December 21st, 2009

Public Service Announcements

In case, you know, you need to know:

…how to cope with UPS. When you call UPS, there is no option in any menu to speak to an agent, but if you decline to press any buttons, even for English or French or to enter your tracking number (interesting: if you don’t choose a language, you get English) they will eventually tell you that you can’t speak to anyone unless you have tracking number, so call back when you’ve got one. Then a long pause that sounds like it might be permanent, then the weary voice of the autoprompt, asking “So do you still want to speak to an agent?” Say “yes” and the voice recognition software will direct you to an actual competent and (somewhat) sympathetic human. Man, that was tricky–but worth it.*

…what to give for a holiday gift. There’s great recommendations (and little bios of their sources so you can check for cred [they all have cred]> at The Advent Book Blog. I recommended a book last week, and now that the person I was giving that gift to has received it, I can link to my recommendation.

…how do something nice. Could you be persuaded to give blood? I know many people can’t because of low iron or certain prescriptions in their systems or other health problems, but if you can I think Canadian Blood Services could really use it this holiday season. I base this guess on the fact that last week, the gentleman donating in the chair next to mine experienced the briefest of dizzy spells, and *five* nurses were all over him like a bad suit–cold compresses, elevated legs, fans, cookies, ecetera! They were really really nice, but you just got the feeling they were a little underworked. A few more donators would keep the nurse/donator ratio a bit more even. I know nobody likes needles, and I personally loathe the whole process, but I feel SO GOOD afterwards, knowing I did something for someone (3 someones!), plus awesome karma for the day. I mean, just a few short hours after making this donation, I found a tambourine on the sidewalk!!!! Karmically amazing.

…describe people that are just too hyper. When someone described a potential project (going to see Sherlock Holmes on Boxing Day) as likely to be pandemonium, I said approximately, “Don’t worry, we’ll deal with the pandemaniacs.”** He responded, “That’s not a word,” but I think it is now, and it’s a pretty good one. I give it to you.

Hope that helps!
RR

* I just received the package, so I guess this is a win. But it took a week, four delivery attempts, one formal complaint, plus me saying morosely after I’d registered the complaint, “Can you write on it that I’m very sad?” (no, they can’t), so I am not feeling very victor-like.

** What I actually said was dumber than the above, but the neologism was the same, and this is my blog and I’m allowed to edit the past if I choose…right?

December 7th, 2009

For Your Information

1) The Fantastic Mr. Fox is pure unadulterated joy. Go if you like animated movies, film technology, Wes Anderson, or subtly weird humour. I think go if you like Roald Dahl, but I haven’t actually read the book on which the film is based (don’t start with me) so I can’t say for certain. That link above is the Rotten Tomatoes Top Critics page–the film got 100% tomatoes (that’s good, yo!) Also, I’m still slightly nauseated from laughing so hard. “I see…a fox on a motorcycle…with a slightly littler fox in the sidecar, along with what might be an opossum-type creature…this mean anything to anyone?” See it even if you are not or do not possess children–this film has enough layers for anyone.

2) Did you know Facebook has friend-spam? You get these friend requests from randos and then if you do it, they just send you ads and things. Well, they do, and this is why I never respond to FB friend-requests from people whose names I don’t recognize and who don’t send a note. If, however, some nice friendly blog reader thought it’d be fun to be my FB friend, I would totally endorse that. So, if you happen to be one of several people I don’t know who friended me in the past couple days, but are not a spammer or a stalker, please send me a note to that effect and friends we shall be.

3) I am listed as one of the judges for the University of Toronto Alumni Writing Contest, story division. I’m thrilled to be associated with the amazing stories that won, as well as the energy in the UofT Magazine office that got it together, and my groovy fellow judges.

However, a wee disclaimer here, as you might have noted that a very dear friend of mine won. So you should know that another judge read “Georgia Coffee Star” in the first round, and when it appeared on my list in the 2nd, I made arrangements to recuse myself in further rounds. Which wound up being a sort of fascinating experience, as the rest of the committee made exactly the decisions I would have made, for rather different reasons. Everything I do with short stories teaches me something.

Anyway, I’m so pleased for Kerry’s winning story–go read!

