about the reality of the regime, now that there is more “out there” about how it all worked, many have taken on Conquest’s work. That book, though, remains the “one to beat.” Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag Archipelago was published in 1974, and it acted as a confirmation for Conquest, a voice from the inside, showing what it was like, how it worked. It lined up with Conquest’s guesses.

Robert Conquest is a real intellectual idol of mine (and a gorgeous writer as well). He also was a master at limericks, and could rattle them off improvisationally.

It’s strange because I just thought about him recently. I was thinking about re-reading The Great Terror and I suddenly wondered, “How the hell old is he by now?”

He died on Monday. He was 98. If you haven’t read his books (there are many) I highly highly recommend them.

Here are a couple of them.

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The Mainstreaming of the Crazy: American Bandstand

Posted on August 5, 2015 by sheila

Dick Clark’s American Bandstand premiered on this day in 1957. Rock ‘n’ roll had exploded into the mainstream the year before, with the stratospheric rise of Elvis Presley, culminating in three appearances on the Ed Sullivan Show in the fall of 1956 and early winter of 1957. If Ed Sullivan allowed you on his show (even if he made the decision to have you filmed from the waist up, because God forbid your sexual wiggles came through the television screen), it meant that middle-class white-bread regular-old America was starting to come around. It was an announcement: “Here is what the youth of today is freaking out about. Let’s take a look.”

Context is important: People were terrified of Elvis, terrified of what he represented (to those who didn’t “get it”, he was a dumb lascivious grease-bomb with a hick-ish Southern accent and a Pentecostal background that made him even more “other”. The condescension from Yankee writers was breathtaking.) The outcry against him was ferocious and omnipresent. Not only was Elvis himself perceived as scary, the affect he had on girls was destabilizing to the entire world, pure and simple. If girls react like this, what’s next? Where did all these SCREAMS come from? Can we … stop it? Nobody freaked out when male G.I.s covered the walls of their barracks with Betty Grable or Rita Hayworth. But girls screaming and rioting about a singer got everyone’s attention. (The world, sadly, has not changed. Boys can do what they want, culturally, and obsess on what they want. And, except for video games and how they allegedly “cause” violence, the entire culture does not get worried and concern-trolly about the passions of boys. But whatever girls decide to be passionate about – en masse – is seen as everyone’s business. Let’s count the think-pieces about 50 Shades of Gray and what it means, shall we? Women like sex and have fantasies about it. If this is in any way NEWS to you, you have some serious issues.) There is very little insightful critical analysis written about Elvis in those first couple of years, because the journalists (“journalists”) came from the Northeast, mainly, asked rude questions about “Holy Rollers” and seemed mesmerized by the sight of girls going crazy and wanted to know if Elvis was MEANING to cause these unsightly and scary responses in girls. This is not an exaggeration. Nobody even cared to dig into WHAT Elvis was doing with his MUSIC because the “girls girls girls” issue took up all the oxygen. It’s truly bizarre and just an indication of how massive the upheaval really was.

(Kids, on the other hand, understood everything. They couldn’t have written a thesis about it, but they knew what was going on.)

Elvis on the Ed Sullivan Show was a HUGE cultural deal, even more so than the Beatles’ first appearance almost a decade later. Because Elvis was the first. The doors busted down. Little Richard (and others, many others) said that Elvis going mainstream opened the doors for them. Before Elvis, they had been relegated to what were known as “race stations,” radio stations that only played black music, many of which were owned by black people, run by black people, with black DJs, and all the rest. After Elvis, the black musicians of the day moved onto mainstream radio. (This is one of the reasons why the “cultural appropriation” conversation can get annoying if it’s too prescriptive. All kinds of unofficial blending goes on in culture, a two/three/four-way current. Joyce Millman just addressed this, beautifully, in her essay about Amy Winehouse.) Besides, you cannot segregate the air waves, which is one of the most fascinating elements of black radio stations back in those days. There are many great articles about the advent of black-run radio stations, and what that meant, economically and culturally – not just to white kids, who tuned in overwhelmingly to listen to the music played – but to the black people who ran those businesses and were able to get their message out and connect their community to one another. Everything is political, even in something as seemingly benign as running a radio station. It was a platform, a place to be heard. And if white kids were tuning in to “race” radio stations, the opposite was true as well. Folks like Ray Charles grew up listening to the Grand Ole Opry broadcasts, and you can hear that influence in his music for sure, and the same is true for others of his generation. There was no money, and nothing much else to DO, especially in small towns, rural areas, so people sat around and listened to radio programs. Radio connected people of like-mindedness, but also connected people from different worlds, different regions, opening up space around what was happening, culturally, socially, politically. That growth process was already in place when Elvis entered the scene.

