There are some directors you admire but don’t enjoy.  Except for Rushmore, Fantastic Mr. Fox, and now Moonrise Kingdom, Wes Anderson is that kind of director for me.

His visual style is distinctive.  He creates quirky microcosms of the world that evoke a dreamy commentary on things that (for the most part) I cannot connect with (in a way that moves me).

I read once in a review or article a comparison that resonated at the time, but I can’t recall where I read it and have been unsuccessful in my feeble attempts to track it down (so if you know the source, leave the information in a comment).

The author said something to the effect that watching a Wes Anderson film was like going to an elegant dinner party with erudite guests where a precocious 12-year-old is seated at the table with the adults.  The child is bright, talkative, and intermittently entertaining, but there comes a point in the evening when you want to tell him that it’s time to go to bed so that the grown ups can talk.

Moonrise Kingdom represents a big transition for me in terms of Wes Anderson’s oeuvre.  This film not only engages my senses with Anderson’s dazzling aesthetic sensibilities (the use of composition, the use of color, the overall production design, the editing, the odd yet oddly spot on music selections), but it engages my heart, too.

Two young people, both troubled misfits, fall in love and run away together.  This throws the New England island where she lives and he attends a summer camp into disarray.  That’s all you need to know about the plot. The young leads (Kara Hayward and Jared Gilman) and the more famous older actors surrounding them are terrific (Frances McDormand, Bill Murray, Bruce Willis, Edward Norton, Tilda Swinton, Jason Schwartzman, Harvey Keitel – what a cast!).

Here’s a funny personal note.  Without giving away too much about the story, there is a scene in the film that involves the young man, Sam, making some earrings out of bugs for his love, Suzy.

When my son was young, I had a whole collection of bug jewelry that I bought at the gift shop of a science museum.  The earrings in the movie look a lot like those green ones in the lower right of this photo.

I haven’t worn them much in recent years, but I think I should wear them all week in celebration of this lovely film.  I wonder if anyone will make the connection?

In 1994, two new series premiered about hospitals on network television, Chicago and ER.

Both received positive critical reviews, but I had a sharply divided opinion about the two and published an essay in the periodical Creative Screenwriting arguing that ER was the superior show.

In an analysis of the scripts for the pilot episodes, I framed arguments about the multicultural, communal social space of ER and the dated visual style and elitism of Chicago Hope, which seemed even then like a vestige of the 1980s.

I enjoyed the former a lot more than the latter and watched regularly until it went off the air in 2009.  Chicago Hope stayed on the air until 2000, but I gave up on it after the first season.

I mention this because I really wish The Newsroom were a lot more like ER and a lot less like Chicago Hope.

It’s true that I’m ambivalent about the high-minded speechifying that typifies some of Aaron Sorkin’s work.  The dialogue is too spot on, too precious, too high-minded.  It is too, too much for me most of the time and feels artfully constructed rather than authentic.

The production values are high in The Newsroom, but the show is too predictable and, in ways related to form and content, seems like an artifact of an earlier era instead of a fresh take on the newsroom and spirited defense of the fourth estate.

I need The Newsroom to feel more real to be relevant and engaging.

Friday afternoon, my mother and I went to see Magic Mike.  I knew we were in for an unusual viewing experience when she embraced another “woman of a certain age” in line, and they both giggled at the film they were queued up to see.  My second clue was that all evening showings of the film were already sold out.

The 5:10 screening we saw was packed with frisky females who had less than zero interest in the preview trailers advertising upcoming horror flicks.  Who programs those trailers anyway?  Lost opportunity promoting those films with this crowd.

Maybe that’s the point.  Could there have been nothing else to show before the feature? There aren’t a lot of films targeting women, and certainly not a lot of them by top directors like Steven Soderbergh.  I went to the film mainly because of the director, and I found both more and less than I expected.

The audience reaction was fun, and I could almost feel Soderbergh chuckle at the shot near the beginning of the film of Channing Tatum’s bare assets (I always want to call him Tatum Channing for some reason) that elicited the desired response from many viewers.

It’s not Tatum’s body or even dance moves that I find most appealing, however.  It’s the openness of his face and a certain look that rests in his eyes when he is in repose.  He is perfect for the duality this role requires – after all, he is a man in transition even before he knows it – and it is interesting to watch the subtlety with which Tatum delivers this performance.

Tatum and Soderbergh orchestrate the transition exquisitely.

Stripper Mike is cast as a roofing-car detailing-stripping entrepreneur (though we could have seen more of the clothed activities to build the case that he is a businessman) who really wants to be an artist-craftsman building distinctive furniture that incorporates found objects.  He lives the lifestyle of excess that goes along with his means (mostly the stripping) to get to his desired end (the American Dream), but we always know he is a good guy (because of that look in his eye and other clues provided by Soderbergh and screenwriter Reid Carolin).

In typical Hollywood form, what he needs to become the better man is a crisis situation and the love of a good woman.  It is the latter that elevates the film for me.

I want less of men stripping (especially Matthew McConaughey – sorry ladies) so that it is easier for me to focus on the scenes from the film I return to inside my head, which is mainly three of them:  the scene at the sandbar party, the scene by the pool when Mike is looking for Brooke’s brother, and the final scene of the film.  I’ll give you a spoiler alert later, if you like, but it’s not like you don’t know what is coming in this movie!

First, a note about style.  All of the lighting in the domestic interiors, especially in Brooke’s (Cody Horn) apartment is low, soft, and very un-Hollywood (unstylized in a conscious way).  The camera in some of the scenes with Brooke and Mike is also a little less subjective in its placement, which automatically sets these scenes apart.

The other thing is Tatum’s performance in these scenes.  He maintains a certain distance from Brooke that is endearing.  In his attempt to be casual with her, yet careful, it is clear just how different his interactions with her are from his other social exchanges.

When I think of this film, that’s what I think about.

SPOILER ALERT (don’t read any more from this point if you don’t want to know how the movie ends).

I could watch this movie again, and sort of want to, just to review those scenes and, most of all, the final scene of the film.  To see Brooke and Mike sitting across the table from one another is a simple, perfectly paced scene that evokes so much more than it shows.

The most powerful moments of the film are subtly rendered in stark contrast to all that has come before – especially the strip club sequences – and near the very end of the film, when the camera has pulled back to make us conscious voyeurs of something truly beautiful, a connection that is revealed by one hand touching another and a head lowered in gratitude for a more holistic desire than expressed anywhere else in the film.

Great movie?  No.  But, there are some great scenes.

When we left the screening, the lobby was filled with restive women and a sprinkling of bemused men.  Outside the cinema, several teenage girls were taking pictures of the Magic Mike poster with their phones.

I suspect that what I find magical (or at least indelible) about the film may be different from what they remember most from the move.  Or, maybe not.

 

 

…but it’s still a good read.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/01/magazine/how-does-the-film-industry-actually-make-money.html?ref=magazine

Maybe, but video never actually killed the radio star either.