RR

September 16th, 2009

Blogging Tips from the Big Screen

Well, it had to happen: I saw Julie and Julia and loved it, and even better, I got over some of my retro gender stereotypes and saw it with someone of the male persuasion, who loved it too!

Better still (or at least equal), this is the first movie I’ve ever seen about a blogger. Well, half about a blogger…the less interesting half, according to pretty much everyone who has reviewed the film. And it’s hard–Meryl Streep is perhaps the best actress in popular cinema today and Amy Adams is…not bad. Julia Child revolutionized cooking in America and Julie Powell wrote a fairly interesting blog for a while. Julia had Paris, Julie had Queens. It’s sort of depressing to continue in this vein, because the character I identified with was Julie.

And I liked the Julie sections of the film, because they are still pretty interesting though not revolutionary or Parisian, but also because they addressed issues I’ve never seen dramatized before, issues dear to my heart–blogging issues.

*And* this gives me an opportunity to do a blogging-tips post here, which I’ve been wanting to do for a while. The reason I haven’t is, though I love Rose-coloured with all my heart and it is very much as good as I can make it, it is lacking some things that make a great blog. So I really needed an example like Julie Powell, who seems to do everything right (in the film; I haven’t read the actual blog; ironic?) for a little segway into the “do as I say, not as I do” territory–onwards!

1. Make it a blog *about* something, ideally something ongoing: a story that readers can follow and get involved in. Political blogs have the right idea: every day something new happens, myriad new things in fact, and the blogger with an informed and interested mind has his or her pick of things to write about that people will be interested in. A travel blog about an extended trip; a parenthood blog about a baby’s first year; a tv blog about America’s Top Model–I’m not saying I would read all of these, but conceptually they are very sound ways to organize a blog. Like some of the above, Julie made her task slightly harder by being herself responsible for the ongoing thing that she would then write about; that’s two tasks, by my count.

Are you already sensing how Rose-coloured doesn’t fit this rubric? Cause the day-by-day “happening” I’m supposed to be covering here is me being a writer, but if I limited posts to announcements of publications and readings, I’d be lucky to post monthly, and if I tried to cover each time I actually wrote fiction, a) I’d never actually write fiction and b) we’d all be bored. Which is why this blog turned out to be a miscellany, linked more or less by the themes of writing, reading, and me (which is of course far too loose–I’m learning to write reviews, but posting one of a shoe is dubiously far from the original theme of writing. Sigh.)

2) Want to do it. Julie’s blog was so satisfying to readers because it was satisfying to *her*–it was her idea and she was proud of herself and eager to share her experiences, thrilled when people related to them. One of the most depressing conversations about the state of publishing I’ve had recently was with a group of writers who felt they “had” to start blogs to promote their books and didn’t want to. They wondered what it would be like, how much work it would be, how many books they would sell. I said I loved my blog, considered it my hobby, and found it little effort compared to what I learn in the process and get back from readers. But I wasn’t sure the blog had in fact sold any books. Someone responded, “Well, discounting “hobbyists” like Rebecca, what do we figure the sales increase would be?” Oh, yeah, I want to read your daily musings. (note: not exact transcript of conversation; I may have added snark).

I hope if nothing else, it’s clear from Rose-coloured that I love Rose-coloured, and look forward to posting. I wrote for months when it was basically Scott and Fred reading, and if all I could keep were those two, I’d go right on. Blogging is my golf, or my knitting, or macrame or whatever; it is the companion to the fiction I write. Yes, I started the blog partly as a publicity thing for the last book, but writing the wide variety of prose I’ve been experimenting with here has also helped immeasurably as I write the *next* book.

3. Post regularly. Julie had 500+ recipes to make and report on in one year; I’m guessing it was a pretty well-updated blog. A blogger can totally set her definition of regularly, from a couple times a day to once a week, to…whatever you want. But I think it is important to set a loose standard that blog readers can expect. Julie rants on the phone to her mom about being accountable to her readers to do what she set out to do, and within reason that is true. You shouldn’t be putting off real life to blog, but as a blog reader, I am so sad when someone who’s daily comment I look forward to goes AWOL for weeks. By the time the blogger returns, maybe I’ve licked my wounds and moved on.

