Poliomyelitis

I realize that this post will make some of you think of me as foolish, yet I post anyway.


I am currently out of town, in New York, for work.  I love, love, love this city.  The reason for my post, however, has only coincidental ties to New York.  Continuing my inexplicable run of reading books with the word Girl/Boy/Man/Woman/Guy/Gal in the title, I brought two books with me: Wonder Boys by Michael Chabon and The Last Boy by Jane Leavy.  Chabon is an author I greatly admire, even if some of his books drive me nuts.  I've read most of his work, but I skipped Wonder Boys because I had already seen the movie numerous times.  The Last Boy is a recent biography of Mickey Mantle, which received across-the-board rave reviews.  I rarely read biographies, and I like the Yankees only slightly more than small pox, but I always wanted to understand why he was such a hero to so many.  After about 100 pages, it's easy to see why.


The odd parallel of these books, other than the word Boy in the titles, is the word poliomyelitis.  I had never seen this word in my life until my flight on Sunday, and I consider myself well-read.  I tend to read a few books at once (or more) and started both on the flight.  In the first twenty five pages of each book, poliomyelitis (or poliomyelitic) was used to describe children (Mickey, in The Last Boy) with serious leg problems.  For the life of me, I couldn't figure out how I had never heard that word before now.  It stuck with me for a couple of days before my dumb ass realized both authors were talking about POLIO.  Yes, polio.  I could use a shot of penicillin for my stupidity.  For some reason, I have a hard time recognizing when people shorten or abbreviate words.  And don't get me started on acronyms.  I almost always think they're real words.


Doctor Zhivago is on again in my hotel room.  No more writing.

Ice Cold Mashed Potatoes

All I want to do is put a couple layers of sweats on, get under some blankets, and hibernate until the warm temperatures come back.  I'm so happy it's supposed to get back to the 50s next week.

-I really enjoyed this collection of what the movie posters would say if the Best Picture nominees told the truth.  Toy Story 3, True Grit, and Inception were my favorites, even though Inception was crap.


-I mentioned a while back that the AV Club's Random Roles series is one of my favorite features on the internet.  They published a new edition with Delroy Lindo yesterday, which is interesting as always.  Lindo stars in The Chicago Code, a new show on Fox that debuted last night.  I enjoyed it.  The reason I point out this particular interview is the attention paid to one of my favorite overlooked movies: Crooklyn.  Crooklyn seemed to fall through the cracks a bit because it wasn't like the Spike Lee movies people were used to.  It's a very personal story of a family in Brooklyn in the 70s.  The soundtrack has long been a favorite (El Pito!) and was the reason I saw the movie in the first place.  Alfre Woodard carries the movie, but that is not to demean the other performances, writing or direction, all of which are excellent.  It's just that Ms. Woodard has a tendency to bring everything she appears in up a level or two.  Such a great actress.

-I loved this talk Stephen Fry gave on Catholicism.  I don't want to offend anyone, but the Catholic Church has done plenty to offend others through the years.


-I haven't written about music much lately, as I haven't been listening to a whole lot of new stuff.  The new Iron & Wine album has been on heavy rotation, however.  While it's a complete departure from the normal Iron & Wine sound, I love it.  It's the type of album that sounds great cranked up in the car.  The other recent album with a lot of play lately is the latest from Justin Townes Earle, Harlem River Blues.  The title track, in particular, 

-Season 2 of Justified starts on FX Wednesday night.  WATCH IT!!!!!


