Mikhail Baryshnikov and Lil’ Buck Together: Perfection

Posted on February 7, 2015 by sheila

For their Fall 2015 menswear collection, Rag and Bone launched a video featuring Mikhail Baryshnikov and Lil’ Buck. Directed by George Greville, it’s a mini-masterpiece of movement and images, completely hypnotic and gorgeous, sexy and strange.

Posted in Art/Photography | Tagged , | 2 Comments

1938 Selfie

Posted on February 6, 2015 by sheila

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My grandfather and grandmother. The photo is dated October 13, 1938, and is in an album that my grandmother called “Of Ourselves By Ourselves.” (Hm, there’s a certain Sinn Féin ring to that.) My aunt posted the photo to Facebook and we have all just stopped in our tracks to appreciate it. They both look so happy, so together. I love my grandparents.

Posted in Personal | Tagged | 3 Comments

Review: John Wick (2014)

Posted on February 6, 2015 by sheila

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The great Stephanie Zacharek wrote two pieces about John Wick in The Village Voice. Highly recommended reading (maybe after you’ve seen the film, which you definitely should):

Keanu Reeves is Just Plain Awesome in John Wick

How John Wick Restored My Faith in Violent Movies

Those two pieces, but especially the second, is the best of what film criticism can do. It can explain why something works for a certain critic, and if the critic is a good writer (and Zacharek is a great one), it will pulse with a feeling so compelling that you will have to go and see it for yourself. Or, it will put into words that ephemeral thing you could sense but didn’t know how to describe.

John Wick is a great piece of film-making. It is made up primarily of fight scenes, ferocious, with a body count equivalent to a small Romanian village. The film was made by two former stuntmen (it is their first feature, and I just have to tip my hat to that – this is incredibly bold, audacious, confident, GORGEOUS film-making) – and besides the story, which is a classic Revenge drama, it is a celebration of the old-school style of stuntmen, what stuntmen (and women) can provide. How AWESOME they are. But it’s how the film is shot that makes the difference. (Again, read that second piece by Zacharek. It’s all there. What she said, basically.) In my review for Taken 3, I talked about the problem of the current trend of quick-cut frenzied action scenes, how it ends up feeling lazy. Instead of creating an action scene that makes sense, visually, they just cut the film to shreds, hoping that the fast-paced edit will do all the work for them. Meanwhile, I’m watching a car chase and I completely lose my orientation in space. I don’t know where we’re going, who’s at the wheel, what’s happening. That’s not immersive film-making: that’s BAD film-making.

In John Wick, the highly choreographed fights are seen mostly in full, and all of the cuts make sense: they come when the fight takes a turn, when someone joins the action, when someone goes down. But until then, you get to see the phenomenal physical work of two actors PRETENDING to battle it out. The whole movie is one long fight, really, and so what ends up happening is you enter a world of relentless movement, bodies flying and lunging and crouching and falling, and it takes on a terrible and violent beauty. Zacharek referred to it as a barbaric ballet, and I couldn’t put it any better.

And the inciting event, as it were, the event that gets the ball rolling, that makes John Wick set out for revenge, is not a gimmick, or a lazily sketched-in plot point. It is specific, heartfelt, and thus totally understandable. All of that is dependent on Keanu Reeves’ mostly wordless performance in the first 15 minutes of the movie. It lands. It’s horrifying. Just as much thought has been given to that quiet sad prologue as to the multiple chaotic fight scenes that make up the rest of the film. Nothing is sketched-in. They have taken the care (the whole film shows great care) to set up their story strongly and emotionally.

John Wick is thrilling.

Posted in Movies | Tagged , | 5 Comments

Moving Forward, Moving West

Posted on February 4, 2015 by sheila

Barring any unforeseen circumstances, like the people involved booking a part in a Michael Mann movie or something, I will be out in Los Angeles next week for the shoot of a short film, written by yours truly. It’s part of a larger script I’ve written, the one which (so far) has had a workshop in LA, a reading in Chicago, and two readings in New York, one small and one enormous. We’re filming one scene from it (ironically, the first scene I wrote, although it comes third in the scene line-up in the full script: this scene was originally meant to be a short film or a one-act – it was only when the first reading of it went so well that I decided to expand it into full-length). This all has happened very quickly, and I haven’t had time to process, maybe a good thing.

