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Uncle Orson Reviews Everything
February 14, 2010
First appeared in print in The Rhinoceros Times, Greensboro, NC.
Valentine's Day, Oscar Shorts, Ellen on Idol
The movie Valentine's Day cleared $52 million on its opening weekend, so my
review is moot. The cynical plan behind the movie worked perfectly. They
packed it with stars, gave it some cute moments to promote, and thus sucked
us all in by convincing us it was the Valentine's Day date movie of choice.
The idea behind it was sound enough. Apparently they had seen the brilliant
classic Love Actually, which told a dozen differently wonderful love stories, and
somebody said, "Let's do one like that for Valentine's Day!"
Then they hired writers and a director (Garry Marshall -- it should have been
his sister, Penny) who, when handed a gift like that, didn't know how to get
past the tissue paper it was wrapped in.
Because the cast is so very good, there are whole moments -- sometimes
several in a row -- that are worth watching. Some of the love stories are cute,
and some are funny, and one of them had hopes of being rather touching.
But they were all thrown away by (a) bad writing and (b) stupidity.
Bad writing first. Love Actually used every one of its vignettes to maximum
efficiency. Whole stories were told in four or five speeches. We liked people
and didn't want them to do stupid things; there were people in pain or need
whom we cared about; and yet we saw each story for only a scene at a time,
intercut with all the others.
Where each scene in Love Actually was packed with story, each storyline in
Valentine's Day was spread thinly and lazily across many scenes, each of which
felt like it took forever while it accomplished nearly nothing.
The gags, where they came, were mostly strained and unfunny. We nearly
always saw them coming from a mile away, and then, when they came, they
were just what we expected and nothing more. There were so many wasted
plot threads you could have woven them into two Oscar gowns and a toupee.
Now for the stupid. A florist on Valentine's Day is rear-ended, and then when
he drives away the back of his van opens and the flowers all spill out. (Though
if that's how they were stacked inside, they should have fallen all over the place
and needed restacking when the collision happened.)
But here's the thing: The driver stomps around the wreckage looking
frustrated, but then drives off without even trying to pick up the envelopes with
the address information so he could go back, replace the arrangements, and
get them delivered. If I'm his boss, he's fired.
The stupid gets worse. A teenage boy is caught alone and naked (except for a
guitar), in his girlfriend's bedroom, by her mother. She talks to him; they are
in the room together for several minutes. Now, I don't care how rattled you are
-- you turn your back on the mother and pull on your pants. But not this
supposedly college-bound moron: He runs out of the house naked. Why?
Because he knows he's in a movie and it will be "funnier."
Then there's the whole sequence at the school where Jennifer Garner's
character, a schoolteacher, is interrupted by Ashton Kutcher, who means to
tell her a useful bit of information. Incredibly, she leaves her classroom in the
charge of one of the children -- a sure way to turn that child into a pariah and
to lose her job.
But it's not just that: Every moment of the school, every action of teacher and
students, is so false that one has to think that no one involved with this film
has ever been inside a school -- certainly not within the past ten years.
Poor Topher Grace is given absolutely nothing to do -- a waste of a talented
actor. Hector Elizondo and Shirley MacLaine are given a subplot that serves
only one purpose -- to make sure we know that there is no such thing as
sexual fidelity in the world, except if you're a fool.
Julia Roberts and Bradley Cooper are only interesting because we don't know
why Roberts (who plays a military officer) is coming to LA for only a single day;
but we do know that the two of them are on the longest plane flight in history,
because it seems to last forever without anything useful happening or being
revealed to us.
And yet ... no matter how bad the writing is, no matter how dependent on
cliches, no matter how glacially the story moves forward and how shallowly the
characters are drawn, this is a splendid cast and they manage to make the best
of it.
Well, it's almost a splendid cast. There is a child actor who was cast for face
alone. He can't deliver a line without a smirk; at no moment is he believable;
nor is he cute or engaging. When you compare him to the young-boy-in-love in
Love Actually, you can't help but wonder who made the casting decision to put
this child actor in that spot.
It was no kindness to him. When you're directing a movie and you discover
that you're working with a child actor whose performance cannot be saved in
the editing room, who will deaden every scene that he's in, it is a kindness to
the child (and the audience) to let him go and bring in another young actor.
I can name two dozen children of my acquaintance right now who would have
been better in the part. This statistical probability surely extends to Los
Angeles.