-I watched a few more older movies this weekend.  Quick takes as follows:
   *Ryan's Daughter - Another David Lean movie that pales in comparison to his more famous epics.  It's the story of a love triangle in a small Irish town during the first World War and leading up to the 1916 Easter Rising in Ireland.  Why Lean decided this story needed nearly three and a half hours to be told is a mystery.  He needed about ninety minutes.  The greater concern is the world he creates.  Two thirds of the love triangle, played by Sarah Miles and Robert Mitchum, feel like actual human beings.  As does the local priest, wonderfully played by Trevor Howard.  The other third of said triangle is one of the stiffest performances I've ever seen put to film.  Even worse is the rest of the townspeople, apparently put in place to serve as the most annoying Greek chorus of all time.  They operate as a massive caricature that goes around doing nothing independent of each other.  The fit is bizarre.  Even more bizarre is the Best Supporting Actor Oscar John Mills received for playing the village idiot.  Mills apparently went to clown school to train for his part, which is completely void of nuance.  I cringed every time he came on the screen.  If you watch this movie after reading this review, please note that your are your own village's idiot.
  *Becket - I sometimes complain about overacting in older movies (and newer - see Daniel Day-Lewis in There Will Be Blood).  Sometimes I'm probably being a little harsh, but sometimes I feel like movies have simply changed for the better over the years, justifying my criticism.  But sometimes actors chew the scenery, and all I want is more.  That was the case with Becket, featuring Peter O'Toole clearly having a blast playing Henry II.  Richard Burton is great as the titular Thomas Becket, but O'Toole steals the movie in a showier part.  The movie follows the relationship between the two men as both friends and adversaries.  It's rich material for two great actors.  Worth a look.

  *The Great Dictator - This was Chaplin's first, and I think only, "talkie".  While aspects of it are hilarious, it didn't work nearly as well as a whole compared to his classic silent films Modern Times or City Lights (I haven't seen others).  I still enjoyed it.  The backstory of the movie intrigued memore than the movie itself, though.  It was released in 1940 and features Chaplin playing a version of his Little Tramp character, as well as a dictator of a fictional European country who bears a strong resemblance to Hitler.  Chaplin was early in recognizing the danger Hitler represented to the rest of the world, and he put his money and reputation on the line to make this movie as a warning to the world about Hitler.  The most powerful part of the movie, even though it doesn't fit the rest of the film, is the speech he gives at the end.  It's a wonderful speech that would be a wonderful message to any society at any point in history.  The problem is that it distracts from the rest of the movie.  Regardless, I enjoyed the speech, as well as the two hours or so that preceded it.  I highly recommend listening to the final speech, even if you don't plan on seeing the movie: 

Snowy Mashed Potatoes

-I feel obligated to say it snowed the other day.  A lot.  The only time I left my place from Monday night to Thursday morning was to run up to the QuikTrip (6 blocks away) in the middle of the blizzard, as I was dying for something other than turkey sandwiches and cereal.  I was walking faster than the cars were driving, the roads were so bad.  Then again, I only saw one car before I got to Main Street.


-Since I know this blog readership extends to many television executives, I would like to give them a tip: Never allow your show to cast Will Forte in a guest role.  He is a vortex of anti-funny.  He guest starred tonight on Parks & Recreation, which went from crappy in season one to one of the funniest shows on TV in season two.  Season three has been fantastic so far, but tonight's Forte scenes slowed the show to a crawl.  He's not my least favorite SNL cast member of all-time (Armisen, then Sanz), but he's up near the top of the list.  Fortunately, Parks & Rec was still a very funny episode.  Anything Rob Lowe says cracks me up, but Andy is my favorite character.  

-If you've never seen The Thin Man, please go to your Netflix queue and move it up to the top.  It was on during one of the blizzard days, ensuring I would have a good day.  William Powell's half-drunk former detective Nick Charles is pitch perfect, especially alongside Myrna Loy as the also tipsy Nora Charles.  The shit-eating grin on their faces as they deliver their bitter sarcasm gives me the giggles every time I watch, which is fairly often.  I think it was the third time I watched it in six months.  One of my favorites.


-Two other movies I watched while stuck at home didn't work for me at all.  Army of Darkness, the third movie in the Evil Dead series, had always been the movie in that series I heard I would like the most.  I understand what they're doing with the over-the-top action and campy humor, but it's not my thing.  I can't believe the guy who directed it also did the Spider-Man movies.  And Darkman, which is awesome.