I won’t mention specific names until it’s actually in the can, as it were. But we have an executive producer, a couple of regular producers, an ambitious talented director who is passionate about the script and about the project, a super-talented cinematographer, and two phenomenal actors. The actors are busy busy busy, they work all the time, but they responded to the script and want to do it. Actors, man. They like working. I am more pleased than I can say that these two people would read what I wrote and decide to do it. The first table-read of the script is tonight, out in Los Angeles, and I’m Skyping into it, even though I have no idea how to do that, yet. Next week is the second table-read, which I will be there for, and then the shoot. They’re location-scouting now. Getting two people into a room at the same time is difficult, let alone an entire small movie crew in an industry town where jobs that PAY beckon. So there’s still some uncertainty, but at this point: July and Half of August is a GO.

My script is precious to me, it has brought me so much good fortune and when I re-read it I can’t believe I wrote it. Not that it’s so awesome but that it’s so clear in its sense of despair, and it came out of a very specific 2009 mindset when I had less distance from Bad Things. I wrote it in the thick of the Bad. It was a blast, at times the only thing I looked forward to during the day, writing about those two wackos trying to work shit out. I probably wouldn’t write it now. But still, letting this thing go – letting other people work on it, letting other people share their input, their take – is what I want, what I hope for. It doesn’t come without its anxieties! It feels like I am watching my child get on the schoolbus for the first time. I feel protective. Like, what if the director wants to futz with it too much, and, for example, put cartoon thought-bubbles outside the character’s heads? You know, like totally over-produce it, and try to be clever and innovative or whatever. What if he thinks the tone should be that of a Judd Apatow film? These were all the cartoon thought-bubbles that raced outside my head before I actually spoke with the director. I did not know the director before this. This whole situation came out of my script being passed around by people who know it, people who love it. The stars aligned, in other words. “Hey, I’m looking for a project …” “Whaddya know, here’s this great script in my back pocket …” But now I feel like I know the director intimately because we’ve talked on the phone every day for the past month. He GETS my script, he relates to it, he’s passionate about it, we are TOTALLY on the same page with it. I haven’t had to explain myself. He gets it already. It’s an ideal situation.

And so now I am just copied on emails. Everyone talking about permits and crew and lighting packages and locations … this very small crew of people moving into position. It’s so impressive to witness: there’s all the talk, and then eventually you have to act, and once everyone decides to act at the same time, stuff starts moving FAST. There’s sometimes a weird dissociative feeling because everyone is talking about these two characters as though they actually exist. But they’re just two people I made up. So to hear someone I don’t know say, “I’m thinking of so-and-so for Jack …” Like, Jack is off the page now. He’s up and out there in the world. It’s weird and wonderful. And now, he is no longer mine. He will belong to the actor playing him. The same with Neve. Neve doesn’t belong to me now, she belongs to the actress playing her, the actress studying the script right now.

It’s a grand adventure. I’m not young. It’s exciting to have brand-new experiences, shit you’ve never done before, shit you’ve never gone through before, when you are not young. I won’t say it’s not nerve-wracking, because it is, but it’s also awesome. I am filled with a sense of gratitude towards every single person out there who loves my script, who has backed it, hustled it for me, passed it around, made shit happen for it. That includes every actor who has played the roles thus far: my cousin Mike and Missy Yager in the very first reading in Los Angeles, David Wagner and Jennifer McCabe at the first small reading in New York, Peter Giles and Rebecca Creskoff at the big workshop we did in Los Angeles, Jeff Christian and Amy Carle at the reading in Chicago, and Kerry O’Malley and Aaron Mathias at the huge New York reading at the Vineyard. Every single actor takes what I wrote and puts their own stuff into it. They LIVE it. They show me new things. They do what they need to do to make it come alive. It’s incredibly humbling to watch that all go down. Like, I can’t even describe it.

There are still so many variables, still so much that needs to fall into place before we actually start filming. I’ll actually believe it’s happening when I arrive at the location on the first day.