This is why #2 is so important. If you don’t want to blog, you won’t–blogs are not necessary to anything, no one pays you, and friendly readers are only that. You’d be suprised, if you surf around, how many blogs are mainly just apologies for not posting more, interspersed with long silences. And really, the silences are fine–it’s the apologies that are silly. With the advent of Google Reader, I no longer have to go looking for updates on most blogs, because they come to me, which is perfect for those blogs that really are just publication and reading announcements for writers I like. That’s not the way to get a large and devoted fandom or a book deal–but we’re not all after that.

4. Have a personality in your blog. Some bloggers tell everything about their jobs, friends, family and sex lives (I’ve stopped linking to Ms. Trunk even for comments like this; argh!), some talk strictly about their subject matter and never even mention what they ate for lunch, but a distinctive and human (and humourous–Julie made lots of witty asides about her own ineptitude) voice is what draws well, me, anyway, to a blog. You could info on Wikipedia, after all.

5. Read it over before you post. Ok, I have no idea if Julie did this and, ok, I totally get that blogs are new form of nonpublishing publishing and that they aren’t held to as rigid standards as say a newspaper. I’ve seen typos in my own published posts and *let them go* because I know if it was posted more than 3 days ago, the post has probably had most of the readers it is likely to get. But if there are flying leaps of logic, non-sequiteurs to the point of illogic, so many typos things can’t be understood, if there are no paragraphs (common and v. annoying in the blogsphere) it seems like you didn’t care much about the piece at all. So why should the reader?

That’s it–the best Julie and I can come up with with regard to blogging. I know I know: there are like 100 000 blogs don’t conform to all this, including mine, and some are pretty good–please don’t feel like I’m rigid on this stuff. But I do feel that many people get excited by and then frustrated with the blogging experience, and these might be some good ways to keep the excitement going. Anyway, it worked for Julie.

I go where I go on my own two feet
RR

September 2nd, 2009

Rose-coloured Reviews *Catch and Release*

The film Catch and Release was written by the Hollywood screenwriting hot commodity Susannah Grant (her most famous film was *Erin Brockovich*, but ok, fine, Grant is not a commodity to me). This film is listed as a romantic comedy-drama, which is a lot of bases to cover. Me, I was just hoping the film would keep us awake long enough to not be a bad babysitter (I cannot be dissauded from my position that a sleeping babysitter is irresponsible, despite many parents’ insistance that they themselves sleep from time to time).

So I stayed conscious, and *Catch* did have it’s bright spots, but this film was lacking some key ingredients of a comedy, while being way too ambitious about life-truths that, in the end, the conventions of the genre couldn’t follow through on. Romance, there was, and if by drama you mean relentless pounding sadness then, ok, that too.

This movie is about a woman whose fiance dies right before their wedding. Said woman is played by the beautiful and talented Jennifer Garner, who was such an amusing spectacle in 13 Going on 30. I haven’t seen most of the stuff that made her famous (I believe there was a sci-fi show on TV??) but I do like Garner, and there’s nothing not to like her performance in *Catch*–she puts her all into her scenes, and she has perfected a dozen different casts of misery: pathetic, defiant, ironic, rueful, resigned–the list goes on and on.

Death is not even the worst of it, it turns out, since after his passing, Grady’s (that’s the finance; Garner’s character’s name is Grey, and the combination is obnoxious) dirty little secrets start coming to light. He was not pillar of love and faithfulness that Grey thought, and he’s left her with an impossible mess to sort out. And his old friend Fritz (another obnoxious name!) seems not to care at all, has sex with a stranger at the funeral, and is the only one who knows the whole truth about Grady’s secret life.

This film is obviously lacking a few key ingredients of a comedy. Only two characters have any witty lines, and Grant spends most of her store of wit on the very worthy Kevin Smith. Smith plays the goofy slacker roommate of the dead guy, the sort of charming f*ckup in a bathrobe that every Judd Apatow movie has. And Smith revels in physical comedy with flyfishing gear, kitchen appliances, and small children. He gets almost every laugh in the picture, but such is the relentless downnote tone of the thing that even his character attempts suicide.

By that point, it was pretty clear that *Catch* is a “thesis” movie, and the thesis is that people are complicated, that they have more than one adjective, and that no matter how well we think we know someone, there are still details that will escape us. If the goofy guy with the ardent to make enormous sandwiches in the waffle iron also harbours deep pain and strong sense of responsibility, well, then, everyone must have a panopoly of characteristics.

