Stranger Than Fiction

Tonight was movie night. There are lots of choices.

We decided against:

  • Borat – conscious decision not to go. It just doesn’t seem appealing, though loads of friends feel otherwise.
  • Babel – bad reviews. Helaine said, if you hold a finger over the “l,” the movie becomes “Babe.”
  • Casino Royale – maybe later. Excellent reviews. I’ve heard it’s violent, which isn’t Helaine’s cup of tea.

We ended up going to Wallingford to see “Stranger than Fiction,” the new Will Ferrell movie. It’s not a comedy – at least not in the classic sense.

Helaine and I hated… not disliked, hated… “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.” There are many similarities between that movie and Stranger than Fiction, yet this movie was thoroughly enjoyable and satisfying.

Will Ferrell isn’t the over-the-top obnoxious guy you’ve come to expect. Queen Latifah isn’t the over-the-top obnoxious woman you’ve come to expect (My skin crawls when I see her Pizza Hut commercials).

Dustin Hoffman has reached a point in his career where he seems to be only playing Dustin Hoffman. He’s perfect at that.

Stranger Than Fiction is “a story about a man named Harold Crick and his wristwatch&#185” – or so says the off screen, pleasant, English accented voice of Emma Thompson, in the movie’s first spoken words.

Ferrell plays Crick, an IRS agent from Chicago who hears a disembodied voice narrating his life. He realizes, he is a character in a book. Therefore, his fate is really up to the author.

As the troubled writer, Emma Thompson is more than equal to the task. Her character is troublingly off center with an emotional short fuse. She smokes cigarettes as if she had a grudge against each one.

This is more than a movie of actors – it’s a movie of styles. Ferrell’s apartment, Maggie Gyllenhaal’s apartment, the IRS office – they are all perfectly designed to reflect and amplify those who dwell in them.

Many of the scenes are also annotated with computer generated graphical overlays to reflect Ferrell’s character’s analytical mind. It’s a clever device and well done.

The movie is poignant and sweet. We both cried, though I cried more than Helaine. That’s not saying an incredible lot. We also cry at commercials.

I can easily see multiple Oscars for this movie. Easily screenplay, maybe Emma Thompson, certainly an Oscar for design.

We saw this movie at the Holiday Cinema in Wallingford. We’d never been there before.

The facility itself looked a little frayed considering how relatively new I think it is. However, lack of sparkling ambience was made up for by the theater’s chairs! They’re well padded and rock nicely.

This showing did have the distinction of being the loudest movie we’ve ever been too. I’m not talking about the movie’s volume either.

If it wasn’t people talking, then it was people moving around or just random noises. Maybe they didn’t like the show as much as we did? Whatever the reason, they were restless.

&#185 – The watch turns out to be a Timex Ironman Triathlon 46 lap dress watch. I want one.

Am I Wrong About Murrow Movie?

Yesterday I wrote about “Good Night and Good Luck,” George Clooney’s new movie about Edward R. Murrow, CBS and Senator Joseph McCarthy. Neither Helaine nor I thought it was particularly good. That probably guarantees it a best picture Oscar!

Friends and acquaintances have written to tell me how much they disagree. Was I the only person to pan the picture?

I went “googling” to try and find a legitimate negative review. Interestingly, the first I found (the vast majority of reviews were very positive) disliked the movie for many of the same reasons I did.

I have no clue who the reviewer, Phil Hall, is – but here’s his review.

This whole thing reminds me of a Mary Tyler Moore episode. Murray gets involved with a play, which opens to a horrendous review in the paper. After some research, Mary finds this guy also panned My Fair Lady, among others.

Recently, we have also disliked Lost in Translation and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Both of those were warmly embraced by ‘real’ critics.

The Oscars

All week long I watched as Matt Drudge tried his best to stir up controversy with this year’s Oscar host, Chris Rock. Even after Rock opened the show, getting a standing ovation (sort of shooting Drudge’s concerns in the foot) and then asking the audience to put their asses in their seats, Drudge felt compelled to rail again. The show was still in progress and he was going off on Rock!