And in 1954/55/56, the classifications and separations started to collapse. And with that collapse came an infinite amount of space. As Lester Bangs wrote in his famous obituary for Elvis:

I mean, don’t tell me about Lenny Bruce, man – Lenny Bruce said dirty words in public and obtained a kind of consensual martyrdom. Plus which Lenny Bruce was hip, too goddam hip if you ask me, which was his undoing, whereas Elvis was not hip at all, Elvis was a goddam truck driver who worshipped his mother and would never say shit or fuck around her, and Elvis alerted America to the fact that it had a groin with imperatives that had been stifled. Lenny Bruce demonstrated how far you could push a society as repressed as ours and how much you could get away with, but Elvis kicked “How Much Is That Doggie in the Window” out the window and replaced it with “Let’s fuck.” The rest of us are still reeling from the impact. Sexual chaos reigns currently, but out of chaos may flow true understanding and harmony, and either way Elvis almost singlehandedly opened the floodgates.

The artists who came before Elvis, the ones who inspired him, knew all this. Had been doing this already, thrilling their own respective groups. But it took one singular figure to bring the message (“I heard the news! There’s a good rockin’ tonight!”) to the rest of us.

In 1957, the year after the roof blew off, television was already taking over – not replacing radio, but altering the whole conversation. Dick Clark started his American Bandstand out of Philadelphia, a show about popular music, with a live audience, “dance parties,” musical guests, and a playlist of jukebox favorites. He opened the first broadcast playing Jerry Lee Lewis’ monster hit “Whole Lotta Shakin’ Going On.”

Personal side note: Huey Lewis came out with an album called “Four Chords and Several Years Ago,” where he covered all the r&b songs that influenced him. One day in Chicago, my friend Ann Marie was driving home from work and heard a call from a local radio station for extras in a Huey Lewis video. She called me. “WE HAVE TO DO THIS.” My response: “COME PICK ME UP IMMEDIATELY.” Once at the radio station, we joined the throngs. The video was going to be a black-and-white tribute to American Bandstand, so they wanted all of us to look period-appropriate (that had been mentioned in the original radio call). So Ann Marie and I pulled out our pedal pushers and little striped tops – and then we were dragged into hair and makeup and given semi-beehives, etc. There were scaffolds set up around the stage, a la American Bandstand, and Huey played live. It was like an actual concert. We danced ALL DAY up on those scaffolds. It took some doing to not get exhausted, and Huey kept us all invigorated by playing many of his beloved hits. It was a great experience. Here’s the clip of the video. I have looked for us, but I can’t really see us. We were on the first level of the scaffold, directly to Huey’s left.

Dick Clark was no dummy: he made sure the show was aired in the afternoon, right when kids got home from school. It became Appointment Television for American teenagers. You could watch new music, hear new artists, see your favorites perform, and participate in the frenzy of rock ‘n’ roll, which was still exploding, outward and outward and outward, a Big Bang Theory of culture. Elvis had already moved on, his explosion was so powerful (Martin Sheen made the comment that Elvis reached the sun – what was it like up there? Who else knew but Elvis?), but many many more followed in his wake.

Here is Jerry Lee Lewis on American Bandstand in 1957, performing “Great Balls of Fire.”

The crazy had gone mainstream.

Posted in Music, Television | Tagged , | 13 Comments

Happy Birthday, Louis Armstrong

Posted on August 4, 2015 by sheila

This is fabulous. And the Duke Ellington quote on the screen before the clip begins … Heart-crack.

Posted in Music, On This Day | 7 Comments

Let the Madness Begin

Posted on August 3, 2015 by sheila

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The film festival submission process for, July and Half of August the short film I wrote (directed by Brandeaux Tourville, starring Annika Marks and Robert Baker) has begun.