On a completely different level, I watched 3 Women, the 1977 Robert Altman film with Shelley Duvall and Sissy Spacek.  Having seen nothing but great reviews for it (95% at Rotten Tomatoes), I recorded it on my DVR.  Kinda wish I hadn't done that.  After reading some of the reviews, I'm convinced everyone who liked the movie was on some major hallucinogens.  All the symbolism they saw in it was just a bunch of uninteresting, delusional people being annoying for a little more than two hours.  I love most Altman movies, but this one was pretentious crap.


-In my downtime, I was also able to finish The Girl Who Played with Fire, which didn't live up to the first book in the series but stayed suspenseful.  The plot was not nearly as tight as The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.  The characters kept it moving, however, especially when Lisbeth Salander is involved.  The Salander-less sections were a bit too many in this installment, so I'm hoping she's in The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest from start to finish.


-TGWPWF was the third book in a row that I read with the word Girl in it, in addition to The Pint Man before it.  As a result, I decided to keep with the trend and only read books with the word Girl, Woman, Man, Boy, Guy, or Gal in the title.  Quite nerdy, I know, but it gives me an excuse to read some books I've been meaning to read for years, and I think I have 6 or 7 already lined up to read.  Should be fun.  


-That picture at the top is Parker Posey in Waiting for Guffman, one of my 5 favorite comedies.  She works at Dairy Queen.  DQ makes Blizzards.  We had a blizzard the other night.  Which is really just a means for me to tell you to watch Waiting for Guffman again.  It gets funnier every time.  That could be because when my parents took my grandma, Pope, to see it in the theater, she laughed so hard we missed half the movie.  It was a lot funnier the second time I saw it, and every time since.  Christopher Guest's line at about the 40 second mark here may be the movie quote I've used more than any other:

-If you hadn't figured it out, I'm going to call the hodgepodge posts Mashed Potatoes if I don't have a real theme for them.

Mashed Potatoes

-After rewatching Doctor Zhivago and Ninotchka yesterday, both about Russians, everyone in my dreams last night had a Russian accent.  Why, then, do many of the actors speak with British accents, while others give the Russian accent a go.  I always find it humorous that "serious" acting often calls for a British accent, whether the movie take place in Russia, Rome, or elsewhere.  This phenomenon is mostly a thing of the past, but it still happens.  The HBO show Rome is just one example.


-You would be correct in guessing that the last bullet point was a gratuitous excuse to put another Julie Christie picture on here.  

-I forgot to mention the aspect of Biutiful that stuck out the most: Javier Bardem's head.  I'm convinced his head is twice the size of a regular human being.  Maybe it was the lion's mane of a haircut he wore, but it looked massive to me.  It helped distract a little bit from all the terrible stuff happening in the movie.  The haircut is a huge improvement from his do in No Country for Old Men.


-Forgot to mention last week that I read Girl with a Pearl Earring by Tracy Chevalier, as historical novel based on the famed Johannes Vermeer painting.  The concept is interesting, as she researched the background of the painting and developed an "origin story" for it, to use a comic book term (possibly the first and last comic book reference to appear on this blog).  Unfortunately, the concept doesn't translate to a great book.  It loses steam fairly quickly, but at just over 200 pages, I still enjoyed it a bit.  

Biutiful and Another Year

If a director's personality correlated to his or her films, Alejandro González Iñárritu would be one of the most miserable human beings on the planet.  For his family and friends' sake, I hope this to be untrue.  Through four feature films, a sense of humor has yet to be found.  I could not make it through 15 minutes of his debut, Amores Perros, as the brutality was too much for me.  Sophomore effort, 21 Grams, was depressing as could be, though still excellent.  His third film, Babel, was well-received by many, but the story felt strained to me, and its bleak outlook left me cold.  His new film, the Oscar-nominated Biutiful, may be the most unpleasant movie ever created.  While the acting is first-rate, and the photography beautiful, I would rather eat a week's worth of meals at The Olive Garden than sit through this movie again.  


