Zodiac (2007)

Directed by: David Fincher

Written by: James Vanderbilt

Starring: Jake Gyllenhaal, Robert Downey, Jr., Mark Ruffalo, Anthony Edwards, Brian Cox, Chloë Sevigny and Elias Koteas

David Fincher knows how to do a death scene.  He can also pull off the fight scene, the torture scene, and the dismemberment scene.  But for those looking to his new movie for the customary shot of ultra-violence, best look elsewhere.  Unlike Fincher’s earlier films (Se7en, Fight Club), Zodiac is a crime film largely unconcerned with the gory details – rather than the grisly photo op, it resembles something akin to a courtroom stenographer on speed.  

Based on the 1986 book by Robert Graysmith, the movie follows the San Francisco killings through the eyes of the investigators – police officer David Toschi (Mark Ruffalo), reporter Paul Avery (Robert Downey Jr.), and Robert Graysmith (Jake Gyllenhaal), a cartoonist at the San Francisco Chronicle who becomes fascinated when the killer starts sending cryptic letters to the newspaper.  A glorified detective story, Zodiac is obsessed with its own minutia, quickly lapsing into a complex patter of jargon and jurisdiction, the messy business of police work that is usually too tedious to show.  It is also a brilliant study in obsession, where these assorted details – a reel of film, a signature, a scrap of fabric – keep us guessing long after the case has ceased to matter.

Fincher isn’t afraid to send us hurtling down the rabbit hole in this regard; far from the satisfying punch at the end (the veritable head in the box) he keeps us riveted, scouring over the stacks of evidence, still looking for the missing piece.  The tightly constructed dialogue is matched by Harris Savides’ brilliant cinematography, which punctuates the talky script with moments of aching beauty – a single overhead shot of a cab leaving San Francisco, or the illuminated portrait of Paul Avery, binged out and decadent in his tiny shipboard apartment. 

Robert Downey Jr. has built up a nice comic shtick playing versions of himself in the mid-90s, but his collapse as the beaten-down crime reporter is nothing short of heartbreaking.  With cameos by Ione Sky and John Carroll Lynch, Zodiac gives us a tantalizing glimpse of the stories behind the story.  But the real meat of the film belongs to Jake Gyllenhaal, playing Graysmith, the unassuming comic strip artist who becomes obsessed with the killer.  Gyllenhaal’s innocent, wide-eyed zeal becomes positively creepy as he enlists his children in the hunt for the Zodiac, replacing family photo albums with clippings on the killer.  His desire to “look evil in the face” at all costs speaks less to the detective in all of us, than to the craven obsession of someone searching for self-definition – not unlike the killer himself, whose desire for attention leads him to claim killings he hasn’t committed.  It is ultimately Graysmith that Fincher wants to deconstruct, not the Zodiac, and certainly not the victims, for Graysmith is as much a victim as anyone.  His story is tragic and riveting, inspiring, and in the end, self-defeating.   If there’s more than one way to lose your life to a killer, as the tagline suggests, I can’t think of a worse way to go.

Katie Gradowski – Temp Jockey

The Wind That Shakes the Barley (2006)

Directed by: Ken Loach

Written by: Paul Laverty

Starring: Cillian Murphy, Padraic Delaney, Liam Cunningham, Gerard Kearney, William Ruane and Orla Fitzgerald.

"A movie isn't a political movement, a party or even an article. It's just a film. At best it can add its voice to public outrage." – Ken Loach

When I first read this quote by English writer-director Ken Loach (who I swore was Irish all of these years), my immediate reaction was to disagree. After all, this is the same director who, throughout his long and celebrated career, has made the following films: 1990’s Riff-Raff, which explores the harsh realities of the British lower class and Hidden Agenda, which deals with the assassination of an American human rights lawyer in Belfast; 1995’s Land and Freedom, which tells the story of an Englishman, who also happens to be a communist, who leaves his country to join the Spanish civil war (this film also won Loach the Jury Prize at Cannes that year); 2000’s fantastic Bread and Roses, which deals with the plight of the Mexican immigrant in the U.S.; and 2002’s Sweet Sixteen, where once again Loach tackles the difficulties that poverty creates, this time using a 16-year-old teenage boy from Glasgow as his centerpiece.

