October 20th, 2010

Rose-coloured Reviews *The Social Network*

I came home from The Social Network in the mood to write about it, having absolutely no idea that it’s being called one of the best movies of the year and that *everyone’s* talking about it (see above link). Hello, I’m Rebecca, would you like to step under my rock?

In case you have your own rock, this is a fictionalized (some would say heavily) bio-pic about Mark Zuckerberg, the founder (some would say one of several) of Facebook. It starts with his life in college–being simultaneously condescending and insecure to his girlfriend, and conceiving of complicated cruel websites with his dorm-mates when she dumps him. From this, his social site-building turns more ambitious, more universal and less misognistic, and we’re off to the races.

The first thing you need to know about this movie is that the screenplay is by Aaron Sorkin who has written films, plays, but most memorably tv shows. It’s been a while since I watched much tv, but back when I left, Sorkin was the acknowledged televisual genius of homosocial bonding–in shows like Sports Night and The West Wing a group of smart, sweet, friendly guys tried to help each other navigate the world, their chosen professions, and those kooky kooky ladies–and it was brilliant. Other things, Sorkin can do well, but for cerebral male banter, he’s #1 (in my opinion).

So it’s funny, and fascinating, to see in this film the same intellectual snap and punch as Sorkin always employs, but with guys who aren’t sweet, who don’t like each other and who aren’t trying to help. Most of the characters in *The Social Network* are jerks by any normal standard, but Sorkin never succumbs to that Hollywood impulse to make the bad guys stupid.

And really, that’s my Hollywood impulse talking when I use the term “bad guys” because there aren’t any, exactly, in this film (except maybe Lawrence Summers, at that time the president of Harvard, and a big meanie in the film). Sorkin creates multi-dimensional complicated conflicted characters, who enact their internal conflicts by being more than a little externally mean. But even the worst behaviour shown here–and there’s some pretty bad stuff–is obviously justified in the characters own minds, and it’s Sorkin’s achievement that you can see those minds working.

The screenwriter has been getting some flak for the misogyny of the charcters, and some of it really is quite fierce. In contrast to all the previous times this accusation has been made of Sorkin, this time he has a defense–the characters he wrote about were jerks to women and did not think of them as equals. And maybe because that’s a feeling that Sorkin has wrestled with so often in the past, he is able to make the bad-boy behaviour seem pretty human, awful as it is.

But let’s be straight about it–there’s lots of awful in this film. It’s basically a couple hours on how people screwed each other in various ways. The music–here’s a helpful clue I spotted in the opening credits to help me brace myself–is by Trent Reznor–creepy, clangy, and dark. The director is David Fincher who did, along with a host of serial killer movies and music videos, Fight Club. Again with the homo-social bonding, again with the amoral, weirdly intelligent male leader.

But it’s a dark movie with some bright streaks–like I say, the dialogue is sharp and witty, even more so about halfway through, when Justin Timberlake shows up. You can just shut up about my early aughts affection for *NSYNC, I think JT is genuinely talented. And even if I’m wrong about that, he’s definitely charming as Sean Parker, some guy I’ve never heard of who apparently founded Napster (I’ve heard of that) and is a unequivocal jerk. Not a brainless one, though, and he does some interesting things in the movie, but on the whole I found him less so than most of the jerks in this film, because of the rest of them do equivocate, and that’s more interesting.

There’s exactly one main character that you can empathize with and root for, and that’s Eduardo Saverin, Zuckerburg’s one-time friend and business partner. As played by Andrew Garfield, Eduardo is a sweetie-pie but an eager dupe, and for most of the second half of the film appears to be on the verge of tears. Not easy to watch.

Which is how I felt about the whole thing in the end–there’s only so much power-mad conniving youth you can watch before you start to, as I told my viewing companions afterwards, wish you were dead. Despite my boundless admiration for this film, I did not actually enjoy watching it.

October 19th, 2010

Zactly

Substitute Canadian for American throughout, and “Canadian short stories” for “American films,” of course.

For most Americans, work is central to their experience of the world, and the corporation is one of the fundamental institutions of American life, with an enormous impact, for good and ill, on how we live, think, and feel. Yet the reality of business life is all but absent from American films.

