Archive for Deborah Lipp

Movies of the decade

I’ve been working on this list for over a week! It’s totally personal and utterly not comprehensive, since I’ve missed more movies than I’ve seen, hated movies everybody loved, and loved movies despite themselves. But that’s me. Original reviews are linked where available. Boy THAT took time.

The movie of the decade
Brokeback Mountain: Structurally, visually, emotionally; in every way, a perfect movie, with a wrenching romantic ache and a deep understanding of what it’s like to have no place and seek to find one. Few movies have moved me more. And really, this has got to typify the decade, doesn’t it? The great acting, the emergence of amazing young talent, including the loss of that talent, the internationalism of the production (a Chinese director and an Australian star) in a quintessentially American milieu, and of course, the importance of gay themes in this decade.

Top ten (with two cheats) favorites of the decadehere are movies that don’t need a decade-end list for me to list them as favorites; they’ve moved to my permanent favorites list (long though it is):
» Read more..

I dreamt about Peter Dinklage

I recognized him working at a bookstore. I handed him two DVDs to sign. One was The Station Agent. The other had a holographic surface so you couldn’t see his signature.

Gotta mean something.

Monday Movie Review: Up in the Air

Up in the Air (2009) 9/10
Ryan Bingham (George Clooney) travels over 300 days a year on business, and is most at home in airports and hotels. He considers his unattached life a virtue that he is teaching to Natalie (Anna Kendrick) a newcomer to his company. Directed by Jason Reitman.

It is obvious that Up in the Air is about connection. Hell, it’s in the tagline (The story of a man ready to make a connection. Haha, get it?) Ryan Bingham is deeply disconnected, and doesn’t see the problem with that. He has no connection to any kind of home, he is more comfortable using a suitcase than a closet, and his family relationships are as minimal as he can keep them. And surely there are dozens of movies about disconnected people finding that they need love after all, although perhaps the movies have never seen a character as committed to his disconnect as Bingham. Hell, he’s a motivational speaker on the subject! Bingham isn’t a cad or a cheat, he’s utterly honest about who and what he is, and apparently at peace with it.

I’m drawn to a comparison with Alfie, but Michael Caine’s Alfie is a scumbag and a cad from the get-go, and he lies about who and what he is as often as possible, except to the fourth wall.

At another level, Up in the Air is not just about connection but efficiency, and that has more subtlety. It’s easy, even facile to say, we all need connection, even loners like Ryan Bingham. It’s quite another to notice that the quest for efficiency; faster, easier, smarter, better-packaged, more-streamlined, and less-painful, is itself disconnected and leads to disconnection. Bingham’s life is perfectly streamlined, his suitcase is perfectly packed, its wheels do not stick. He may be racist in choosing who to stand behind at airport security, but the fact is he gets through security quite easily. And if you’ve been to an airport lately, well, that’s not nothing.

But can we have this efficiency and connection? Up in the Air sees a dotted line between them, as a life without friends and loved ones is obviously more streamlined, and the explicit way in which caring “weighs you down” is a motif. This is smarter and deeper than it sounds, because it is presented with wit and gentle humor, and also because we really want both; we really want our love but also to get the fuck through airport security. So Bingham is truly speaking to us in a way that, at first, we listen to.

This may well be George Clooney’s finest moment. He is incredibly nuanced, and every line has layers and layers of presence and personality. There’s a scene, late in the film, in which he gives a speech he’s given before, and I had no doubt that it was time for A Movie Thing to happen, but I also knew that it didn’t need to happen, because just the subtle shift in his tone of voice told the whole tale. It was exquisite.

At the beginning of the movie, Bingham meets Alex (Vera Farmiga), a woman apparently as unfettered as himself. It’s one of the film’s best scenes, as they heat each other up talking about car rental upgrades and mileage rewards. She’s absolutely perfect in this film as well, warm and real despite having very little character on which to hang her hat.

The whole cast is solid, the film looks just right, the script is a dream of humor and pathos and poignancy, flowing with enormous grace, and hey, did I mention Clooney? No really, Clooney’s performance is everything any actor can hope for. There are no big gut-wrenching moments here, no tearing your hair out for the Academy, just subtle, deep, honest work from beginning to end.

The previews sell this film as an adorable sort of thing, but it’s not The Bucket List. Up in the Air is truthful about the cost of an efficient life, and is not interested in pulling punches.

The language of years

When the calendar turned to 2000, people self-consciously speculated as to what we’d call this decade. My feeling was that language would emerge, not be decided upon. As the decade closes, I have seen a lot of decade-end lists, best (movie/music/television) of the aughts. Yep, it seems to be settling into “aughts.” (My own best movie list is coming soon.)