It is not the child's fault. He is doing the best he can. He can't help it that he's
given such appallingly unnatural things to say (as bad as when George Lucas
forced poor, innocent Jake Lloyd to say "Whoopee!"). He can't help it that he's
working with a director incompetent at teaching a child how to act. Child
actors are children. They are not responsible. I grieved for the poor boy every
moment he was on screen.
My wife and I had to leave a half hour before the end to pick up our fifteen-year-old after a party. We should have been grateful for the excuse -- it kept
us warm and indoors on a snowy night. But we both decided -- feeling rather
ashamed of ourselves -- that we will buy another pair of tickets and go back to
see the ending.
Just to see if it turns out as badly as it began, I suppose. To find out why Julia
Roberts is on that plane. To discover that the little boy is (probably) in love
with his teacher, not the little girl the other kids taunt him about. To watch
other cliches play themselves out.
And because it's the closest thing to a Valentine's date my poor wife is going to
get this year.
Besides, there is one great scene where Jennifer Garner faces the man who's
been lying to her. It's not really worth the entire price of admission, but I don't
regret seeing it.
There's your incentive to go to Valentine's Day!
*
There's an email moving through the internet that purports to show pictures
of D-Day that were taken by a sailor with a Kodak Brownie camera, which sat
somewhere for more than sixty years and still put out pictures that were sharp
and clear and dramatic.
Since my father was a Navy photographer during World War II (but toward the
end; he was not at Pearl Harbor), I forwarded the email to him with my
comment that I didn't believe for a second the story about the Brownie.
Here's what he replied: "No Brownie camera ever took 16 pictures on one roll of
film. They look too crisp to have been made by a single meniscus lens. They
are great pictures, but not from an old Brownie. At least that is my
evaluation."
And Snopes.com agreed. The pictures are genuine, but they could not possibly
have been taken by one person, with one camera, for the simple reason that
they were shot within minutes of each other at so many different locations,
miles apart.
I just can't understand why the pictures themselves weren't good enough. Why
did some lying snake have to add the completely false story about the old
Brownie camera? What is the motive of these people?
It's as if some people can't be happy until they've wrapped a lie around the
truth. Perhaps that's how they feel as thought they've taken possession of it.
*
For my entire life, I've been watching the Oscar broadcasts and sitting through
the short-film categories without having seen any of the nominees except a
couple (in my life, not each year) that were theatrically released.
Knowing this, for the past five years the Academy has been trying to make
these films available to the public. Starting on February 19th, selected theaters
around the country will show a program of all the nominated live-action shorts,
and another of all the animated ones.
In other words, you don't have to watch the Oscars in complete ignorance!
Why should you care? Because in many a year, some of the short films are the
best things made that year. A lot of filmmakers get their start making short
films and taking them around to exhibitions. Many a career has begun when a
short made a strong impression on a studio -- for instance, that's how
Napoleon Dynamite got its start.
However, short film is also a genre in its own right, not just a career boost. So
when I tell you that the Carousel theater (on Battleground just south of
Wendover) is going to be one of the places where these films will be shown --
for a week, starting Friday, 19 February -- I hope you'll seize the opportunity to
go.
Having been provided with a screener DVD in advance, I had a chance to watch
two of the shorts before writing this column; I'll be watching the rest very soon.
Kavi, a live action short, is set in India, and only a few words of English are
spoken. I promise you that you won't mind the subtitles. The child actor in
the title role gives a real and powerful performance, but so do all the adults, as
they tell the story of a little boy working with his family in (illegal) slavery at a
brickyard. It is one of the best movies I've seen this year, of any length.
Then there was the animated A Matter of Loaf and Death, a Wallace and
Gromit cartoon that had me laughing out loud dozens of times. I've never seen
a W&G cartoon before, and so the irony and emotional effectiveness took me
completely by surprise.
Both of these shorts held me with all the interest of feature films; and, unlike
many features, neither lasted a minute too long. They could not be more
different from each other -- the one a bold, heroic drama, the other a ... well, a
bold, heroic comedy. You'll see.
I can't promise you that all the shorts will be that good. But come on, when
you're watching the Oscars, won't it be cool, when the nominees are read out,
to be the one saying, "Seen it -- great. Saw it -- sucked."
The good ones are so good that you won't regret having gone to the theater to
see them all.
I appreciate the Carousel's offering us this chance to view some of the best
that filmmakers have to offer. In all likelihood you'll only have this one week in
which to see these, so don't put it off too long.