Here’s a great picture of the director, immediately post-shoot, 3:30 a.m., foggy street in Burbank, holding the slate.

july

My deepest thanks and gratitude to everyone – exec. producer, producer, actors, makeup, grips, cameraman – who believed in my script and made it happen. No one does anything alone.

Posted in Movies | Tagged , , | 30 Comments

July 2015 viewing diary

Posted on August 1, 2015 by sheila

Faith of Our Fathers (2015; d. Carey Scott).
A poorly done Christian movie. My review at Rogerebert.com.

In Stereo (2015; d. Mel Rodriguez III).
The second terrible movie I’ve had to see and review in June. My review at Rogerebert.com.

Red River (1948; d. Howard Hawks).
I had to watch a great film in order to cleanse my mind of the bullshit I was forced (well, I was paid, so there’s that) to watch. I love Red River so much. Montgomery Clift in his debut, holding his own with John Wayne, not an easy feat. Gorgeous cinematography. Great film.

Berlin Alexanderplatz, Part I (1980; d. Rainer Werner Fassbinder).
I went through a huge Fassbinder phase about 15, 20 years ago. I saw everything he did. (Which is quite a feat: in his short life, his output was prolific. It’s like he knew he wouldn’t live long.) I love Querelle and Ali: Fear Eats the Soul, and the television series Berlin Alexanderplatz. It’s really not like anything else. I didn’t watch the whole series this time around. I mean, who has the time, really. I love his style, though.

They Were Expendable (1945; d. John Ford).
You’ll see a lot of Wayne in this list. Seeing Hondo brought the obsession to the fore. They Were Expendable is a devastating and dark picture about a group of men left behind during a particularly fraught battle in WWII. There aren’t planes enough to come and get everybody out. Ford films it with gloom and despair: there are many GORGEOUS shots of the men walking through a particular tunnel, their figures turned into stark silhouettes of grief. John Wayne is wonderful but he plays support staff to the great Robert Montgomery. There’s a beautiful romance as well with Donna Reed: I love John Wayne pacing near the phone, waiting for her to call. Like an eager teenager. Beautiful film.

Gold Diggers of 1933 (1933; d. Busby Berkeley, Mervyn LeRoy).
A favorite. I have something I want to write about it, and I am putting it off because I can sense it will be huge and take over my life. Why do I do this to myself? A great film: gritty and fantastical and bizarre. Both a fantasy and an expression of the harrowing reality of 1933. Ending with one of my favorite musical numbers of all time. Wrote about it – and Joan Blondell – here.

Tree of Life (2011; d. Terrence Malick).
It’s been a while. I reviewed for Capital New York, right after seeing it for the first time, and you can hear my initial response to the film in my writing. It holds up. (I’ve seen it about 4 times.) Brad Pitt’s performance gets better and better. His HANDS. The whole performance is about his HANDS.

A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night (2011; d. Ana Lily Amirpour).
I love this movie! I reviewed this for Rogerebert.com, and also put up a post of screen grabs.

Tap World (2015; d. Dean Hargrove).
My review of this wonderful documentary about tap dancers around the world was slated to go up on The Dissolve the week it closed its doors. WHAT A LOSS. Not just personally, although I loved writing for them, and loved their comments section, but for the world of serious enthusiastic film fans everywhere. I put up the review on my own site, but almost hated pressing “Publish.”

The X-Files, Season 7, Episode 20, “Fight Club” (2000; d. Paul Shapiro)
Back to the X-Files! Kathy Griffin in a dual role. Super stupid!

The X-Files, Season 7, Episode 21, “Je Souhaite” (2000; d. Vince Gilligan).
An episode about a genie, and be careful what you wish for. It’s wonderful, especially that last scene which is KILLER. However, I can’t help but compare it to the genie episode in Season 2 of Supernatural, which is one of my favorite episodes of television ever made. Unfair comparison. Still: when you see what Mulder wished for … Heart-crack.

The X-Files, Season 7, Episode 22, “Requiem” (2000; d. Kim Manners).
The season finale. Mulder is sucked up into a UFO with a group of other freaks. And scene.