James Surowiecki, The New Yorker, October 11, 2010

August 21st, 2010

Toronto Tidbits

I was sitting on the edge of a planter reading outside of some random office building (I was early to meet people for coffee) and various corporate types were striding down, purposefully inhaling a cigarette in five minutes or less, then striding off. Two gents in suits, one my age, one a little older, cruised past, not smoking, and I caught just the moment in the conversation when the younger said to the elder, “I really just try to cry as little as possible.”

I found out the City of Vaughan is twinned with Sora, Italy, which seems like a nice, friendly, slightly random enterprise (until you realize how many Italian folks live in Vaughan). I also found out that Vaughan is a city–I always thought it was part of Toronto. To be fair, this week’s visit was only the second time I had ever been there. It not being part of Toronto would certainly explain why the TTC doesn’t go there, and the TTC not going there is the explanation of why I don’t go there either. It was a lovely visit–people made me tasty food, I petted an orange cat, and sang karaoke! If anyone volunteers to drive, I’ll go back–it’s likely the closest I’ll get to Sora.

I was going into my apartment building when I saw through the window a woman coming out. I stood waiting for her to open the door, rather than fumble with my keys, but when she opened it she turned awkwardly in the doorway, as if trying to block me. I reached into my bag to show her my keys–that I wasn’t a burgalar trying to sneak in–when she said in a thick Russian accent, “Excuse me, could you…?” I looked up; she had her back to me and her snug black sheath dress was about halfway zipped up. “Oh, of course,” I said, and did it up. She shot me a look between gratitude and shame, said thank you and scurried off.

If you somehow can’t be in Toronto or even Vaughan right now, but really want to be, I highly recommend you check out the movie Scott Pilgrim vs. The World. It is set in Toronto. Not Toronto-disguised-as-New York-or-Chicago, but actual unabashed Toronto. Sightings include: old-school (ie., getting rarer these days) red rocket buses, Honest Eds, Lee’s Palace, Pizza Pizza, Casa Loma, the CN Tower, etc. But, actually, even if you don’t care about TO one way or another, you should still see this movie. Unlike the very fun One Week the locational love note is just where Scott Pilgrim begins, not where it ends.

This euphoric little action movie is about a 22-year-old goober (played by the uber-goober, Michael Cera) who falls in with a cool girl with a complicated past, and has to fight her seven evil exes to win her hand. The whole movie is set up like a live-action video game: when we see Scott’s apartment for the first time, tiny letters pop up labelling each item and saying who bought it (mainly his roommate, Wallace, in an incredibly funny performance by Kieran Culkin, whom I adore without remembering ever seeing him in anything else). When Scott goes to the bathroom, a pee bar flashes full on the top of the screen, then drains to empty. And the fight scenes are bang-pow fantastic, and involve a lot of leaping and ducking and spinning; when a villain is defeated, he or she explodes into a shower of coins (Canadian coins–including toonies!)

There’s skateboarding on the stairs at Casa Loma, a show at Lee’s Palace, and lots and lots of Annex-y self-referential irony. And I personally love Michael C., but even those who don’t have pointed out that he is less annoying than usual in this pic. Oh my goodness, so much love!

July 16th, 2010

Things to do on a “writing day” that are not writing

Despite the fact that none of the activities listed below are actually writing, they all offerred comfort or encouragement to the heat-besieged writer, and I have no regrets whatsoever about anything that happened yesterday. (I also got a little writing in between all the other stuff.)