Javier Bardem stars as Uxbal, for which he received a Best Actor nomination.  Uxbal endures on the fringes of Barcelona's criminal underworld, mostly working with a small-time purse/movie pirating operation involving immigrants from China and Senegal.  His family situation is complicated by his bipolar wife, so he has custody of both of his children.  After being diagnosed with pancreatic cancer early in the film, he spends the rest of the time getting his affairs in order and trying to make things right for those he leaves behind.  


Miserable movies often feature nothing but unsympathetic characters, but that is not the case in Biutiful.  Uxbal somehow remains a good man, even as he participates in illegal activity.  I understand that all cannot be cheerful in the movies, and realism certainly has its place.  When a film can't let anything positive happen in a two and a half hour span, however, why would anyone care to watch?  Walking out of the nearly full theater this afternoon, very little talking could be heard.   It was like the audience had just gotten out of a funeral.  As I got to the hallway, a guy walking next to me sarcastically said, "What a wonderful way to spend a Sunday afternoon?"  As we made our way to the exit, we cataloged all of the bright spots in the movie: a birthday cake, a humorous anecdote, and the family eating ice cream.  That's it.  If you feel the need to punish yourself, by all means, go see Biutiful.


After 150 minutes of desolation, I needed something a little more lighthearted, so I went to see Mike Leigh's wonderful new film, Another Year.  With a cast of Leigh regulars, including Oscar winner, Jim Broadbent, the movie chronicles a year in the life a group of Londoners from one season to the next.  Broadbent and his wife, played by the lovely Ruth Sheen, feel like real human beings, rather than vessels to get from one plot point to the next.  Plot is secondary, as Leigh concerns himself more with creating an interesting world of characters around the couple.  


The real revelation is Lesley Manville, playing a coworker and longtime friend of Sheen's.  As a single woman in her 50s, she exudes desperation, drinking too much wine and always overstaying her welcome.  Her performance is filled with a sense of melancholy but also a glint of optimism that shines through any time she sees any sort of opening out of her dead end world.  That optimism is fleeting, as it repeatedly comes crashing down moments later.  Speculation had Manville earning an Oscar nomination, but Hailee Steinfeld's bizarre categorization as a supporting actress probably kept her from it.  It's a shame, as she deserves more recognition for this great performance.


Another Year, while lighthearted in some respects, plays across the full range of emotions, though the laughs are never cheap or unearned.  The conflict all feels real in the every day lives of this interesting group of people.  This ranks near the top of the Mike Leigh movies I've seen, all of which I enjoyed a great deal.  Leigh isn't for everyone, but if you liked Vera Drake, Happy-Go-Lucky, Secrets & Lies, or others, you'll love Another Year.

Set Your DVRs

After FX, Turner Classic Movies is probably my favorite cable channel.  Their 31 Days of Oscar schedule every February is always a favorite of mine.  It's not quite February, but they have a bunch of my all-time favorite movies playing this weekend, so the DVR will be working overtime.  It's too late to tip anyone off, but Being There and Dr. Strangelove are playing tonight, both in my top 30 movies of all time.  Here are some others I highly recommend:

-The Shop Around the Corner - 9:30AM CST Friday, 1/28 - The 1940 Ernst Lubitsch classic comedy/romance stars Jimmy Stewart, Margaret Sullavan, and the great and powerful Frank Morgan.  You've Got Mail was a very loose adaptation, but please don't hold that against it.  The action takes place in a Budapest shop, with an interesting group of workers.  I could watch this one repeatedly.

-Ninotchka - 1:30PM CST Friday, 1/28 - Before checking the link at IMDB, I never knew this was also directed by Ernst Lubitsch.  Ninotchka was Greta Garbo's second-to-last movie.  While I've only seen a couple of them, apparently this was one of her few comedies.  It's hard to tell, as she and Melvyn Douglas are wonderful.  I love Melvyn Douglas.  I think I may have to break out my Being There DVD now.