The X-Files, Season 8, Episode 1, “Within” (2000; d. Kim Manners).
I come to the series fresh, having no idea of the fan-consensus (such as there may be) about certain aspects of the show. I am also (clearly) binge-watching which is its own animal and very different from watching it in real-time. Mulder is gone for the majority of Season 8, and replaced by Agent Doggett (played by Robert Patrick, who was T-1000). I LOVE Agent Doggett. At a certain point in a long-running series, you have to shake things up – either because you are forced to (Duchovny didn’t want to come back full-time), or because you want the show to survive and not spin its wheels. Introducing a new agent into the mix, thereby putting the skeptical Scully in the position of being the “Mulder” in the new partnership, was wonderful. What ends up happening with Mulder’s disappearance, is we start to see what he meant to Scully, and her desperation to get him back. That’s what it’s all about. I’m in this thing for the emotions. The mythology is often beyond me.

The Third Man (1949; d. Carol Reed).
Charlie and I went to go see the new restoration playing at the Film Forum. I have seen the film many times, but never in a theatre. Those images. Those shadows. The tilted camera angles. The glowing mischievous face of Orson Welles peeking out of the shadows, one of the most famous entrances in cinema history. Charlie and I had a great time.

The X-Files, Season 8, Episode 2, “Without” (2000; d. Kim Manners).
Tracking down Mulder leads them to the desert, which leads them to the little genius kid from the chess competition. Agent Doggett is now the skeptic, fighting Scully every step of the way, except you can tell he has integrity as a person and wants to do as good a job as possible in an impossible situation. The intermittent shots of Mulder being tortured are both erotic (he’s naked, there’s a cod-piece-ish contraption over his groin) and HORRIBLE (his skin being pulled out from his face.)

The X-Files, Season 8, Episode 3, “Patience” (2000; d. Chris Carter).
Oh boy, Duchovny’s name has disappeared from the opening credits! And Robert Patrick has taken his place. I get why fans resented it. But I fell in love with Agent Doggett.

The X-Files, Season 8, Episode 4, “Roadrunners” (2000; d. Rod Hardy).
My guide through the Files has been Keith Uhlich. He watched in real-time as each episode came out. His is a lifelong obsession. So when we watch together (as we watched this one), he gives me background, on how it was received initially. He said that there was a lot of irritation about this episode, fans did not like Doggett’s He-Man Let-Me-Save-Scully thing. So here’s my take on this one: I LOVED it. And LOVED Doggett in this. Him carrying Scully out to safety provided a sweep of emotion! She was a damsel in distress (as she often has been, against her will – since she is such a strong capable person). But this episode provided the glue between these characters, glue that carried us through the rest of the season.

The X-Files, Season 8, Episode 5, “Invocation” (2000; d. Richard Compton).
A bit of backstory about Agent Doggett and his son who died.

The X-Files, Season 8, Episode 6, “Redrum” (2000; d. Peter Markle).
I fucking love Joe Morton. Always have.

The X-Files, Season 8, Episode 7, “Via Negativa” (2000; d. Tony Wharmby).
Third eye. To be honest, the details of this one are a bit lost to me. That’s what happens when you watch 12 episodes in one day, which is what Keith and I did in June. “You two need help,” said Dan.

The X-Files, Season 8, Episode 8, “Surekill” (2001; d. Terrence O’Hara).
To be honest, my main takeaway from “Surekill” is being a secretary at that particular disgusting company has to be one of the worst jobs in existence.

The X-Files, Season 8, Episode 9, “Salvage” (2001; d. Rod Hardy).
Gulf War Syndrome: you’d have to be a certain age to remember when that condition was in the news all the time. It brought back memories. Mulder is really just GONE now, isn’t he. It was weird.

The X-Files, Season 8, Episode 10, “Badlaa” (2001; d. Tony Wharmby).
Kind of hilarious. Deep Roy is awesome.

The X-Files, Season 8, Episode 11, “The Gift” (2001; d. Kim Manners).
The return of Mulder, whom we have been dying to see, although once he re-appears it is terrifying. Super-gross to see someone vomit that much into a hole.

The X-Files, Season 8, Episode 12, “Medusa” (2001; d. Richard Compton).
Really fabulous. Great set of the Boston subway-system. Interesting ensemble, too, reminiscent of the band of warriors in Aliens.