A worthy premise. Except the movie is also struggling to be a romantic comedy where everyone pairs off and lives Happily Ever After, and the HEA ending precludes that kind of complexity. So instead of presenting Grady as a kind and loving fiance AND a guy who made some mistakes, the film shows us only the mistakes and has people occasionally mention, “He was a great guy.” Ditto Grey, who is just as kind and sweet and vulnerable and pretty as can be, lacking flaws, failures, or even a particularly sharp tongue in the face of incredible betrayal.

We need to have Grady be pretty entirely evil, and Grey be pretty entirely good, so that when Fritz changes his ways and is so kind to Gray that she falls in love with him a couple weeks after Grady’s death, she’s not doing a bad thing. And thus, even drunk and disorderly yet secretly kind and tender Fritz loses out on the chance to be a complex, conflicted individual. He’s just a good guy at heart, after all.

Grant’s screenplay never addresses what made Fritz behave badly, and we see no evidence that he ever even thinks about doing so again. Nor do we learn how Grey and Grady’s relationship worked around such enormous dishonesty, and how she’s changed as a result of her discoveries.

They’re just good people who made a few errors in judgment but, if the end of the film is any guide, they will never ever make any more. They embrace on a beach with a dog running around their ankles. They are Happy, and about to be so forever after.

I *hate* stories that apparently contain the only interesting thing that ever happened to the characters. I hate stories where you are supposed to feel like you know every single thing that happened after the final page, which is why the story doesn’t need to be any longer. Why invest so much energy in imagining characters and lives and dogs and everything if you’re just going to shut it down after 90 minutes and say, “Then everything was perfect”??

Obviously, I am questioning the very foundations of the rom-com genre, and the truth is, sometimes when I feel life is very difficult and I am tired, I find romantic comedy math comforting, ie., you just need these few ingredients (love, dog, house at the beach) and then you will be happy UNTIL YOU ARE DEAD.

But this film aimed at so much more and then so cheerfully didn’t achieve it, that it makes me feel bad. In the end, I felt that real complex Gray and Fritz were going to make a terrible couple and never acknowledge it, just like Gray and Grady had been. I felt like the ending was just faking. Which is of course a terrible way to feel about a movie that was supposed to be a comforting lark.

But Kevin Smith = awwwww, the big lug!!

So here’s another day / I’ll spend away from you
RR

August 11th, 2009

Writing Exercise: Tom Stoppard’s Questions Game

Sunday evening I rewatched the film version of Tom Stoppard‘s brilliant play Rosencrantz and Guidenstern Are Dead. Since the author directed the film, it is just as wondrous as the play.

If you’ve never read or viewed this one, it’s the left-out lives of Hamlet‘s two retainers, who die off-stage and without tears or explanation towards the end of that play. It’s also about the act of writing and the definition of character, the concept of performance, and a variety of physical principals and simple machines, which are explored by one of the characters in a series of subtle and hilarious protracted gags.

This is one of the funniest movies you’re likely to see, but to get all the jokes, it helps to see it multiple times (I think this was my forth, and I saw a lot that was new!) One scene I did remember distinctly and with joy from childhood viewing was the great Questions game, that the protagonists play on Hamlet’s indoor tennis court.

The game is what it sounds like, to keep a (semi-)logical fast-paced conversation going using only questions. The characters have rules against not only statements but repetition, non-sequiteurs, rhetoric, synonyms and hesitation. This keeps the conversation fast, intense, somewhat surreal, and very tight–people are trying to win, after all.

Stoppard’s style of dialogue in general like that; the Questions game comes up almost as a kind of parody of R&G’s usual quick, confused/confusing banter. This style also reminds me of Sanford Meisner‘s repetition exercise for actors–another way of creating fast, tight dialogue.

As a lover of fine dialogue of both real and artificial forms, needless to say, a) I love this stuff and b) it’s very hard to do well, or even at all. As I said, I watched this movie as a kid, with my bro, and the first time we encountered a tennis court, we did try to play it–so frustrating! Even when you leave out some of the secondary rules about hesitation, non-sequiteurs, etc.