-The Dirty Dozen and The Wild Bunch - 8:30PM CST Saturday, 1/29 and 2:00AM CST Sunday, 1/30 - While TCM is airing some other good movies on Saturday (Little Big Man, Bad Day at Black Rock), these two will leave you feeling manly after the two romances I previously suggested.  The Dirty Dozen is one of those movies that makes me stop what I'm doing every time I see it on TV.  I own it on DVD, but I've seen at least chunks of it on TV so many times I can't count.  Action movie directors have been trying to emulate what Cassavetes, Bronson, Jim Brown, Donald Sutherland and all the rest did in 1967, but nothing really comes close.  Where TDD goes playful, The Wild Bunch is balls to the wall stylish action from Sam Peckinpah.  I would record it again, but this is one of the few Blu-Rays I own, so that may have to come out this weekend too.

-Doctor Zhivago - 1:00PM CST Sunday, 1/30 - David Lean is known for his epics, and Doctor Zhivago is certainly one of his most famous.  I prefer Bridge on the River Kwai and the much smaller Brief Encounter, but those movies lack something Zhivago has in spades: Julie Christie.  After Grace Kelly, I'm not sure a more beautiful woman has ever graced the screen than Ms. Christie.  

Thomas Robinson

If you're not familiar with the sad tale of Thomas Robinson, power forward for KU, take a look at Brady McCullough's story from the KC Star or Gary Bedore's from the Lawrence Journal-World, but it may get a little dusty in the room.  To summarize, Thomas Robinson's grandma passed away at the end of December.  His grandfather died unexpectedly last Sunday, leaving him with just his mother and 9-year old sister.  On Friday night, the eve of KU's biggest game of the year, he got a call from his little sister telling him their 37-year old mother died of a heart attack.  I don't know how a 19-year old kid deals with such tragedy, let alone play in a basketball game the next day.  Thankfully he has a great support system from his teammates, coaches, and their families.


Seeing this team rally around Thomas in his time of need makes you feel good about the power sports can have on people's lives.  You want to do anything in your power to help, and fortunately the NCAA is allowing a scholarship fund to be set up for his sister.  I criticize the NCAA a lot, but they really came through in this situation.

The Best Show You Probably Don't Watch

ed. note: Our first guest post at TKOP, from the always tasteful Mark Czarniecki. Please take his advice and watch this great show.

DVR space is precious. My wife and I watch a lot of (HD) TV. Rarely do our DVR holdings ever dip below 90% capacity. Yet, when it comes time to make room for new shows, the one folder I can never bring myself to touch holds NBC's Community. As I write, there is a "24" next to "Community" under "My Recordings." That's 24 episodes of one show. 30 Rock has a "2." All of this is a long-winded and not very interesting way of saying that Community is the most re-watchable show on television.

The show follows a study group of unlikely misfits who have enrolled at Greendale Community College. The group's founder and leader is Jeff Winger, a cynical, fast-talking, metrosexual, 30-something egomaniac who finds himself needing another ride on the collegiate carousel in order to legally return to his law practice. Reminiscent of Vince Vaughn before he blew up (fame requires sustenance), Joel McHale brings a sharp wit and even sharper edge to the role of Jeff. We quickly learn that Jeff's moral rehabilitation is the show's central premise. There to assist in this mission are his fellow study-groupies Britta, Pierce, Shirley, Annie, Troy and Abed and his professors Senor Chang and Ian Duncan. A United Colors of Benetton troupe of brilliant characters played by brilliant comedians from yesterday (Chevy!), today (Jon Oliver and Yvette Nicole Brown) and tomorrow (Dany Pudi and Donald Glover), this group of writer-actors makes the best case for diversity since Thurgood Marshall. Community is the opposite of Friends. And thank goodness for that.