–go to the gym where, because of the air-conditioning, you actually sweat less than elsewhere
–pick raspberries
–eat the raspberries immediately. Do not even bring a bowl to put them in–eat’em right off the bush.
–read and read and read Russell Smith’s Girl Crazy. I am only at the halfway point, so I can’t fully tell you whether it is a brilliant novel or not, but I know that I am mad every time I reach my TTC stop and can’t read anymore for a while, so that’s a good sign.
–have lunch at Ackee Tree, where the staff is incredibly nice and everything seems to come with coleslaw.
–go sit on the lawn downtown that no one ever sits on (they sit on benches and stare out at it, as if it were the sea). I will leave out the exact location of the lawn to protect the identity of my partner in crime, but that is one nice lawn–all long and lush, with no worn bits (because no one ever sits on it or even walks on it) and certainly no cigarette butts or dog poo.
–give blood! I am still trying to figure out where to donate money, but at least there’s really only one place to give blood. I asked and the supply is currenly not bad, but they always need more, especially B- and O-, if you happen to have those. (Side story: as part of the usual intake assessment, the nurse asked to examine my inner arms to check for track marks. I had none of those, but I did have a cookie crumb embedded in the sweat of the crook my elbow–sex-ay!)
–watch Nicole Holofcener’s amazing film Please Give starring Catherine Keener and a really talented woman named Rebecca!! (Hall). I am not famous for my interest in complicated, serious, grown-up movies, but I did get blown away by Lovely and Amazing, also by Holofcener and also staring Keener, way back in 2001. I’m actually going to try to review this at some point, so I’ll shut up now.
–scuttle about the city in the heat, and enjoy watching folks in suits and ties eating ice-cream, skateboarders, children pitching fits, tour groups, street charity solitictations, and the nice people from a hair products company, whom I ran into both at Queen and Spadina and later at Yonge and College (I get around) and who gave me a mini bottle of conditioner both times.
–when you get home from all this, pour astringent on a white cotton pad, and then run it over your makeup-free face. If you are disgusting and immature like me, you will be fascinated to see the brownish colour of Toronto smog that has accumulated in your pores. I do this every night in summer! (Is this TMI? I never know.)

What a nice city I live in!

May 3rd, 2010

Rose-coloured reviews *Date Night*

It was pretty much obvious that I would see Date Night even though the reviews weren’t amazing. I have been a big fan of Tina Fey ever since she and Jimmy Fallon were Weekend Updating–no one has more slang terms for “vagina” in her repetoire and no one says them with more flare.

I always forget why I like Steve Carrell–unlike most humans, I’ve never seen *The Office*–and then I remember *Little Miss Sunshine* (which I rewatched over the holidays and still love). Oh yeah, and he was the *40-Year-Old Virgin* too. Yeah, I like Steve Carrell plenty.

So it’s disappointing to see such stellar comedians struggling to elevate this film above “fine” or “funny enough” or “not a total waste of money.” And it is *slightly* better than those things, but largely on account of their efforts. The script is solidly silly, which is no way to be. There are no risks, there are no non-stock characters (sexy calculating babysitter, foozball playing loser male friend, teary-eyed histrionic female friend, supercompetent superattractive male special ops…should I go on? You can probably guess if you’ve ever seen…any other movie).

The premise is that Claire and Phil Foster’s marriage, bogged down by kids, work and life in the burbs, has lost its spark and, in a reasonably pathetic effort to regain it, Phil proposes to take them to the hottest restaurant in Manhattan on a Friday night without a reservation. Which, sorry, makes Phil look like a moron, when he clearly plays the character as a reasonably bright guy.

There are a *lot* of slipups like that in the script–some far worse. On Phil and Claire’s first depicted date night, Claire mentions that the next evening they have bookclub. At bookclub, she mentions that the evening after that, they have a date. Who has a date every other evening, especially with two small childrens and another excursion on the intervening evening (she says with a touch of envy?) Also, Phil is later described as a “tax lawyer” though the shot of him at work shows him explaining a modest tax refund to his dumbass clients–something *accountants* and their assistants do. Oh, and that poster showing Carrell wearing lipstick and Fey with a kissprint on her face? Inexplicable, because that scene doesn’t happen in the movie.

I’m harping–this is minor stuff, but indicative of a film made with a minimum of care. So Claire and Phil steal an unclaimed reservation at the restaurant by impersonating the reservationees, only to find themselves help to account for those folks’ attempt at blackmail. The best part of the whole movie is when they are dragged out into the alley midmeal by evil henchmen. Claire, thinking they’re just in trouble for the reservation hijinx, takes her bowl of expensive and fabulous rissotto with her. When one of the thugs knocks it out of her hand, she cries, “Great, now I’m going to have to pick that rissotto up of the ground to eat it!” Ha!

Should I get into the plot thickeners? I should not get into those, for those are dumb. They go to a spooky boathouse in Central Park, they break into a realty firm, they steal a car and crash it into a cab that gets stuck on the grill, they are forced to pose as strippers…blah blah blah. It’s all highly unlikely yet utterly predictable, and hard to even care–obviously, for such likeable people, things are going to work out just fine.

But they are so nice, so charming and funny and self-effacing, so clearly much smarter than whoever wrote the script…it’s a pleasure to watch these two work. Apparently, bits of the show were improvised, and it’s pretty easy to tell which ones–the ones with funny voices, assumed characters, a measure of confidence completely out of keeping with the domestic schlubs these two are supposed to be.