So, obviously, this is a great writing exercise. Obviously, you won’t end up with anything quite *realistic* in the usual sense, and if realistic is what your project is, you’ll have to redraft to use the exercise. But in addition to pace and rhythm, the all-questions-no-answers style brings a great deal of tension to dialogue–nothing says recalcitrant witness like answering a question with a question.

Ok, the exercise is: write a scene with two (or more, if you really want to push yourself) characters, in which all dialogue is in the form of question. Use the other rules at your discretion, or not at all. I’ll post mine when I’ve written it. If you write one, I’d love to see it if you send me a link, post it as a comment, or send it some other way.

I’m glad I came up with this after my actual teaching term finished–I think it’s gonna be really hard.

I’m a wrecking ball in a summer dress

RR

March 23rd, 2009

Quel anti-climax

I’m now truly sorry I complained about my lost courier package last week, since a shared mystery demands a shared denouement, and the denouement in this case is stupid.

It was not a summons, it was not a dairy product, it was a set of advance-screening movie tickets that I “earned” through a corporate rewards program. These are a) small enough to fit handily in a mailbox, b) not relevant for close to 3 weeks and c) probably worth less than the cost of delivery. I have no idea why anyone would have couriered them.

And, before you ask, they are to a truly embarrassing movie, much as me and my partener in cimatic silliness are looking forward to seeing it. I shall never ever ever reveal the title, lest it sully my reputation as a serious person (even more).

Dire times call for dire faces
RR

March 20th, 2009

Rose-coloured Reviews *One Week*

One Week is a movie about a 29-year-old English teacher who finds out he has cancer with 1-in-10 odds of survival. He buys a motorcycle and tells his fiancee he needs to “have an adventure.”. Oh, yeah, he also buys a coffee from Tim Hortons and rolls up the rim to win, only instead of a doughnut or a BBQ, he gets “Go west, young man.”

*One Week* is almost the nice simple daydream/nightmare most people have–buggering off all your responsibilities and doing what you’ve always dreamed of doing, with no guilt and no regrets because it’s probably the last thing you’ll ever do. There’s a couple wry and magical moments like the Tim Hortons cup–I hate reviews that tell you all the best bits, so I won’t, but they are lovely. That sort of thing, plus the character’s sheer joy in what he’s doing, goes a long ways towards tempering the capital-M mortality theme.

And so does the star’s performance. Most of the time, when you’ve got a script that calls for a single actor to be in nearly every frame, often in close-up and often in pain, you go for a heavy hitter. As actors go, Joshua Jackson is pretty lightweight–whenever I mentioned that I would see/had seen this film, someone squawks, “Oh, Pacey. Whatevs, I never watched Dawson’s Creek, but I credit Jackson for using every ounce of his talent in this movie, and his direct r Michael Mcgowan for never pushing him to strain for more. The fact is, life calls on the lightweights as often as the bruisers to deal with bad news, and the character he plays *is* a lightweight, maybe one hoping to be more. I know tonnes of guys like Ben–with sweet girlfriends, mediocre jobs, go-along attitudes and a backpack whenever they have to carry something. Those guys deserve a movie, too, and Jackson’s Ben is a pretty perfect portrayal of ordinary.

And part of Ben’s ordinariness is his self-dramatization. The whole solo trip west on a black motorcycle is fanciful, and so is his luggagelessness, sleeping in his motorcycle jacket and eating silently alone without anything to read. So is his eschewing of the big town in favour of rural outposts and tourist attractions, hiking without a map, and one perfectly charming attempt to dance for joy when he doesn’t feel it. Ben’s a little pretentious; Jackson and this movie aren’t.

Much. The one thing I’ll fault *One Week* for is something 95% of viewers won’t even note: I feel a touch of professional pique that Ben’s supposed to be a writer, but he a) never writes anything, and b) never reads anything. The insertion of this biographical data is just supposed to be a cue for us to think he’s deep, you see, and I really don’t like the idea that writing is some sort of automatic admission to Maslow’s penthouse (would that it were). But whatever, minor detail.