His films have never been just films to me—the way that they make me feel when I watch them, and the heated conversations that ensue when they’re over serve as enough proof of their social and political nature. But it isn’t just the subject matter that is political in Loach’s films; politics and passion are engrained in every celluloid frame. As a result of this every accent seems to be even more authentic, every actor becomes his/her character and every well-placed historical marker becomes an indisputable fact.

Loach’s latest film, The Wind That Shakes the Barley, is yet another reminder of just how apolitical his films really are. Set in 1920s Ireland (and filmed in County Cork where the film’s star Cillian Murphy is from), the movie tells the story of the gory rebellion that pitted brother against brother in their struggle for freedom and independence from British rule. The movie is heartbreaking and tragic, but also serves to illuminate the price that Ireland and its people paid in order to become the country that they are today.

Many viewers have found Loach’s account of the Irish revolution to be a bit too one-sided: England is by no means painted in a positive light in the film (they torture women and children without batting an eye) and by the end of the movie you find yourself seriously questioning (if not downright loathing) the morality behind the “great” empire’s reign and power. (The fact that Loach also turned down the Order of the British Empire for his contribution to film in the 1970s doesn’t win him any points with the English public either.) However, when The Wind That Shakes the Barley won the Golden Palm at Cannes last year, Loach said the following as he accepted the award: "Our film is a little step in the British confronting their imperialist history. Maybe if we tell the truth about the past we can tell the truth about the present."

In this light I can finally begin to make sense of Loach’s definition of films in relation to politics and although I still don’t completely disregard my original thesis, The Wind That Shakes the Barley is indeed simply another protest song in a long line of protest songs sent to help us to remember the cause, and never forget the bloodshed.

Music & Lyrics (2007)

Directed and written by Mark Lawrence

Starring Drew Barrymore, Hugh Grant, Brad Garrett, Kristen Johnson

There is very little that Drew Barrymore can do wrong in a romantic comedy. In Music & Lyrics, she illuminates the screen as Sophie Fisher, a fumbling former English major now part-time plant watering girl to eighties pop star, Alex Fletcher (Grant). While managing to keep a few greens alive, Alex quickly recruits her to compose lyrics for the song that will resurrect his career. Reluctant and forever on the run, the film finds the two circling around each other in a consistent attempt to understand who they were, are, and want to be, all amidst that gooey, completely excessive and necessary chemistry. (This plus a music video that will have you laughing out loud on any rainy day.)

The beauty in the film lies in the honest way Sophie and Alex challenge each other to get to good. With the assistance of Brad Garrett as Alex's well-meaning agent and Kristen Johnson as Sophie's fanatic sister, viewers are brought into a kitchen of characters that are believable and better than needed. English trench or sky-high free bird, Music & Lyrics is a harmony unique and memorable, be it February or September. 

DVD'S:

The Last Temptation of Christ (1988)

Directed By: Martin Scorsese

Written By: Nikos Kazantzakis (Novel), Paul Schrader (Screenplay)

Starring: Willem Dafoe, Harvey Keitel, Barbara Hershey, David Bowie, Verna Bloom.

In keeping with the spirit behind the Oscar triumph of The Departed, I have decided to go back in time and write about Scorsese’s most controversial film, The Last Temptation of Christ, ranked #6 of the 25 most controversial movies of all time by Entertainment Weekly.

I guess you could say that everything got started after actress Barbara Hershey gave Martin Scorsese a copy of Nikos Kazantzakis novel “The Last Temptation of Christ.” The finished script sat inside the desk of Scorsese’s attorney for five years, however. After several failed attempts to begin production, the film was finally set to shoot on location in Israel but due to budget cuts and financing problems the production had to settle with shooting entirely in Morocco.

As expected the movie stirred up a whole lot of criticism from the religious communities, and it’s because of this controversy that I chose to write about this film. First and foremost, I would like to encourage all of the people that refuse to see this movie because of the controversy to give the film a chance. To be honest with you, I wasn’t all that interested in watching the film either; for a long time Scorsese’s film lingered somewhere at the bottom of my list of “must-see” controversial movies. Stanley Kubrick’s Clockwork Orange is more controversial in my opinion. Yes, Jesus having sex is a no-no, but the question of “why should I care to see this movie?” always seemed to keep me from it. That is until a couple of weeks ago, when I finally saw the freaking film and to my surprise it wasn’t as bad or controversial as I had been led to believe (thank you Christian left and right).