Here is what you wish for, as a writer: You write in isolation. You have an idea, or, for me, it was just an opening line, the opening line of the scene we’re going to film. I heard that opening line and then wanted to hear what the response was. I didn’t know who the two people were, or what their backstory was, but I wanted to discover what happened. That’s why I wrote it. The writing process is isolating, and it’s even more strange to write a script in isolation because a script requires VOICES, it requires people to make it happen. Once that first reading happened in Los Angeles, I knew I wanted to continue, and write the rest of it. The full script was completed in 2010. Then came the long hard push, to organize the workshop in LA, and then the reading in Chicago, and then the huge reading in New York. I have representation now, and my agent certainly helped with the momentum after all of that, getting me meetings, hustling my script. But for a while there (the last year or so) the sense of organic momentum was lost. I knew it would take some huge PUSH again. So I started pushing. And others started pushing. And here’s what I set out to say: it is when OTHERS start pushing, that things start REALLY happening. And momentum starts to gain on its own. It’s a strange change in atmosphere, and you can almost feel it happening: events starting to build, and you have almost no part in it anymore. You are not the generator of momentum anymore. The REAL momentum required on my part was to finish the damn script. None of this would have happened if I hadn’t written the thing. And now … I’m copied on emails, as people pass around pictures about possible locations. The thing itself has momentum now. It is its own organism. I do try to take a moment or two to realize, Sheila, this is what you’ve been hoping for. Here it is. Look at how you don’t have to DO anything anymore except … show up.

I’ve booked my ticket out, a leap of faith that yes, we will be filming next week, and the stars will align yet again to get this thing done.

Posted in Personal | Tagged | 69 Comments

Supernatural, Season 10, Episode 12: Open Thread

Posted on February 3, 2015 by sheila

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My schedule careening towards the breaking point, not sure when I will get a chance to watch tonight’s episode. Hopefully tomorrow, but more likely Thursday. Will catch up with you all then!

Posted in Television | Tagged | 58 Comments

The 50 Best Films of The Decade, So Far

Posted on February 2, 2015 by sheila

The Dissolve polled their writers for a list of their favorite films of the decade so far, and they came up with a master ranked list, based on everyone’s choices. We each had to contribute capsule reviews for a couple of the films on the list. I was happy to write about Amour and Melancholia.

You can go check out The 50 Best Films of the Decade, So Far Part 1 here. An embarrassment of riches.

Posted in Movies | 1 Comment

January 2015 Viewing Diary

Posted on February 2, 2015 by sheila

I’m going to start listing everything I saw each month. It’ll be a good way for me to keep track, and also a good record for my end-of-year lists.

So here’s everything I watched in January, 2015.

Inherent Vice (2014; Paul Thomas Anderson): my second time. Even better the second time.

The Bling Ring (2013; Sofia Coppola): I saw it on its opening night (thoughts here), and just re-watched it. Just as entertaining, although seeing it in a packed chaotic theatre was a real high-point for me, in terms of movie-going. Especially these days when people can’t put down their phones long enough to watch the movie. This was an engaged EXCITED audience, people couldn’t WAIT to see it, and that energy was infectious.

Sullivan’s Travels (1941; Preston Sturges): I love this movie, I ADORE Veronica Lake and Joel McCrea together: what an unforgettable pairing. It’s also a celebration of the comedic in life. Comedy is dismissed as un-serious, it’s undervalued. Sullivan’s Travels has its serious element, and the Depression-ravaged world shown is pretty bleak. And that’s where comedy is most needed.

Music and Lyrics (2007; Marc Lawrence): Loved it.

Bakery Girl of Monceau (1963; Éric Rohmer): The first part of Rohmer’s “Moral Tales” series, starring a young and slick Barbet Schroeder. Heartless. I loved the narration. I had planned on going through the Moral Tales in order, but the best-laid plans and all that …

The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946; Tay Garnett): A favorite. It never gets old.

Inglourious Basterds (2009; Quentin Tarantino): His masterpiece. Wrote about a tiny moment of acting that I love here.

The Letter (1940); William Wyler): One of Bette Davis’ best performances. Herbert Marshall kills me. Wrote a bit about it here. My friend Mitchell observed: “Watch her right-hand throughout the movie. The hand that held the gun. It always remembers what it did.” He is so RIGHT.

My Man Godfrey (1936; Gregory La Cava): Carlo the morose protege. The furious dad holding the tray of martinis. The ridiculous mother. Gail Patrick. Carole Lombard falling apart. The maid also falling apart. The two of them collapsing into one another’s arms crying. William Powell’s sexy confident charm. The magnificent opening credits. I know the movie by heart, which only increases the pleasure of it.