Better, but still strange, is the fact that this movie is mad-crammed with Canadiana–there is no scene, no skyline or pan or fade that doesn’t scrawl I AM CANADIAN all over the celluloid (note: since it was a whole movie of familiar sites, I left off jabbing my companion at every one, though there may have been a few twitches from me at the Dundas streetcar, Kalendar and Trinity College at UofT, and Big Nickel in Sudbury [sidebar: I have a big crush on the Big Nickel]). I don’t know who decided to make this movie one big postcard, but it was pretty fun to see Jackson posing for pictures with every roadside attraction west of TO. There were also plenty of landscape shots with the motorcycle tiny in the foreground. I dug that ok, though in truth it got a little dull. The women sitting both in front of and behind us were a lot more bored than I was, judging my the level of conversation. Obviously, modern audiences aren’t real clear on what to do when no one is talking on-screen…except talk themselves.

I haven’t even mentioned the most plotty element in the film (shows what kind of reviewer I am), which is Ben’s relationship with his finacee, Samantha. Throughout the trip, Ben puzzles about whether his illness changes anything about that relationship, and for good or ill. As the left-behind Sam, the actress Lianne Balaban is stuck doing most of her dramatic work with a cellphone, and nearly everytime we see her she is engaged in some semi-inane wedding preparation. And yet the character is sweet, sympathic and smart, pretty featherlight herself but definitely someone you’d look forward to seeing on-screen.

And the ending. As you may know, I’m on a kick for good endings. For a film that was so ripe for schmaltz and sentiment the end, *One Week* really blew me away with a closing that was subtle, mature, and neither simplistic nor even simple. I was genuinely surprised by it, and that’s rare in “life-redeeming” sort of movie. Yes, yes, there was the sweetheart coda, but by that point, I was ready to be moved by it.

And I was.

And the eyes were / a colour I can’t remember
RR

February 27th, 2009

Big Screen/Little Screen

I am a sucker for the big screen–I think it makes every movie about 20% better to see it in a big dark room full of like-minded citizens, with the images larger than lifesized and some fancy sound-system. I am not much of a cinophile, I just like movies a lot a lot a lot. To the point that if my viewing companion talks to me, it is always a delicate etiquette moment–ignore and be rude to companion, speak and be rude to other theatre-goers and possibly miss something crucial on-screen. The only exception to this is city-skyline establishing shots; for some reason, I feel permitted–nay, bound–to talk during those. It’s not just me: every Rosenblum feels compelled, as soon as we see a skyline, to name it, and simultaneously to jab our companions in the ribs. No idea why.

Maybe my love of the theatre experience is why I’ve been so out of the loop about the You Tube revolution (there was another post about this a while back, but I’m too lazy to find it right now). The screen is all little and YouTube is a non-event–you don’t plan the time, book the evening free, invite the escort. You just watch a two-minute video here, a 30-second one there as a breather from work, and maybe a week later, it comes up in conversation and you can jab someone in the ribs and say, “That was set on Mars, you know.”

On Wednesday, I had the unique experience of watching a couple animated shorts (a YouTube staple) on a big screen in a dark room full of likeminded citizens. The films were wonderful, and I think they would’ve been on any size screen. This is the work of animator Nick Fox-Gieg, set to various texts. Check out his site now to see “Foxhole Manifesto” and “I Wanna Be Famous”, among others, then go back at the beginning of March to see the one about the orange (we got a sneak-preview). It’s one of the best things I’ve seen in a long while.

I don’t know about the other two, but the setting of “I Wanna Be Famous” sorta looked Toronto-y.

This party’s over
RR

February 17th, 2009

Rose-coloured Reviews *Once*

It seems small and petty to complain about random coincidences. Yet, small and petty as I am, I did wish that the year prior to my book being published, there hadn’t been a a major motion picture that everybody loved with the exact same title. Indeed, one of the (many) great joys of my little book gaining a little fame is that, when someone asks me the title and I tell them, *sometimes* they say they’ve heard of it or they’ve read a review, rather than, “Oh, like that Irish move?” Someone once even asked me if I was writing a novelization of the film (no, but is that gig still available?)

It was a similar pettiness that prevented me from seeing the film for over a year, but now I have and I’m feeling a lot better, because the other On(c)e is nearly as good as everyone says it is, and it’s pretty clearly a different animal from my book. *Once* the movie is about a Dublin street guitarist/vacuum-cleaner repairer with a broken heart, and the Czech flower-seller/pianist who inspires him with her love for music: his, Mendelssohn’s, her own.