It’s not a movie for the kids (especially since they would be really confused) and it can’t really be categorized into the typical genres of action, romance, erotica, drama, and comedy or even foreign. But there is an important lesson to be learned from the story: Jesus was human and sometimes we seem to forget that. I’m sure Jesus of Nazareth was nothing like the character played by Willem Dafoe, but I can pretty much guarantee that Jesus had to deal with the same feelings, urges and temptations that we have. He was just a man on a mission that chose to behave like the Son of God.

But why then should you see this movie? You should see this movie to experience a bit of cinema history and to be able to say “I saw it and I’m not going to hell.” With that in mind, The Last Temptation of Christ actually makes some interesting points. Unfortunately both the author and the director turn the character of Jesus into an irrational individual that spends most of the movie lost, confused, scared and alone. The movie doesn’t really go anywhere until about the middle, then it starts to make a bit more sense and by the end you’re like “Oh shit! So that’s why!!”

The actors do a good job of carrying the confused and terrified Jesus throughout all of the biblical pit stops, but its Judas, played by Harvey Keitel, and Mary Magdalene, played by Barbara Hershey, that give the strongest supporting performances. Overall I feel that this film is not a grand achievement, and the same controversy against the film has given it a place in film history. Regardless, Martin Scorsese’s venture into the world of religion proved to be a direct challenge of faith that still resonates on TV screens all around the world.

SHORTBUS

The movie opens with a porno-type warning that guarantees us that all of the actors were over 18. Thank goodness, because we've all been warned that the movie starts off with a guy giving himself head. A pretty bad acoustic song kicks the movie off. It starts, "The sidewalk is rushing at my head again..."

Richard: Oh my God, I don't want to hear any of the songs from this.

Jeanne: Did you listen to the soundtrack?

Richard: Yeah, Lily made me put it on my iPod. Every time a song came on, and I was like, “This song sucks," it was from fucking Shortbus.

Chris: Aww, do we have to edit that out of the review?

Richard: No, I already told her.

Chris: Did you tell her like that, though?

Richard: I don't know. I say things a lot.

Jeanne: "These songs fucking sucked!"

We begin with a sweeping, panoramic aerial shot of New York City... if it were made out of Play-Doh and construction paper. This speaks a lot to us about the film's budget. The camera zooms in onto a townhouse.

Jeanne: Is that our house?

Richard: No.

Chris: I hope not, 'cause I don't know what's going to be going on in there.

Richard: Nobody in our house ever does what this guy's doing.

We see a naked, depressed-looking young man sitting in a bathtub and idly playing with his penis. This movie is going to astound us.

Jeanne: If he can blow himself, why does he look so sad?

Chris: Maybe he's just tired.

Jeanne: It's all he does?

Richard: It's exhausting!

He pulls out a camcorder and points it at his penis. Then he urinates. I think I saw this video at MOMA.

Jeanne: Ew!

Richard (laughing): Ewww.

Jeanne: I don't want to watch this! I want to watch The Covenant! It's about... (sounds nearly at the point of tears) wizards.

Richard: It's the exact same thing, I'm telling you.

Jeanne: They don't pee in the bathtub.

The Play-Doh cam leaves piss-boy and now zooms over what is clearly a paper mache crater in the middle of downtown New York.

Richard: Is that supposed to be Central Park?

Chris: I think that's the World Trade Center.

Richard: Oh. I'm sorry. I am just wrong.

We zoom into another building and see the meekest looking dominatrix ever. She has a really unfortunate haircut, too. She could be one of the regular guests on Pee-Wee's Playhouse, like maybe she comes to repair his air conditioner or something. She's toying with a dildo while her client tries to legitimately flirt with her. He asks her if he thinks we should pull out of Iraq and she starts to whip him.

Chris: This movie made Lily cry??

Richard: I think it's going to make Jeanne cry.

We're back at piss-boy, and now he's on the floor of his living room, trying to suck his own cock. Why are we watching this again? Oh yeah, Richard suggested it.

Richard: Oh my God.

Jeanne: It's definitely going to make me cry.