The central aim of the show's writers is to take small screen and big screen cliches and turn them on their heads. Using pop culture references, self-aware gags, physical comedy, laugh-out-loud one-liners and whimsical off-the-wall goofs, the show moves from week to week with only the thinnest of threads providing continuity. If smart sitcom subversion is all there was, I'd be a loyal follower. What moves me from fan to blogger is the accuracy of the show's imitations and the emotional connections these characters make. To the former, look no further than Season 1's "Modern Warfare" and "Contemporary American Poultry" episodes. Each episode's 24 short minutes are perfectly efficient send-ups of a dystopian action shoot-em up (with paint!) and a Scorsese-style mafia masterpiece, respectively. For characters that connect, there's Troy And Abed In the Morning. The kind of bromance Jud Apatow wishes he wrote, Troy and Abed provide some of the show's best moments both comedically and dramatically. Dany Pudi and Donald Glover are kindred spirits, operating on a wavelength only the two of them can hear. Pudi, in particular, deserves far more recognition. Jim Parsons isn't the only game in town. The 30-second T&A skits at the end of every episode are as good or better than any SNL Digital Short. It's the kind of relationship every guy pines for.

The show's weakest episodes are those that involve Jeff's romantic pursuits with regular cast members. It's not that they don't contribute to his redemption, it's that they're not required for it. Unlike Jim and Pam on The Office, there are no two characters on this show whose chemistry builds anticipation from one show to the next (save for Troy and Abed). If anything, Jeff's non-superficial love life only distracts from furthering the group dynamic. The more time this show spends sitting at the table in the library showing off each actor's talents, the better.

The most-repeated criticism of the show is that its early episodes were too mean-spirited. I don't buy it and think there are two reasons for it, both having to do with lazy television critics. First, Joel McHale's hosting of The Soup, in which he lambasts Hollywood with an acerbic, sometimes overly-petty, commentary lends itself to an easy comparison to his character on the show. Jeff's many spitfire monologues in the first half of Season 1 provide grist for this mill. While McHale clearly draws upon his schtick on The Soup, Jeff's asshole persona in the beginning of the series is kind of the point. He's a charismatic dick, who isn't cured over the length of one or even four episodes. By the end of the first season, however, Jeff's emotional and social development is plain for all to see.

The second reason I think Community is unfairly singled-out for its cynicism has everything to do with timing. The show premiered at the same time as Modern Family and the comparison was too much for armchair TV Guiders to resist. Modern Family was a surprise hit that's easy to like. However, every MF episode ends with a "Full House Moment" that tries, sometimes successfully, to extend the lesson above and beyond the realm of TV comedy. You won't find that in Community, though it's not from a lack of heart or an intention to be overly negative.

As unfounded as I find this line of criticism, I think even the critics who offered it have to admit that the show has shown nothing but sustained growth throughout its run. This is a space ship that I'm proud to say I've been aboard since day one and that I revisit often. Climb on board.

A Slew of Movies

It has been so cold and snowy here in Kansas City that all I want to do is sit around watching movies or reading.  Mostly watching movies.  Here's what I saw the last few nights:

-Despicable Me - With Pixar on a streak of greatness rivaling Joe Dimaggio, other animated movies can't help but suffer in comparison. As a result, I rarely see them in theaters, either waiting for video/cable or skipping them altogether. After seeing the trailers for Despicable Me, I figured I wouldn't see it unless I was bored and HBO was showing it.  Lucky for me, Redbox had it yesterday, and I spent 90 minutes laughing hysterically.  The alternate reality where the movie takes place shares the hilarious cartoon violence I always loved in Looney Tunes and Tom & Jerry.  While the two central characters and the little girls who come between them are great in their own right, the endless army of minions (pictured above) completely stole the show.  


-Buried - This thriller never got the attention it deserved when it came out in the fall with little fanfare.  I suppose the general public would not flock to see a movie that takes place almost entirely inside of a small wood coffin.  Ryan Reynolds stars as a man who finds himself buried alive inside the aforementioned coffin, and he spends the rest of the movie working to escape.  I heard a few comparisons to 127 Hours, since the central character in both is stuck in one place. Where 127 Hours resorts to twitchy camera work and lots of quick edits, Buried allows the camera to sit still at times.  The result is a feeling of claustrophobia that never goes away.  The filmmaking and the acting are both impressive.