The Congress (2013; Ari Folman): I don’t know, I think I liked it. Yeah, just a bit … Kidding: it blew me away.

Supernatural, Season 2, Episode 11, “Playthings” (2007; Charles Beeson): A re-watch for the re-cap.

The X-Files, Season 1, Episode 16, “E.B.E.” (1994; William Graham): I just need to point out that William Graham directed 3 episodes of The X-Files, and he also directed Elvis’ last feature film, A Change of Habit in 1969. Elvis loved him. Graham treated him like a real actor. He only had good things to say about Elvis, which is basically a theme in Elvis’ life. I wrote about William Graham when he died.). Back to X-Files: “E.B.E.” is as paranoid as it gets, and X-Files is a VERY paranoid show!

The Big Year (2001; David Frankel): I’m not a fan of the term “under-rated” because what it usually means is “that thing nobody else likes that I love.” But The Big Year, for me, really qualifies. It came and went and barely caused a blip. Nobody paid attention to it. It got some nice reviews. It was only through the high praise of my friend Craig, whose opinion I trust, that made me loop back to see it. And Jack Black is one of my favorite actors, as is Owen Wilson. It just wasn’t on my radar at all! It is a WONDERFUL film. It’s very funny but it’s also poignant. I saw it a couple of years ago for the first time, fell in love with it, and it held up in the second viewing. I recommend it to everyone.

Caged! (1950; John Cromwell): A “women’s prison” drama, with Agnes Moorehead as a reform-minded warden, fighting an uphill battle, and poor pregnant innocent Eleanor Parker as an incarcerated woman, learning the ropes of prison from the tough dames around her. Sent to me by my good friend Stevie, who knows my taste, and it did not disappoint. The posters and advertisements for it look really salacious, but it’s actually not that at all – it’s a serious film.

Taken 3 (2015); Olivier Megaton): Reviewed for Rogerebert.com.

Django Unchained (2012; Quentin Tarantino): I was even more upset by Samuel Jackson’s performance than I was the first time I saw it. And Leo is flat-out brilliant, but that’s not a surprise. I love the movie.

Three Night Stand (2015; Pat Kiely): Reviewed for Rogerebert.com.

Supernatural, Season 2, Episode 12, “Nightshifter” (2007; Phil Sgriccia): Re-watched for the re-cap.

Supernatural, Season 9, Episode 5, “Dog Dean Afternoon” (2013; Tim Andrew): The lack of perfection of the episode doesn’t bother me in the slightest. I love the dog behavior and it’s pleasing to me and very relaxing to behold. Pop this one in when I need to chillAX.

The Passenger (1975; Michelangelo Antonioni): Prompted by a brief discussion about Antonioni in the comments section to a post. I saw The Passenger years ago, at the Music Box Theatre in Chicago, and have never forgotten that final shot. That final strange mysterious shot. It’s been years since I’ve seen it though.

Supernatural, Season 9, Episode 7, “Bad Boys” (2013; Kevin Parks): Has quickly become a favorite.

Supernatural, Season 9, Episode 8, “Rock and a Hard Place” (2013; John MacCarthy): Many fans dislike. I get their reasons, and I also do not understand why everyone looks alike in the episode. A GREAT example of an unimaginative casting director AND (I would think) an unimaginative director. However: I love it for the burlesque.

Something’s Gotta Give (2003; Nancy Meyers): A favorite. I watch it all the time.

Save Me (2007; Robert Cary): A devastating drama, starring Judith Light, about a young guy put into a halfway house (basically) to undergo reparative/conversion therapy. Stephen Lang is incredible as Judith Light’s husband. Another one watched on Stevie’s recommendation. So excellent.

Supernatural, Season 2, Episode 20, “What Is and What Should Never Be” (2007; Eric Kripke): A favorite.

Supernatural, Season 2, Episode 21, “All Hell Breaks Loose, Part 1” (2007; Robert Singer): Moving ahead in Season 2, preparing for the rest of the re-caps. Also, I love it. I watched it alone, and then with the commentary track.

Cake (2015; Daniel Barnz): Reviewed for The Dissolve.

Appropriate Behavior (2015; Desiree Akhavan): Reviewed for Rogerebert.com.