The X-Files, Season 8, Episode 13, “Per Manum” (2001; d. Kim Manners).
Hey there, Adam Baldwin, how are you? I found this episode, with pregnancy and perhaps false-ultrasounds, and Scully’s panic to be incredibly upsetting. Also the tender flashbacks with Mulder, donating his sperm for her, their heads leaned together in silhouette. Emotional.

The X-Files, Season 8, Episode 14, “This Is Not Happening” (2001; d. Kim Manners).
Fantastic. Scully’s performance is coming into the Epic realm.

Supernatural, Season 2, Episode 17, “Heart” (2007; d. Kim Manners).
I’ve been busy and June was, frankly, wretched. It involved a date I was psyched about ending in weirdness and disappointment, a random sexual assault (not by the guy from the date, but from a guy leaping out of the shadows, literally – I had to punch him.), the start of new meds for my loony-tunes psychology, increasing health issues involving my uterus, and a Satanic doctor who made me feel my body was worthless because I have never had a child. “Your uterus is a piece of meat. I do not understand why you are attached to it.” Uhm, because it’s an important body part and it’s part of me and whatever I decide to do with it is going to be a big deal? June felt like the world was against me. So I have not been in the mood for re-caps. I tried to get in the mood, though, by re-watching “Heart,” an episode I love. I finally got around to the re-cap.

Mad Women (2015; d. Jeff Lipsky).
Terrible movie. I’m sorry I even saw it. My review at Rogerebert.com.

Magic Mike XXL (2015; d. Gregory Jacobs).
My third time seeing it. Can’t get enough. I have written before about how seeing it was actually healing, in the middle of June.

The Last Waltz (1978; d. Martin Scorsese).
A favorite. With such an air of melancholy and exhaustion keening through it.

The X-Files, Season 8, Episode 15, “Deadalive” (2001; d. Tony Wharmby).
Billy Miles Billy Miles Billy Miles. Also Krycek, whom I love, horrible villain that he is. Scully’s future baby is rising in importance. Like, entire government agencies are aware she is giving birth. Ridiculous. But great. The return of Mulder.

The X-Files, Season 8, Episode 16, “Three Words” (2001; d. Tony Wharmby).
FIGHT THE FUTURE. Okay, dude, but how? Not really interested in the plot here. More taken with how different Mulder is, how things have changed, and the strange new relationship between the two of them. Mulder is irritated and, if possible, even more paranoid than he was before.

The X-Files, Season 8, Episode 17, “Empedocles” (2001; d. Barry K. Thomas).
Welcome, Annabeth Gish. I like her slightly bizarre character. She doesn’t really fit in, but neither does the character. Scully again is a damsel in distress, hospitalized due to stomach pains. The “pizza man” becomes a running joke, which makes me think that a similar joke in Supernatural (beloved by Destiel fans and, seemingly, despised by the rest of us) has to be a nod to the X-Files. “The pizza man” is the universal code for = Porn Plot.

Samba (2015; d. Olivier Nakache, Eric Toledano).
May be offensive to some since it treats the hot-topic of immigration in France with a light slapstick touch. The reason to see it is the charm and star power of Omar Sy. My review at Rogerebert.com.

Fast and Furious: Tokyo Drift (2006; d. Justin Lin).
In the midst of a re-watch of the whole series, which I love to death. Also: can someone please teach me how to do the Tokyo Drift? Even though my car is a Hyundai, used as a punchline in the film? I need to know how to do it.

A Gay Girl in Damascus: The Amina Profile (2015; d. Sophie Deraspe).
Fascinating documentary about the recent Internet hoax that dominated world news for a week. My review at Rogerebert.com.

Supernatural, Season 2, Episode 17, “Heart” (2007; d. Kim Manners).
I told you June was rough. I needed to watch “Heart” AGAIN in order to get into the re-cap. I was moving in slow motion in June, beat up and upset.

Magic Mike XXL (2015; d. Gregory Jacobs).
Fourth time. My sister and I snuck away on our vacation to see a matinee. We were the only ones in a huge theatre. It was a private screening. We had a BLAST.