-Date Night - This was clearly the third best of the Redbox movies I rented to console myself after the KU loss yesterday.  Tina Fey and Steve Carell work nicely together in what could have been renamed Adventures in Babysitting with Adults.  I do not mean that as a slight.  There are a lot of laughs with fun adventure and a wonderful supporting cast.  The scenes with Marky Mark had me howling, and the James Franco/Mila Kunis scene is brilliantly acted.  While it doesn't deserve any awards, you won't regret spending 90 minutes with Date Night.


-Green Zone - I hesitate to bring politics into the site, but it's difficult to discuss Green Zone without doing so.  The bad guys in this movie are so cartoonish that I wanted to dismiss them for being too perfectly constructed by the filmmakers.  They just didn't seem real.  Of course, I then realized the Bush administration did a lot of similar crap to get us into the war in Iraq.  Getting angry again, so I'm gonna stop.  Decent movie, but not one I will remember much from Matt Damon's career.


-The Life of Emile Zola and The Great Ziegfeld - It's amazing how much biopics have changed in the last 75 years.  These two movies won Best Picture for 1937 and 1936, though neither one gives much of a nuanced portrait of its subjects.  The Great Ziegfeld is a love letter to Florenz Ziegfeld, producer of the famed Ziegfeld Follies, among other things.  While they do not make him out to be a saint, the filmmaker's opinion of Ziegfeld is plain from the beginning.  There are some grand set pieces that are beautiful and clearly cost a ton of money to make, but they feel thrown in as part of another movie.  Fortunately, the cast, including three of my favorites, William Powell, Myrna Loy, and Frank Morgan, make the bulk of the movie fun to watch.  Mr. Deeds Goes to Town should have taken home Best Picture that year.  Then again, five Frank Capra movies would have won Best Picture in the 30s if it were up to me.  Maybe six.


The acting in The Life of Emile Zola feels like something out of an SNL sketch making fun of how over-the-top actors used to be.  Emile Zola DID lead an interesting life, but I found myself laughing at the actors more often than not.  If you want to see a great movie from the same year, get The Awful Truth, which is intentionally funny.


-Suspicion - I didn't think it could happen, but I finally found an Alfred Hitchcock movie I didn't like, as well as a crappy performance from Cary Grant.  The less said about this one, the better. If Cary Grant isn't my all-time favorite actor, he's probably second behind Jimmy Stewart.  His cartoonish performance in Suspicion distracted me so much, I hardly noticed how great Joan Fontaine is.  Guess I should watch North by Northwest or Holiday or His Girl Friday again, just to get Cary back in my good graces.

The King's Speech

With approximately 8 inches of snow falling on Kansas City this afternoon, the entire city apparently let employees go home at the same time, creating a brutal drive home.  My commute is normally thirty minutes, which has been stretched to nearly two hours in similar weather.  A movie theater happens to be down the street from the office, so I decided to catch The King's Speech and let the traffic clear.  Excellent decision.


The plot of The King's Speech is the stuff Hollywood executives dream about: a speech therapist helps a member of the British royal family in the 1930s and 40s overcome his stutter.  Exciting stuff, right?  I'd love to see someone piece together clips from the movie into a fake action movie trailer.  All kidding aside, the movie works on all levels, with a surprising sense of humor complementing the history.  Colin Firth deservedly received most of the plaudits for his outstanding performance as the Duke of York.  His stutter never seems forced, and he brings a unique humanity to a seemingly stuffy person.  The Duke and his unorthodox speech therapist, Lionel Logue, played by Geoffrey Rush, do not have the type of Royal/commoner relationship normally seen in movies.  Logue becomes a friend, as well as his instructor, even chastising his charge at times.  Rush offers a perfect counterpart to the serious Duke, adding a sense of levity that elevates the movie above most period dramas.  Both actors deserve the Oscar nominations they are almost certain to receive next week.  Helena Bonham Carter is also a favorite for nomination.  While she used to be the queen of the period drama, her parts anymore all seem to be oddballs that fit her marriage to Tim Burton nicely.  Good to see her in something normal again.