Water Lilies (2007; Céline Sciamma): A re-watch in preparation for Sciamma’s latest film Girlhood, which was fantastic, reviewed for Rogerebert.com. I love Sciamma’s work so much. Water Lilies is a wonderful coming-of-age story about three young girls, all involved in a synchronized swimming team called “Water Lilies.”

When Evening Falls on Bucharest or Metabolism (2013; Corneliu Porumboiu). I love his films, and this is his latest. Write about it here.

Girlhood (2015; Céline Sciamma): Reviewed for Rogerebert.com.

Blackhat (2015; Michael Mann): So much fun. Mann is always fun. Gorgeous to look at.

Locke (2013; Stephen Knight): Phenomenal. Wrote about it here. It was then syndicated on both Road & Track and the BMW blog, so I am feeling particularly bad-ass about it.

Wadjda (2013; Haifaa Al-Mansour): The first film shot inside Saudi Arabia. By a Saudi director. By a FEMALE Saudi director. These facts, in and of themselves, make the film historic. But, thankfully, it is also a wonderful story, beautifully told. Wrote about it here.

Against the Sun (2015; Brian Falk): Very good, reviewed for Rogerebert.com.

Before Sunrise (1995; Richard Linklater): 2015 is the 20th anniversary of Richard Linklater’s Before Sunrise. I wrote about the film for Movie Mezzanine.

Before Sunset (2004; Richard Linklater): The follow-up film to Before Sunrise. All three in the trilogy (thus far) are amazing. Before Sunset is my favorite of the three. Painful. Precarious. Brilliant.

Love Me Tender (1956; Robert Webb): Elvis’ much-anticipated film debut! I wrote it up for Bright Wall/Dark Room‘s upcoming issue devoted to musicals. It will come out this March. I watched the film once, and then again with Jerry Schilling (lifelong friend of Elvis) doing commentary. I’ve seen the film 100 times, of course, and have written about it here and there, but it was really fun to go in-depth.

Supernatural, Season 3, Episode 4, “Sin City” (2007; Charles Beeson): The long conversation between Dean and the demon is the Keeper here. It feels like a play. Beautifully written and beautifully played.

Supernatural, Season 3, Episode 7, “Fresh Blood” (2007; Kim Manners): Because Gordon Walker.

Supernatural, Season 10, Episode 10, “The Hunter Games” (2015; John Badham): Yes. THAT John Badham.

Night of the Hunter (1955; Charles Laughton): One of my favorite movies ever made. Popped it in again because of the ongoing conversation here. So brilliant I don’t even know what to do with myself.

American Sniper (2015; Clint Eastwood): The controversy around it has been unbelievably annoying and I did my best to tune it out until I could see it. On one side, we have the “Yay! Killing rag-heads!” brigade. Idiots. On the other we have, “But what about the reasons we went into the war? And how Bush Lied People Died? Doesn’t the film GLORIFY killing?” They must have missed all of the PTSD scenes at the end, which are the opposite of “glorifying” his actions. (Many people were arguing about the movie without even having seen it. Like Glenn Greenwald going off on Zero Dark Thirty without having seen it. Moments like that actually make things simple: you know who to tune out. You know who’s not serious.) Both sides are wrong. American Sniper is neither an endorsement nor an indictment. (Would those critics have been happy if Chris Kyle broke down in tears at the end, sobbing, “Why did Bush send us into this dirty war?” Honestly, people who yearn for a moment like that are not artists, they are propagandists, and also should be ignored. They want to neuter complex art.) I thought the movie was great, disturbing. There was criticism that his Iraqi equivalent was dehumanized. I didn’t think so. He was portrayed as just like him, the same focus, the same drive, the same ability. Yes, Chris Kyle saw him as someone to be taken down and OUT, but that’s war, kids. Eastwood filmed him with the same clarity that he filmed Chris Kyle. It’s not on the nose. The film is completely 100% from Chris Kyle’s point of view. That is confrontational, for sure, but that’s the movie. That’s also why it works. An upsetting portrait of PTSD, as well as the patriotism that got a lot of people involved in the military in the first place. To condescend to that impulse (people joining up after 9/11) is rather silly. I mean, you can sneer at it if you like – but Eastwood is just telling the truth there, and letting you in on a secret about how the world operates outside of your little enclave where everything is so black-and-white and all right-minded people (according to you) agree with you. This is a portrait of a world that is NOT that, and Eastwood is under no obligation to include the stuff that matters to YOU just because YOU think it should be in there. For God’s SAKE. The film is not perfect and Chris Kyle’s minor-level fabulist-tendencies are not addressed at all. It’s an error. He was all messed up at the end, telling stories about punching Jesse Ventura, perching on the top of the Superdome with his sniper’s rifle after Hurricane Katrina, and killing two guys at a gas station in Texas. Fabrications, as far as can be ascertained. VERY interesting: he couldn’t let go of his self-image as a vigilante, it’s all a part of the mindset that allowed him to shut out reality (how disturbed he was by some of the things he had to do in Iraq): of course it would be hard to give up being a hero, a legend, and adjust to being a regular civilian again. The lies make perfect sense. But all in all, the film is a brutal look at a killer, rewarded for killing in one context, and then being flat out unable to come back home. He has been forever changed. It’s in the same vein as perhaps the most famous line in any film directed by Eastwood: “It’s a hell of a thing, killing a man.” Yes.