On their dates, Claire and Phil play a game where they spy on people in the restaurant and try to guess what their life stories are. These stories are fairly funny, and supposed to convey, I suppose, Claire and Phil’s lifelong committment and intimacy. But that doesn’t work–Fey and Carrell don’t have that sort of chemistry (they don’t kiss until the very end of the movie, and that one is totally a joke). They do *have* chemistry, but it’s that of two professional comics who respect each other and are happy to riff off each others’ one-liners. The restaurant brain-storming sessions are funny because they’re the actors trying to top each other.

Who is supposed to be the target market for this movie? I’m worried it’s actually me–30somethings who want to cling to the delusion that, just because we haven’t bought minivans yet, we are still somehow cool. No, wait, maybe it’s 30somethings who want to be convinced that even thought they *have* bought minivans, they are still cool enough to solve crimes.

Well, it doesn’t matter, because once you are in your 30s, you aren’t cool unless you own a bomber jet, so we can all give it up to the next generation: my students who went to see *Kickass*. I almost went to see it too, but I heard the violence was gratuitous so I didn’t. Uncool!

But I was pretty excited to hear Tina Fey’s latest slang term for vagina. That counts as immature, right? Anyway, I was not disappointed.

RR

March 17th, 2010

Rose-coloured reviews *The Blind Side*

March 15th, 2010

Brothers and Sisters

When I was a young whippersnapper student writer, somewhere in later undergrad years, I won a place in a one-day seminar with the novelist/short-story writer Audrey Thomas. It was a cool honour and an interesting day, but the organizers overbooked the workshop a little, and Ms. Thomas wasn’t really able to comment specifically on much of the student work. She may havesaid one or two other small things, but the meat of what she said about my story was how nicely unexpected it was that the close friends in the opening scenes eventually turn out to be brother and sister.

That stuck with me–not so much the compliment, although that was nice, but the pointing out that brother/sister relationships are not the most popular topic for stories, and that may well be because not everyone *has* an opposite-sex sibling, especially one that they are close to. It was a good reminder that I needed to check my work carefully for that sort of autobiographical creep–it may be that almost every one of my main characters in my earliest stories *did* have a close sibling. Maybe.

This goes back to that teenager centre-of-the-earth thing–I wasn’t entirely sure how people without such relationships functioned, and I suppose I suspected not very well, even though I know some people who didn’t, and did (something went wrong with that sentence). I’ve met a lot more people since then, only children, people estranged from their families, people perfectly polite with their sibs but just none-too-chatty, mainly all perfectly functional, and thus I’ve gotten over the urge to give every character a brother or a sister.

But I’m still immensely fond of my brother, and I guess I’d like to see our vibe represented in art a little more. I say this because the two of us just finished watching You Can Count on Me, a film that everyone in the world recommends as a great brother-sister films, and that we both loathed. I’m so disappointed, especially since every critic in the world (see the above link) loved it. Not sure what the misfire was there.

We loved The Savages and even Home for the Holidays was pretty good (I think I liked it more than B. did) but…are there others? Because I really can’t think of any, and would love some recommendations if anyone has any… (yes, I make a point of watching these sorts of things with B.–what, it’s the same as watching romantic movies with your SO, isn’t it?)

I’m probably just blanking out of panic, but I’m having the same trouble with books. Of course there’s Franny and Zooey, and I want to say Holden and Phoebe in Catcher, but that’s kids and I’d actually like adult relationships if possible (being as I’m adult and all). What else… Oh, dear. Maybe I’m having this problem because it’s late. I’ll try again tomorrow, but if you have ideas, please share!!

February 27th, 2010

Oscar Derby!!

You are playing this year, aren’t you? Go over to A Place and enter your picks before you forget. I’ve even seen some of the movies this year, which makes me more of a shoe-in to win than usual. Go right now! It’s fun and it reminds you of the movies you’ve been meaning to see–what more could you ask for?

RR

February 22nd, 2010

Rose-coloured reviews *True Romance*

There are better movies in the world than True Romance, as written by Quentin Tarantino and directed by Tony Scott, but there are very few I like as much. And after close to a dozen viewings, I’m pretty sure that though TR is not the best movie ever, it is very very very good.