More interestingly, I heard a guy on the radio hoping that there would be fewer tragic deaths “in twenty-ten than in two-thousand-nine.” It was a perfectly natural language shift I’m sure he wasn’t even aware of, and I think it’s pretty meaningful in terms of how we’ll be speaking.

Friday Random Ten

Have a happy and random holiday celebration.

1. Young Blood—Rickie Lee Jones
2. I Wanna Be Sedated—The Ramones
3. Free Yourself—The Untouchables
4. That’s Right (You’re Not from Texas)—Lyle Lovett
5. Night Train—Steve Winwood
6. Ya Got Trouble—The Music Man
7. We Care a Lot—Faith No More
8. Someone to Watch Over Me—Nancy Wilson
9. Round Eye Blues—Marah
10. Pretty Boys—Joe Jackson

Bonus Track: Babylon is Burning—The Ruts

Light is returning

Longest night. Darkest day. A bleak time to be sure. But once it is the longest night, then nights are shorter. Once it is the darkest day, days become bright.

Since the wheel last turned this way, my life has been touched by death, cancer, lay-offs, failure, and loss. It’s been, in short, a fuck-all year.

But I am happy, and I have hope, because the Sun is reborn, and so are we all.

Celebrate rebirth.

Blessed be.

Monday Movie Review: Dogfight

Dogfight (1991) 8/10
It’s November 1963. A group of Marines on liberty has a “dogfight;” a contest to see who can bring the ugliest date. Corporal Eddie Birdlace (River Phoenix) brings Rose (Lili Taylor), but finds there’s more to her than he’d thought. Directed by Nancy Savoca.

This is a waaaay below-the-radar movie (the IMDb tells me it was almost but not quite direct-to-video). Hanging out on movie discussion boards, I end up hearing about, and renting, an awful lot of obscure and interesting movies, but I had never heard of this one until my sister and I were discussing Lili Taylor (we do that sometimes) and she mentioned this movie. So I added it to my Netflix, but you know how that goes, it’s a big list. Then we were discussing Lili Taylor again (we do that sometimes) and it came up again, so I moved it to the top of my list, and here we are.

Dogfight exists in the small spaces between things said. It is not interested in being demonstrative. There aren’t a lot of histrionics in this film, and opportunities to go overboard are kind of shied away from. There was one spot in particular where I felt like the movie was telling me, ‘Don’t worry, we’re not going there,’ in a way I appreciated. For example, most of the action takes place on the night of November 21, 1963. The Kennedy assassination looms, and indeed, we ultimately see a news report, and people’s faces as they watch. But the assassination is not a centerpiece of the film. It is more that, in the days before, we are breathing the last of a particular kind of air; an innocent air that Americans will never again breathe. We don’t need to see a lot of weeping and rendering of garments to know that.

When Eddie Birdlace picks up Rose because he spots her as a “dog” he’s a jerk, but warm enough that we understand why Rose says yes. Later, Rose finds out what kind of invitation it actually was, and it is in the course of his efforts at apology that the audience, Rose, and Eddie himself discover that he cares about being kind, and decent, and a gentleman.

Contrasting Eddie and Rose’s gentle and tentative evening are Birdlace’s three buddies on a more typical leave. The four of them comprise the “Four Bees;” four Marines who became friends standing in formation in alphabetical order (their names begin with B). After the dogfight, Eddie goes off on his own while the other Bees drink, get in fights, get tattooed, and get serviced by a prostitute. Eddie is one of these men after all, even if he is also the guy seeking forgiveness for insulting a nice girl.

Rose is not just a “nice girl” and the object of Eddie’s self-realization. She’s a complex and human character. Intensely awkward, she is obsessed with folk music and longs to change the world through peaceful action, but she’s tied to a family-owned coffee shop and a mother who appears strict and controlling. As the proto-hippie opposite a military man, she could easily be shrill or cliché, but she’s also observant and self-possessed. She challenges Eddie when he starts in being nasty to a snooty maitré de, and because he is being nasty, and because it won’t end well, her challenge isn’t just some peacenik versus soldier scenario, but an angry boy with no life skills being schooled by a girl with nothing on her plate that pleases people except a sweet nature and a pocketful of insight. I like that she goes along with Eddie, but doesn’t swallow bullshit for the sake of going along. I like that she finds a way to express herself in a way that is uniquely hers, and I like the way she makes her own decisions, so that ultimately it is Eddie being led by Rose, not the other way around.

I imagine there must be ten thousand ways for this movie to have ended the wrong way. I was surprised by the ending, and kind of said “wha?,” and then I was terribly, terribly pleased.

Monday Movie Review: The Omega Man

The Omega Man (1971) 8/10
Robert Neville (Charlton Heston) is the only survivor of biological war. With the world dying of plague, Neville developed a vaccine too late; and only he was treated. Everyone else is dead or mutated into vampire-like creatures lead by Matthias (Anthony Zerbe) that are blinded by daylight.