Before Midnight (2013): Watched again in preparation for the Before Sunrise piece. Painful film, so good.

The Palm Beach Story (1942; Preston Sturges): Soooo funny. So excellent. Great comedy about marriage. Lunacy on the fringes. Mary Astor … that type of acting is a lost art. Love every crazy second of it. Check out the essay Stephanie Zacharek wrote for The Criterion Collection.

Miami Vice (2006; Michael Mann): Was in the mood for Mann after Blackhat. I love this movie.

Thunder Road (1958; Arthur Ripley): Another Mitchum movie, wonderful, about the dangers of illegal liquor transportation throughout Tennessee. The movie is a Gearhead Paradise.

Supernatural, Season 5, Episode 1, “Sympathy for the Devil” (2009; Robert Singer): I love Season 5.

Supernatural, Season 5, Episode 2, “Good God Y’All” (2009; Phil Sgriccia): Continuing on with Season 2.

Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison (1957; John Huston): A glorious two-hander, Robert Mitchum as stranded Marine, and Deborah Kerr as a nun abandoned on the desert island. I adore this movie. Another one I pulled out again after our big Mitchum conversation. Love every second of their magnificent scene work.

Ghost Town (2008; David Koepp): The movie makes me howl with laughter, and it also makes me cry. I consider that a win. And Greg Kinnear is PERFECTION.

Supernatural, Season 10, Episode 11, “There’s No Place Like Home” (2015; Phil Sgriccia): Adore it. Watched it twice in a row.

Supernatural, Season 3, Episode 11, “Mystery Spot” (2009; Kim Manners): Because, always.

Supernatural, Season 3, Episode 12, “Jus in Bello” (2009; Phil Sgriccia): Because, Agent Henriksen.

Edge of Tomorrow (2014; Doug Liman): One of the most exhilarating innovative movies I’ve seen in a long long time. I got covered in goosebumps of excitement multiple times when watching. It’s a kind of Ground Hog day mixed with an apocalyptic war-movie. It’s an existential examination of the human condition, how we learn through trial and error, through repetition, however annoying: we are better at things the 20th time than the first time, only because we have fallen on our ass 19 times before. Perhaps not a profound thing to realize, but in a way it is – because it’s so difficult. If it were easy, then human beings would not struggle so much with it. Tom Cruise at his mega-watt best, with some definite quirks and a very steep learning curve in the first half of the film. Emily Blunt playing, what is, essentially the “Tom Cruise” role, the established hero, the bad-ass strolling slo-mo towards the camera as everyone moves back in awe and admiration. In one moment, Cruise says to a skeptical regiment who have no idea why he is ordering them around, “No. You won’t follow me [into battle.] But you will follow her.” And he moves back to let her step into place. Everyone’s jaws drop. SHE is the draw, not him. Amazing switch-off, and it fits, it fits so well. There’s a lot here about gender roles, gender mash-ups and mix-ups, Alphas, Omegas … it’s a buddy movie with a man and a woman. There’s no time for romance. Sex is discussed but only as a possible practical solution to the threat facing them [maybe we can stop this thing if fluids are exchanged … It’s a scientific proposition, in other words). I could have done without the yoga pose being shown, what, five times? Come on. But that’s a quibble. What happens with the story set-up is that gender norms, and what we expect, especially with actors like Tom Cruise and Emily Blunt, and action movies in general, is completely eradicated. What is created in Edge of Tomorrow is its own extremely specific dynamic. Riveting.