The film starts in Detroit where a lonely loser named Clarence tries to pick up a girl in a bar, failing when he suggests going to a triple feature of martial arts movies. He goes anyway, alone, and there succeeds in picking up another (much prettier girl). They have fun, have pie, have sex, and then have a poignant conversation on the billboard frame that adjoins Clarence’s bedroom window. In this conversation, the girl, named Alabama, admits that a) she is a call girl and b) she has fallen in love with Clarence.

One of the many reasons I love this movie (we’ll get to them) is that it combines real urban grit with the hyper-intensity of (Tarantino’s favourite) pulp romance. There’s so much realism in the portrayal of Detroit, of people’s speech and snacks and clothes–but it’s all just a bit more intense, dramatic, hyper.

January 7th, 2010

Dark Materials

It wasn’t intentional, but as soon as the holidays were over I started reading and watching much darker stuff than in late December. Though it wasn’t the plan, but it’s worked out to kind of suit my mood–it’s freezing in my apartment (and outside of it), the war with UPS rages on, and I have way too much work. Also, I miss the days when everything was about tinsel instead of to-do lists–where are you, oh halcyon days of late December??

But of course, if something’s going to be sad, it helps a lot if it’s also darkly funny and searingly realistic. I went to see Up in the Air because it is being marketed as a snappy romantic comedy and (sue me) I like those. But though there are a few rom-com type scenes (a groom with cold feet, a cra-zay party where everyone gets drunk and lets their feelings show), those wind up looking strange and out of place in the midst of all the dark and searing.

This film is about a man named Ryan (played by George Clooney) who is hired for a day or a week by companies who want to fire some of their employees but management can’t a actually face doing it. Ryan describes losing a job as one of the worst days of most people’s lives–and in this film, you get to see that, over and over. Many of the dozens of newly fired folks are played by real people who actually *have* been recently let go. They improvise their lines, and the pain apparent made me want to look away, and unable to look away.

So the film is about how people relate to their jobs, how Ryan relates to his job, and to the women around him. He mainly *doesn’t* relate to people in non-business relationships, until he meets a sexy lady in a bar, and that relationship somehow lets him engage with people like his sisters, his vulnerable young colleague, etc. So you see how this could have been an inspiring little love story, but I have been running around begging people not to see it if that’s what they’re hoping for.

The gooey middle of the story ends soon enough and the ending is a one-two punch that left my companion and I sitting like blast victims as the credits rolled and everyone else left the theatre. *Up in the Air* is a very good movie, but brace yourself.

There certainly are flaws in that film, despite my love for it. On the other hand, though in many ways grim, Denis Johnson’s short story collection Jesus’ Son is pretty pitch-perfect. Such immense clarity and respect he brings to even descriptions of suffering that I was really awed my the book, though again, I often wanted to look away. These are linked stories–they all have the same narrator, a young junkie of no fixed address with a string of unhappy girlfriends and a flexible relationship with violence.

The stories are likely what you’d imagine them to be, tales of deals gone wrong, confusion, suffering, gore, all with the hazy chronology and causality that comes from telling stories on chemicals. But there is an incredible beauty in these pieces, too, which comes partially from the narrator’s fractured viewpoint and partially from the circumstances he finds himself in, quite unlike what most of us will ever see. I saw the film version ages back (it was pretty good, I think) and the most memorable part involved Jack Black as a strung-out hospital orderly, and a patient with a switchblade in his eye. That incident is found here in the story “Emergency,” similarly striking but much quieter, much more ordinary in its strangeness and impossible beauty.

This is from the last piece in the book, “Beverly Home.” The 20 pages of the story feel epic as the narrator takes a job in a nursing home, dates a dwarf, goes to AA, struggles to live what he imagines a real drug-free life would be:

“One day, too, when I’d passed through the lot and was walking along behind a row of town houses on the way to the bus stop, I heard the sound of a woman singing in her shower. I thought of mermaids: the blurry music of falling water, the soft song from the wet chamber. The dusk was down, and the heat came off the hovering buildings. It was rush hour, but the desert sky has a way of absorbing the sounds of traffic and making them seem idel and small. Her voice was the clearest thing coming to my ears.”

So many people talk about how amazing this book is that I was daunted to read it–book almost never live up to that sort of hype. I am so glad this one did.

I’m, uh, gonna maybe do something cheerful now.

RR