Music is the core of this movie–when our stars plays as song, they play the whole of it, and we get to see them work through ideas, chord patterns, melodies and lyrics to make some of the music from scratch. It’s interesting to me that most of the blurbs and press on this film call it a “musical”–to me, the songs in a musical replace dialogue and are non-diagetic–the characters don’t acknowledge that they are singing, and the accompanying instruments are not on-stage.

To me, *Once* is not a musical; it is a movie about music, the same way *The Thin Red Line* is a movie about war and *Bring It On* is a movie about cheerleading. All the songs are sung by characters as songs, though of course as well-written and subtle a movie as this allows their emotions about each others to creep into the song lyrics. And all instrumentation is diagetic, too–there is a truly great scene where the girl is challenged to come up with lyrics for the guy’s music, and wanders the streets singing possibilities over the tune in her discman.

The music is amazing, and when people get done telling me that at least my book has a great name, they usually tell me that the songs in the film are what they remember. It is a true joy to get to hear these pieces in their entirety, and the music resonates more and more when a song recurs in the film, and the lyrics resonate with where you heard them last time and what’s happened since. These are the highest elevation of gentle acoustic rock, and I wouldn’t be surprised if I wound up buying the soundtrack.

If I were to write a novelization of this film, I couldn’t include the music and so, I think, that book would be about 20 pages long–not a lot happens in *Once* other than music, chat, and pitch-perfect awkwardness between two people who like each other but have a lot of problems. I have to admit, I’m stunned at how universally, unequivocally positive all the reviews are, since I myself quite liked the movie, but I was a little bored.

It’s less than 90 minutes, and all the characters are charming, but there’s little conflict and not a lot of action. There is a simple truth to the film–the characters have zero money and a fair amount of sorrow in their lives, and yet they are kind to their families, hopeful for their futures, passionate about their art. And they ride busses and carry courier bags (their is a spectactular frolic on the beach where everyone has their courier bag firm strapped to their torsos–that is my romantic urban fantasy!) *Once* makes the streets of Dublin look both quotidian and sunlit magical, but there’s a lot of sitting around, fiddling with guitar strings, making conversation.

A film–a popular film–at such a leisured pace is something of an achievement, and maybe it’s only my Hollywooden mind making me yearn for someone to make a bold gesture or statement. Another problem I had with *Once* that’s likely limited to me is that I had a terrible time with the accents–I actually missed a good bit of dialogue because of it. I kept thinking I was not making out the main characters’ names, and was relieved when I got to the end credits to find them simply billed as “Guy” and “Girl.” And that, too, is an achievement–the filmmakers make us (well, me) care about these characters while giving us only the sketchiest of backstories and not even names to hang our care on. And if you’re me, with 30% less dialogue, too.

And the ending, the ending blew me away because that just doesn’t happen in American films, and it was both genuinely moving and genuinely true to how human beings are. So, though I was a little bored at times, and a little confused at others, I have to give the other On(c)e the A grade, and concede that, if I have to share the name, this is a film worth sharing with.

Get out of bed / you little sleepyhead
RR

February 3rd, 2009

Derby Day!

It’s that time of year we all look forward to, when the A Place Oscar Derby is posted! Make your choices and remember you may have a slight advantage this year, for though I have won the Derby several times in the past, this year I’ve actually seen some of the movies (though not as many as I’d thought; how can I’ve Loved You So Long not be nominated for *anything*??). Actually seeing the films may throw off my fabled ability to guess things accurately at random, so this will be a pitched battle, I’m sure. Get in on it!

A side note is that I’ve seen a *lot* of good movies this year, for various reasons, but one is that the good movies out this year happen to be the sort I like. I really don’t go in for anything with “epic” or “sweeping” in the tagline, no matter how brilliant it may be; just not my thing. And I don’t dig war movies (there’s a few exceptions). Such are my standards that if there’s no character-based movies being made in a thoughtful, intellectual, Oscar-worthy manner, I’ll happily watch character-based goofball comedies and purported junk.

This was a very good year for the character-based film, of both the intellectual and junk level, and some delightful confusion between the two resulted. No matter who wins the Derby, or the statuettes, I’m feeling really well-entertained.

I look a little bit older
RR