His Kind of Woman (1951; John Farrow: although there were a lot of fingers rooting around in this particular pie. However, Farrow got the director credit): It’s been a Mitchum kind of month, just because of me posting that one photo and then all of us talking about him. Robert Mitchum and Jane Russell are incredible onscreen together: wary, but also hot: sizing each other up, a space of total honesty between them. And the entire last half-hour of the movie Robert Mitchum is shirtless. Being whipped, locked in a steam room, beaten up by six guys at a time. His BODY. I’m sorry. But that BODY. To speak like the leering objectifier that I am, it is my favorite male body type, and more’s the pity, because it’s out of style now. Kim Morgan wrote about the “barrel-chested man” for Salon and THAT’S what I’m talking about.

Posted in Monthly Viewing Diary, Movies, Television | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 4 Comments

Elvis Is Everwhere

Posted on February 1, 2015 by sheila

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Perhaps one needs to be a pretty hard-core Elvis obsessive to get the beauty of this connection, which leapt out at me immediately in the moment my brother took my car keys, (with the Sun Studio key-ring bought at Sun Studios in Memphis), to go move my car, holding the two Keys to our rooms at the Holiday Inn in Boston.

I was like, “WAIT. HUGE ELVIS CONNECTION RIGHT THERE IN YOUR HANDS. STOP LET ME TAKE A PICTURE.”

Posted in Personal | Tagged | 6 Comments

Review: Girlhood (2015); directed by Céline Sciamma

Posted on January 30, 2015 by sheila

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I am a huge fan of the work of director/writer Céline Sciamma. She has directed/written three features so far, Water Lilies, Tomboy, and now Girlhood, all of them EXCELLENT, all of them featuring girls in pre-adolescence or adolescence trying to figure things out. She’s up to something different. I LOVE her work and Girlhood is amazing.

I reviewed Girlhood for Rogerebert.com.

Really, you should see it, and all her work. It’s a very coherent career and vision so far. I love what she’s about and, more importantly, HOW she is about it.

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The O’Briens

Posted on January 30, 2015 by sheila

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My cousin Susan posted this amazing photo on Facebook, one I have never seen. It’s been so wonderful to see everyone else’s photos: since my grandmother died on Wednesday, we’ve all been posting photos. It’s been a great way to remember, to commemorate, and also to feel like we are all together.

This is the O’Brien family, my mother’s side of the family, lined up in a row. My grandmother is the second from the left. Lined up: my great-uncle Frank, my grandmother, my great-great grandmother, my great-great-grandfather, my great-aunt May, my great-aunt Joan. I am lucky enough to have vague memories of my great-great grandmother, who lived in Connecticut, spoke with a brogue, and we would go visit her when we were kids. I still make her tomato salad recipe (which we all call “Granny’s Tomatoes”), which I’ve been obsessed with since I first had it at her house, age 4 or whatever. My two great-aunts, Joan and Mary, were huge figures in our lives growing up. My great-aunt Joan is still alive. In her 90s. Still sharp as a tack. One of the most incredible women I’ve ever met. (Both Joan and Mary were nuns. I wrote about my great-aunt Joan here, a little bit. I interviewed her about the impact of Vatican II and what that time was like for a piece I was writing. She’s a pioneer in Catholic feminist theology, as well as a scholar of the classics. She speaks ancient Greek. And of course Latin. She’s written a couple of books, one on Sophocles. She’s a powerhouse.) Of all of those people in the photograph, only my great-aunt Joan is still alive now. I have been thinking about Joan a lot since my grandmother died. Joan would come back East to visit her sister in the Retirement Center run by the Sisters of Charity of Saint Elizabeth. (They do such amazing work.) Joan would play the piano for Mama (they used to play duets together on the piano). My great-aunts and my grandmother were willowy, tall, beautiful women, scholarly and learned. Before Vatican II came along and everyone took off the habits, Joan and Mary were these formidable creatures striding in their full habits across the campus of Albertus Magnus, where they were professors. (All of the Sullivan women, the children of my grandmother, my aunts, my mother, went to Albertus Magnus. So did my grandmother.)

It is amazing to see these people in this photograph. A family. Immigrants. My family.

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