I, Confess (1953; d. Alfred Hitchcock).
Montgomery Clift as the priest caught up in a situation beyond his control. Karl Malden as the determined police detective. Beautifully shot, of course. Stunning black-and-white.

The Innocents (1961; d. Jack Clayton).
How had I never seen this unbelievably creepy and upsetting movie, based on Henry James’ The Turn of the Screw? Deborah Kerr always said this was her finest performance, and now I can see why. Gorgeously filmed. Scary as hell. Psychologically unstable.

The X-Files, Season 8, Episode 18, “Vienen” (2001; d. Rod Hardy).
Inquiring minds want to know: Did they really film this on a real oil rig? It looks like they did.

The X-Files, Season 8, Episode 19, “Alone” (2001; d. Frank Spotnitz).
Scully goes on maternity leave. Doggett gets a new partner, who seems pretty meta: a “fan” of Mulder and Scully. It’s weird: Scully and Mulder are exiting the series sort of. I loved the final scene, though, with the two of them bickering about whether or not they saw a spaceship.

The X-Files, Season 8, Episode 20, “Essence” (2001; d. Kim Manners).
Frances Fisher as the creepy baby-nurse! Scully’s due date approaches. And naturally the government is involved.

The X-Files, Season 8, Episode 21, “Existence” (2001; d. Kim Manners)
Scully gives birth in an abandoned town. And holy shit, she and Mulder kiss.

Diary of a Teenage Girl (2015; d. Marielle Heller).
For review at Rogerebert.com. My review will come out next week.

The Quiet Man (1952; d. John Ford).
I love The Quiet Man. My dad loved The Quiet Man: “There is a fight scene in it that is the longest fight scene I’ve ever seen.” John Wayne in the graveyard in the rain, with his shirt see-through – one of his sexiest moments. The Quiet Man always reminds me of a really fun conversation I had with a random guy in Ireland about the movie.

Supernatural, Season 10, Episode 1, “Black” (2014; d. Robert Singer).
The start of my first re-watch of Season 10 in its entirety. I had forgotten how terrible Hannah is. She’s a bad actress, basically, and forgets – always – that her character is an angel, a supernatural being. Compare to how Misha Collins originally played his character in Seasons 4, 5, 6. He did not seem human. I had forgotten how MUCH of her there is. But, and this is a huge but: JP and JA and Mark Sheppard more than make up for it. And Cole. I love Cole. He is my Special Ops doppelgänger. Not that I ever was Special Ops, but that’s one of the nicknames my friends have for me.

Supernatural, Season 10, Episode 2, “Reichenbach” (2014; d. Thomas Wright)
Ackles is superb. What he has created here … I just wish we had more of it, akin to Soulless Sam in Season 6. But c’est la vie.

Supernatural, Season 10, Episode 3, “Soul Survivor” (2014; d. Jensen Ackles)
Quite moving, and beautifully filmed. The other episodes Ackles directed did not have all that much “Dean” in them. This one is heavy on the Dean. And he’s grown as a director and is able to handle switching off roles. In many ways, the close-ups of him in the bunker basement are among the most beautiful shots of him in the entire series. Which just proves my theory that he knows what he has, is not embarrassed about it, and lets it be highlighted to its most baroque level. I also love the derelict old drive-in, created in post-production. A lost world.

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“I’m looking for a book by this guy eye-bid.”

Posted on July 31, 2015 by sheila

Charming review of Margaretta Barton Colt’s memoir of her 30 years running the independent bookshop specializing in military topics called The Military Bookman: Martial Bliss.: The Story of The Military Bookman.. The quote in the post-title comes from one anecdote in the book, included in the review.

The bookshop closed in 2003. I went there a couple of times when I first arrived in New York (the Upper East Side was practically the suburbs, as far as I was concerned – it was way over THERE), but I loved the atmosphere of that bookshop, and also the mostly-male clientele who hung around. These guys knew books and knew what they were looking for. I was really into military strategy for a while there. I bought a John Keegan book at The Military Bookman, and inhaled it while I was in the midst of going to grad school. I will definitely be reading this memoir (I love bookish memoirs especially, but it’s wonderful that Colt has written this book, self-published it … It’s one of the real casualties of the Internet age, the vanishing of special places like The Military Bookman.)

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