The must be some sort of Drudge grudge at work here.

I’m a big Chris Rock fan and I thought his opening monologue was great. OK, maybe he hit Jude Law a little hard, but the rest was really funny and I laughed aloud though I was watching in a room by myself. Of course the very stuff I liked was creamed in USA Today and lambasted last night by one of my co-workers, who was not favorably impressed.

The rest of the show was watched by me in ‘collapsed’ form off the DVR.

It was a fairly lackluster telecast. I was disappointed there wasn’t more of Rock in his other appearances during the evening. He needed to do more than hit and run. There needed to be one or two more extended pieces with him. That being said, I hear the ratings were very, very good. So, obviously, I’m not as good a judge as I’d like to be.

I was touched by the acceptance speeches of Morgan Freeman, Hillary Swank (“I’m just a girl from a trailer park who had a dream”) and Jamie Foxx. Then, this morning on CNN Headline News, I heard someone say Foxx had given the virtually same acceptance speech at two other awards shows. That’s not right.

Winner of the “David Niven Funniest Ad Lib Award” went to Jeremy Irons. Chris Rock introduced him, as “comedy superstar,” to which Irons replied, “It’s so good to be recognized at last.”

Then, as he was delivering his nominations, a sound… something like a gunshot, rang out. Without missing a beat, Irons said, “I hope they missed.” His timing was perfect.

Last night’s taped pieces, including the Johnny Carson tribute and annual “death medley,’ weren’t as good as I wanted, or had come to expect from the Oscars. Whoopie Goldberg was used in the Carson package, but why not Billy Crystal and Steve Martin, two recent hosts who had a lot of contact with Johnny.

I was also stunned that “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” won an Oscar. As I had written last April, it was one of the worst movies I had ever seen. What were they thinking when they made it and voted on it?

What strikes me as most interesting as bout the show was the rise in the ratings this year even on a night where few movies produced any kind of passionate following.

I wonder if Billy Crystal will be back next year?

Bad Movie – What Were They Thinking?

Steffie wanted to go to the mall, and we didn’t want her to drive there, so Helaine and I spent the evening at the movies. Last week we had thought about going, but there was nothing that interested us. This week there’s the new Jim Carrey movie, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.

I can’t remember a movie I have enjoyed less – not recently, certainly.

Forget the plot for a moment (because, even if I wanted to, I don’t think I have figured out what the plot is). In a love story, and this is a love story, the characters should be … lovable. Clementine, as played by Kate Winslet, is someone I avoid at all costs in real life. An alcoholic who is psychotic, flighty, cruel and manipulative. Need I go on?

Carrey spends the entire movie fighting his good sense, staying smitten with her. Why? He dumps an unseen live-in-girlfriend for her. Why?

I don’t know. And, with this movie squarely in past tense, I don’t care.

The movie is ‘cut’ in a very edgy style and past and present are tantalizingly juxtaposed. But technique is not enough to support a film. There is no meat on this turkey.

To me, this is the strangest revelation. As much as I disliked this movie, I continue to like Jim Carrey more and more. He, as Kate Winslet, played a character who never enticed me to know him more. Yet there is something charming about him which jumps off the screen. There is a special ‘it’ which some people have which allow them to light up a screen and overshadow those around them Jim Carrey has such a presence. But his character gives him little to work with, and left me cold.

As I was looking for some detail to put into this entry, I stopped by the movie’s website. There was a quote from Karyn James of the New York Times. That was strange because the film was reviewed in the Times by Elvis Mitchell. I wonder how far out of context the quote was taken?

I have often wondered if there’s a point of no return in the movie making process. Past that point, when the movie’s true quality is revealed, it’s too late to stop the production. Now, Jim Carrey, Kate Winslet, Kirsten Dunst, Elijah Wood and the others will go and promote it.

We went to see this at the Showcase Cinemas in Orange. To add insult to injury, it seemed like the theater wasn’t heated at all. The concrete floor was incredibly cold, and as the movie wore on, I did everything I could to keep my feet up.

Other than that, it was great.