Richard (excitedly): Is he going to do it?!

Jeanne: I wonder how the casting for that went.

Richard: "Would you be willing to suck your own dick?"

Jeanne: Well, they'd have to confirm that that person could. "Oh, your acting's all right, but take off your pants and blow yourself."

Richard (laughing): Oh, it's like a Gus Van Sant casting session. That's how Sean Connery got the part in Finding Forrester.

We're flying across the city again--this is like Peter Pan! We find ourselves in the apartment of a couple having sex on a piano. Then we're back to the dominatrix, who says something along the lines of her wanting to have sex by herself, in the dark, "like a worm." I don't know, either. Cut back to piss-boy, his penis mere inches away from his own mouth. It's like a “Fear Factor” challenge. He's also setting up his camcorder to record the feat, no doubt so he can watch it later and masturbate to it. Does that make him gay?

Richard: So close.

Jeanne: Is he like the chick from “Heroes?” "This is attempt number one."

Uncomfortable silence as he gets closer and closer to succeeding.

Richard: Oh my gosh! He's going to do it!

Jeanne: Is that worth it? That must be so uncomfortable so he can like, lick the tip.

He proceeds to ejaculate into his own mouth. We collectively gasp and groan and cover our eyes.

Richard: Whyyyy? Is this when Lily cried?

We jump back to the piano-couple, who are now through with their escapades and lying in bed together. It turns out that the woman is some sort of sex therapist and begins telling her boyfriend/husband about some clients of hers. One of them is incapable of having an orgasm. There's a lot of weird new age talk about claiming your orgasm for yourself.

Jeanne (scared, whispering): We should have watched The Covenent...

Chris: Is this what “Sex in the City” is like?

Richard and Jeanne: Noooo!

Chris: It's kinda like this, though.

Richard: There's not as much dick on Sex in the City.

The rest of the movie is essentially the three of us groaning unhappily, sighing in defeat, and shifting uncomfortably in our seats. We saw a teenager make out with an old man, reinforced the idea that all performance art is terrible, learned that gay people think monogamy is for straight people, and watched a grown man sing the national anthem into another man's ass. That's Shortbus! The End.

The Saturday Night Itinerant Brooklyn Gang is:

Jeanne Lopez, Cookie Monster

Rick Sayre, Pop-Culture Critic

Christopher Wilson, Vampire Hunter.

BOOKS:

“The collection is heartbreakingly beautiful, each sentence escalating on the others in such a manner that the reader gets to the end so sure and trusting of where he was being taken and yet shocked and moved that the trajectory of that journey was so flawlessly and truthfully rendered.”~ excerpt from a letter written to Kevin Moffett

On a night in the early fall of 2006, writers Kevin Moffett and Karen Russell sat down at two long tables at Mo Pitkins House of Satisfaction, both of them running their fingertips along edges of recently published short story collections. The ambient lighting of the room barely disguised its own harsh reality—the fact that only true-blue academics or friends of the writers themselves sparsely populated the crowd. Yet, in the narrative worlds of both writers, reality tempers its bitterness with notes of tenderness and fantasy. Each of their stories is filled with universal details that compose heart notions about emotional uncertainty and true human connection, or often its grounded disconnection. This reality—so much more than that of the attendance in the room that night—explains why venues from The New Yorker, McSweeney’s, Zoetrope: All Story, Tin House and Granta herald these two writers as influential voices of the new literary generation.   

Both refugee Floridians, Moffett and Russell, while at present eschewing the harbor of their home state, exploit its landscape to great effect throughout both Permanent Visitors and St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves, respectively. For Moffett, the indecision of the state’s omnipresent drift and tide enhance the emotional wavering of his characters. For Russell, conversely, the mystery of Floridian quirks and the loneliness of the swamps shape the lyricism and magic held dear within the confines of her prose. Yet, beyond this similarity and the writers’ equal end results of touching a reader with wonder, their styles are divergent.

On this particular fall night in Mo Pitkins, Moffett stood to read first.  His ease at the microphone belied the inner turmoil of his story’s theme. The reading of The Medicine Man from his collection Permanent Visitors explored the depths of depression, listlessness and disconnection with such quiet longing—and as noted short-story writer George Saunders would observe, “true kind-heartedness”—that the possibility of stoicism or indifference in the face of the story’s conclusion was rendered incomprehensible. From beginning to end, Moffett is a master of the minute and its manipulation to sketch life as equal parts beautiful and bittersweet.