Giving a numeric rating to a cult classic is kind of a fool’s game. You know there’s a cheese factor, you know there are things that are overblown, and yet that’s part of its charm. I like to take my movies seriously, and I seriously think that Omega Man is a terrific movie, but there are definitely major flaws.

For one thing, the soundtrack is horrific. It’s a nightmare of seventies-style sweetness. At one point, Neville plays Theme from a Summer Place on the radio, and that’s pretty much the tone of the whole thing, including during the scary, horror, and action sequences. The soundtrack actively works against any tension the movie successfully builds (which is considerable). The other major flaw is the direction of the action sequences. Whether it’s a car chase or a fist fight, it’s very staged and posed and transparent; groan-worthy.

And yes, Omega Man is overblown. It sells its message too hard, and paints its metaphors with too broad a brush. But given the moody atmospherics, the intensity of the last-man-on-Earth scenario, and a powerful flow of events, I really don’t mind the broad brush.

Lots of people criticize Charlton Heston’s acting, but he holds the screen like a magnet. It requires something special to be alone on screen, babbling to your household objects, and retain audience interest. Heston’s dynamic presence makes it work. Is Neville crazy or just lonely? We are never sure, but neither is he, and that makes him sympathetic. It turns out, of course, that Neville is not the last man on Earth, and his vulnerability in the sudden presence of people after years alone is touching.

Matthias, we learn, is a former news reporter watching the plague unfold and reporting on it. Gradually, he comes to hate the technology that is destroying the world, and before succumbing, he has already turned his news broadcasts into polemics. Now, he is the cult leader of the mutant victims, called “the Family,” they celebrate the scars on their skin as cleansing them of the world’s sin. All this is very over the top, which, let’s face it, is what you want when you cast Anthony Zerbe. The Family is a mishmash that serves to criticize witch hunts, superstition, religious fervor, and anti-science bias, but the reality is that science did destroy the world. The Family is vile, monstrous, and not entirely wrong.

This is all very juicy stuff; our lone heroic survivor paints an iconic figure even before the messianic metaphors start flying. Visuals of an empty and abandoned Los Angeles are stunning, and paint a sharp contrast with Neville’s home, fully of knick-knacks, art, science, and luxury. My overall assessment is that Omega Man absolutely earns its cult status.

I am dreaming of…initiation?

A few days ago, I dreamed that someone I knew was an expectant father, and his wife was in labor. I was to be the labor coach and, while my friend waited nervously outside, I went in to attend to her.

When I entered, I discovered the “wife” was an elderly Native American; a shaman (I knew) in jeans, a red flannel shirt, and a headband. The shaman got up on the delivery table and spread his legs, and from between his legs a slit opened in his blue jeans and a head began to emerge.

Well.

Last night I dreamed that I was at a festival with friends Larry & Sabina. We were playing some sort of game or doing some sort of ritual, and they needed a drop of my blood to prove my good intentions. I knew they would prick a finger but then Sabina said that didn’t work and could I please turn around. It was, I think she said, for initiation, but I don’t know what she meant. I think it was still a sex game in my mind. She lifted my hair and took a slice from the top of my spine/base of my skull (exactly where my Kali eyes tattoo is, but I wasn’t aware of the tattoo in the dream). It was a plus-sign shaped cut and it hurt horribly. I felt like she was damaging my brain. I was terrified and angry. I cried out in pain but I was afraid to move. She cut my like that, with me holding still and crying out, for a long time. I was wondering, in the dream, if this was domestic violence.

Upon awaking, that dream plus the earlier one seem to add up to some kind of message about ritual or transformation, but I can’t put it all together.

Friday Random 10

1. Little Green — Joni Mitchell: Except the sound was screwed up, so now I have to figure out if I need to remove and re-upload this one.
2. Whispers from a Spiritual Garden — Yusef
3. Louisiana 1927 — Randy Newman
4. My Romance — Michael Feinstein
5. Know Now Then — Ani DiFranco
6. El Matador — Los Fabulosos Cadillacs: I had no idea this thing was on my iPod. Turns out it’s from the soundtrack of Grosse Point Blank, which is continually rewarding.
7. Don’t Touch My Hat — Lyle Lovett
8. Come Away With Me — Norah Jones: I almost want to remove this one, it’s so familiar and so beloved that it lacks something of the surprise and delight of using shuffle.
9. I Was Doing All Right — Annie Ross: Another one I didn’t know I had.
10. Farewell to Tarwathie — Judy Collins: I swear to the gods, I thought I removed this from my iPod already. It’s lovely, but not really iPod music, y’know?