*
Speaking of what the Carousel offers, I had no idea that for some time they've
had a twice-a-month event aimed at the college-age audience called "The
Mixed Tape Film Series."
Last week, for instance, they showed Princess Bride -- it must have been fun to
see that in a theater again! -- and the remaining installments in the series are:
March 4th -- Big Trouble in Little China
March 11th -- The Thing
April 1st -- Pee Wee's Big Adventure
April 8th -- Robocop
May 6th -- Goonies
Joe Scott of Go Triad assures me, "In terms of formatting, the Carousel has
exhibition-quality projectors that create an image from a DVD that's almost as
good as film."
You don't have to prove you're a college student to attend these events. You
just have to promise -- if you're an old coot like me -- not to try to shush them
when they act their age.
*
We've seen several installments of Ellen DeGeneres as a judge on American
Idol, and frankly, I'm thrilled.
After her jokey turn on So You Think You Can Dance, I shuddered at the idea of
her judging regularly. She was fine as a one-shot jester at the dance show, but
she truly had nothing to say. How could she do it week after week without
making us want to scream?
With American Idol, she actually knows what she's talking about. No, she can't
give specific singing advice -- but then, how often did Paula Abdul do any such
thing? They have vocal coaches working with the show who do that (and this
year, for the first time, we actually got to see them during Hollywood week).
No, DeGeneres knows performing. She knows when she's seeing and hearing
the effects of terror, and unlike Simon, she doesn't get testy with people for
being human. In fact, her presence seems to calm Simon down a little.
Kara, on the other hand, was appalling during the auditions. She sucked up
so pathetically to every celebrity guest judge, imitating their behavior, that I
was sickened and had to look away from the screen. The worst moment was
when the celebrity judge got up to give a hug to a devastated contestant. It was
obvious Kara didn't think of doing any such thing until the celeb did it, but
then she had to bound over and give a me-too that was just ... well, sad.
The good news is that with DeGeneres in the lineup, Kara is somehow more
subdued.
Either that or the show's editors had mercy on us and simply cut out her most
appalling moments of fame-sucking neediness.
So I'm going to keep watching for a while longer -- though I must confess I've
only heard two voices so far that have any promise at all. I can only hope
they've kept the best under wraps until they unveil their top 24.
*
Speaking of voices with "promise," have you seen countertenor Greg
Pritchard on Britain's Got Talent? I'm going to say no more than this: It is an
unforgettable performance and you won't want to be left out.
*
I'm assuming that, if you've been reading this column for any length of time,
you've already heard about the Improv Everywhere movement. These are the
people who go into public places and, essentially, put on a show.
They're in a train station and all at once, at a predesignated time, everybody in
the group freezes. They have cameras and microphones picking up the
reactions of the innocent bystanders.
Sometimes, when they do an impromptu musical, it's wonderful; sometimes it's
embarrassing. Mostly the difference depends on the quality of the writing.
And now and then they do one that is just, well, wrong. For instance, the "gag"
where they tell people in the subway station that they're taking pictures for the
transit authority's (nonexistent) yearbook. Naturally, some people primp and
preen and everyone takes the time out of their lives to take part in this
nonsense, so everyone can laugh at them.
That's not funny. It's an imposition. The glory of Improv Everywhere is that
the performers do the funny-wonderful thing. The joke isn't on the audience,
it's for the audience. But the subway photo-shoot thing is nothing of the kind
-- it's vintage Allen Funt.
Yes, regular improve companies often bring audience members onstage -- but
they know they're in a show.
But the others are so good I forgive them for one flop.
If you want to see what I'm talking about, then go to this website
You can even subscribe to the site and be notified when new videos go up.
This is what your children are watching on the computer when they tell you
they're "almost done" with their homework ...
*
On Valentine's eve, by the way, my wife and I and another couple dropped in at
Gnam Gnam, expecting to get a salad or sandwich. Instead, they had a special
menu of full-fledged restaurant entrees.
We decided, however, that their tapas menu looked irresistible, so we asked for
enough of every single one of them to share among the four of us. Chef
Robert Keir outdid himself -- even the things I didn't think I'd like, I
loved.
Of course, by the time you read this it won't be Valentine's any more, so I won't
make you eat your heart out.
Maybe just a little: The brie in puff pastry with a tiny bit of raspberry on top
was exquisite -- and I don't like brie! I want more.
But then, I wanted more of everything else, too.
Clearly, Gnam Gnam is a gelato shop that wants to grow up into a restaurant,
and I tell you, I can't wait.
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