Moving from lovingly detailed reality to a world of innocence lost defined through magical realism, Russell took the stage with the air of a supremely confident and precocious child, her voice high-pitched and sweet, the girl-next-door from a memory of a fourth-grade Girl Scout Bake Sale. Oddly appropriate though it was, her demeanor gave away none of the darkness of her stories, none of the underlying oddity weaved into the fabric of her character’s arcs: a wolf girl’s realization that her schooling in civilization has rendered her incapable of communicating with her family, or a younger sister’s acceptance of adult responsibility for her delusional sibling. The discrepancy from recitation to reading pinpointed an unshakable fact about the nature of St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves—namely that it must be read with a willingness to embrace its darkness. For it’s this darkness that so threads the collection in its fantastical allure. Here, Russell’s is a child’s world; a fairy tale but only in its most authentic sense, the frills and joys eliminated to allow for the deeper meaning of its poignant message.

Without a note of hesitation, it’s easily remarked that both Moffett and Russell stand out as not only two upcoming influential voices within the literary community but two whose work may in the future expand the dialogue of emotional expression and thought for readers in the mainstream. It’s we as readers, however, and not Moffett and Russell who primarily contribute to this latter reality. It falls on our shoulders as readers simply to care enough to show up.

For more information on Kevin Moffett, visit www.kevinmoffett.org. For a biography of Karen Russell, check out www.randomhouse.com.

MUSIC:

Rotary Downs – Chained to the Chariot

Everybody’s got a list of rainy day songs.  Having listened to the same bands since I was fifteen, my list is fairly short – it includes mostly TMBG songs from the early 90’s, some OK GO, and a lot of August and Everything After.  Varying between a depressive state and manic oblivion, my meager playlist captures exactly where I want to be during breakups and rejections—distracted, alone, and ever-so-slightly loony.

These seem like odd praise for the scraggly New Orleans band Rotary Downs, but it is well-deserved.  Their new album Chained to the Chariot is a slipshod testament to wackiness under pressure – sprawling, unpredictable, and fiercely articulate in its observations.  Jason Marler’s wry refrains – “Seven-thirty-five in the morning / Forty-five degrees in the park” – offer a blinking, wide-eyed sense of waking up in a strange place, while songs like “The Big Parade” and “Black Town” capture the savage optimism of post-Katrina New Orleans.   As an indie-rock band displaced by the hurricane, coming back to rebuild in the jazz capital of the world, Rotary Downs captures precisely what it means to be in the wrong place at the right time.  Go buy their album.  I promise, it will brighten up your day.

Katie Gradowski – Temp Jockey

SPOTLIGHT:

Laura Linney

1964-

            Modern day motion pictures include a certain group of performers unique in what they contribute to the medium. They are not simply described as character actors. They are more versatile and, from one project to the next, serve a different purpose. They can be the lead actor of a low-budget independent picture and follow that with a strong supporting role in a big-budget studio flick. Arguably one of the most prominent of these actors is Laura Linney.

            The daughter of an off-Broadway playwright, Laura Linney was born on February 5, 1964 in New York City. Theatre and the arts were always a key part of her life and she furthered her creative education at Julliard and the Arts Theatre School in Moscow. Her early professional career saw her on the Broadway stage in such notable plays as John Guare’s “Six Degrees of Separation.” She also enjoyed smaller supporting roles in several films, including Lorenzo’s Oil (1992) and Searching For Bobby Fischer (1993).

            1993 was the year she received one of her greatest roles: as Mary Anne Singleton in the adaptation of Armistead Maupin’s “Tales of the City.” Wanting to start her own life away from her Cleveland home, Mary Anne moves to 1970s San Francisco. Taking residence in an apartment house at 28 Barbary Lane, where her landlady “doesn’t object to anything” and welcomes her new tenant by taping a homegrown joint to her door, Mary Anne begins to see a different kind of world than the one she has always known. Linney takes this innocent, naïve character through a journey of self-exploration and acceptance of the new people around her without making her overtly virtuous or gullible. When she makes mistakes, the audience can feel for her rather than deplore her actions because Linney hits the right tone with her characterization. She would go on to play the character twice more in More Tales of the City (1998) and Further Tales of the City (2001).

            In 1996, Linney played Janet Venable, the prosecuting attorney who is also the former lover of the defendant’s lawyer, Richard Gere, in Primal Fear. Playing the range of several different emotions throughout much of the film is something Linney does with great aplomb. Powerfully attacking Edward Norton’s accused murderer in the courtroom and fighting off Gere’s advances (suspecting he has ulterior motives), Linney approaches the role with tremendous passion. Though often playing strong, modern and independent women, Linney never carries a banner. She plays this sort of role as a woman who does what is necessary because she lives in the real world; not so much a feminist as a realist, or more simply a hard-working adult.

            The Truman Show (1998) is Peter Weir’s smart, yet entertaining look at the life of a man whose life has been produced for the purpose of television. As Truman’s wife, Laura Linney steals the movie. Playing up to the “camera within the camera,” she is the all-American wife from your typical family television show, but like everyone else she is deceiving Truman. She can never break character as she tries to keep Truman from finding out the truth. On the surface it seems like a simple role, but there is certainly something complex about an actress acting like an actress who is acting.

            In 2000, Linney starred in Kenneth Lonergan’s You Can Count On Me. The film is about a sister and brother whose parents died when they were young. Both have dealt with the tragedy in different ways and have become very different adults. Linney plays a single mother who is, for the most part, a conventional small-town adult who has always been responsible for herself and those around her. Her brother, played by Mark Ruffalo, is somewhat self-destructive, repels conformity and seems to find trouble too often. When he comes home for a few days, he strikes up a relationship with his young nephew. Linney’s character wishes she could keep the best parts of her brother around her son, but keep the lesser qualities far away. Linney gives a touching performance, highlighted by her ability to show all the right emotions and use them at all the appropriate times.

            Over the next few years, Linney co-starred in several ensembles, including The Laramie Project and a supporting role in The Mothman Prophecies, both in 2002. In 2003, Linney attempted three very different characters in three very different films: In The Life of David Gale she plays Constance Harraway, a terminally ill, anti-death penalty activist who makes the ultimate sacrifice to make her argument against capital punishment. The character has great dignity because Linney relies on simple, honest humanity to serve as the backbone of the performance. Showing yet another side of humanity she played Annabeth Markum, Sean Penn’s grieving wife in Mystic River. As the strong, supportive wife and mother, Annabeth has one priority, and that is to protect her family… through anything. Much of the performance is wonderfully understated, but as the movie nears its close, Linney has a powerful scene that truly demonstrates her entire character. Though it’s only about five minutes on-screen, the moment speaks volumes about a woman who can survive whatever she is given to deal with.

            The third picture Linney did that year was Richard Curtis’ refreshingly smart and witty romantic comedy Love Actually. With a remarkable script and a vast pool of talent that includes Emma Thompson, Alan Rickman, Hugh Grant, Liam Neeson, Bill Nighy and Colin Firth, it would be easy for an actor to get lost among the crowd. But not Laura Linney. Of all the ups and downs of love, romantic or not, that are explored in the film, Linney’s are probably the most heart breaking. Desperately smitten with a co-worker, played by Rodrigo Santoro, Linney can’t seem to find the nerve to make her interest known. When he finally approaches her, she can’t pull herself away from her mentally ill brother. At first it seems that her need to be responsible is what gets in the way of her romantic endeavor, but we soon realize that it’s love, actually.

            Love, among other human emotions, seems often to be a particular driving force in Linney’s films. But they never seem to be sentimentalized or manipulated for the sake of an emotional reaction by the audience. Rather, they are treated as things that happen to everyday people in the real world.

            Periodically Linney has returned to the stage, being nominated for the Tony Award as Best Actress for the 2002 revival of “The Crucible” and for 2005’s “Sight Unseen.” In addition, she has continued to build a strong body of work in film, including critically acclaimed performances in the 2004 films Kinsey and P.S., and 2005’s The Squid and the Whale.

            Whether in big pictures, personal independent films or on the stage, Laura Linney has made a remarkable career for herself by staying away from becoming a “movie star,” and remaining, instead, a great actor.

Laura Linney Select Filmography: