An Inconvenient Truth

When I was eleven years old, I read a book that changed my life. It was called Fifty Simple Things YOU Can Do To Save the Earth. Looking back, it was really the title that did it; after all, how often do you get the opportunity to save a whole planet? I was instantly converted – I began conserving water, pestering my parents to put out the recycling, and wrote to my Congressman (once) about the dangers of acid rain.

It’s hard to believe that only twelve years later, I would watch a movie like An Inconvenient Truth and leave thinking that it signaled a radical new shift in public policy. True, I never became a budding conservationist, but I did live through the 1990’s. We were the generation of global warming; we grew up with a built-in consciousness of pesticides and ozone holes. Is it possible, in the past decade that we’ve actually managed to move backward in the race to save the planet?

The answer is yes – at least, that’s the message that Al Gore is trying to get across in his new film, An Inconvenient Truth. The movie is a beautifully shot version of the slide show he has been giving for years, and it is a disturbing account of how bad things can get given a couple of decades of collective inaction. Forget Michael Moore – all Gore has to do is flip up a bar graph of carbon levels for the past ten years and he’s got us riveted in our seats.

Yet for all its weighty content, the movie is surprisingly understated. There’s very little finger pointing (which is surprising, given the obvious issues Gore might have with the current administration). Nor does it play the blame game that made Why We Fight such a painful movie to watch. Rather than focusing on intractable political issues, Gore emphasizes the smaller things. No, we haven’t ratified Kyoto, but here’s a list of individual states that are working to meet the standards. Does your city support carbon offsets? Moreover, he embraces a refreshing principle: you can influence people by educating them, rather than simply yelling in their faces.

It’s unfortunate that after two weeks, this movie is only playing in 77 theaters across the country. It’s also a little upsetting that six years after the election that would have made him President, Al Gore is just now figuring out how to market himself to a mass audience. He’s certainly making up for lost time – he’s smart, he’s articulate, and he couldn’t have picked a better platform to launch his 2008 campaign. But watching him bent earnestly over his laptop, I can’t help but hope that he doesn’t run. After all, if the problem is as big as he says it is, the last thing we need is another politician on the scene.

- Katie Gradowski, Temp Jockey

The Da Vinci Code

Directed By: Ron Howard

Written By: Akiva Goldsman

Starring: Tom Hanks, Audrey Tautou, Ian McKellen, Jean Reno, Paul Bettany, Alfred Molina.

Is there really a conspiracy inside the Catholic Church to hide the truth from us? Did Leonardo Da Vinci know something we don’t? Is this movie really worth watching? These and some other interesting questions will be challenged in this uncontroversial review of Ron Howard’s new feature film.

Let’s start with our first question: Is there really a conspiracy inside of the Catholic Church? Sure, I can bet there’s hundreds, but are they trying to protect us from some doctrine altering lie passed on from generation to generation as proposed in The Da Vinci Code…I don’t think so. Did Leonardo Da Vinci know something we don’t? Not likely. Yes, he was a genius, and sure, he had ties to many powerful men in the church but just like the famous painting that started this whole controversy, his purpose was never to tell us about some secret love affair but to create something that was relevant at the time he painted it.

Now, on to the last and most trivial question: Is this movie really worth watching? Well, that will fall entirely up to you, but be warned—don’t expect to find a great faith-shaking experience like The Mission or a delicious archeological adventure like Indiana Jones And The Last Crusade. What you can expect is a one sided discussion that lasts almost 3 hours. I think the flaws in the movie don’t lie in anything Ron Howard does or in the actor’s interpretation of the characters in the story; instead I blame any negative criticism on the source material.

I’m sure that by now you are asking yourself why I saw the movie. I saw it because I wanted to see what all the hype was about and let’s just say that I enjoyed the movie for all of the reasons that one should not see this movie: I loved everything except the story the movie is based on. That doesn’t leave much to talk about I know, but I did manage to come out of the movie with one very important conclusion; That there is no Da Vinci Code, its just fiction, so if you want to find some real conspiracies then maybe you can start by doing your own research rather than allowing money making theories to fill your head.

- Juan Marcos Percy, Importer/Exporter

X-Men: The Last Stand

Directed by: Brett Ratner

Starring: Halle Berry, Hugh Jackman, Patrick Stewart, Ian Mckellen, Famke Janssen

Let me start out this review by saying I love the X-Men. (If any of you read the April P&F spotlight, you would know this to be true.) I have been anticipating the release of X-Men: The Last Stand since I first saw the poster last Christmas. I remember riding down the escalator at my local movie theater, minding my own business and then I saw them: Wolverine’s three claws gracing the front of a big steel X. It literally stopped me in my tracks.

My excitement lasted until I found out news I still dread: our faithful director, Bryan Singer, the man who started it all, was not directing this film. Instead, he was abandoning the franchise he successfully created to work on this summer’s Superman Returns. How could he? I felt so betrayed, like a jilted girlfriend who just caught her boyfriend cheating. That’s not even the worst of it. His replacement was Brett Ratner. You might know him from films such as Rush Hour and Rush Hour 2.

No?

How about Mariah Carey’s “Heartbreaker” video?

Nothing? Hmm…

So, it’s not completely crazy of me to be a little nervous that the fate of my X-Men was relying on this man. I mean, the last time I checked the X-Men don’t dance, nor do they have a character that even remotely resembles Chris Tucker.

All I can say is the following and I will leave it at that: The story could have been better. It wasn’t as tight as the first two X-Men films and that really hurt. Not only that but it went the route of the last two Batman movies—pre-Batman Begins—and added a horde of new characters without giving them any real purpose or depth. (For a prime example of this, see Angel, the mutant who does nothing but fly around the Golden Gate Bridge. Oh, that’s not his power? Well, I was completely fooled!)

I did enjoy some of the action scenes, mainly the final one. Not because it marked the end of the movie but because you get to see the X-Men stand together as a team. I’m a sucker for camaraderie, especially when it ends in some serious butt kicking. Hugh Jackman failed to disappoint. Whoever cast him as Wolverine should really get an award. There is a certain excitement and anticipation when he is on the screen because you know at least the next few minutes won’t suck.

That being said, I don’t regret going to see this movie. How could I not enjoy seeing some of my favorite comic book characters come to life for two hours? It definitely wasn’t the best it could have been but it wasn’t the worst, either.

I left the theatre torn. Torn between my love of the X-Men and my hatred for crappy movies. In the end, all I could do was think about how it could have been and then ask myself the inevitable question: um, what day does Superman Returns open?

- Gilliane Lataillade, Resident Advocate

DVD'S:

KEANE

I don’t think that Keane would have left such a mark on me were it not for the fact that I now reside in New York City; that I now ride trains daily and walk streets that are filled with people just like William Keane (especially at Port Authority). I’ve seen them shake and cry and yell and mutter to themselves and this film, deeply anchored by Damien Lewis’ jarring one-man performance, hits closer to home than I’d like to really admit. It makes me ask uncomfortable questions, the kind that usually leads to equally unsatisfying answers.

I know, even as I write this, that it will probably not be the last time that I think the following words: this film disturbed, shocked and kept me awake at night. (Just this week I saw Michael Winterbottom’s new film Road to Guantanamo and it did the same.) But I do think that regardless of the countless times that I use these words, they still hold undeniable weight and feeling. One thing is for sure: After watching Keane, I cannot look away.

- Lily Percy, Editor

National Treasure

By Jeanne Lopez, Cookie Monster

Rick Sayre, Pop-Culture Critic

Christopher Wilson, Vampire Hunter.

NIGHT INTERIOR: Richard measures his arm with a tape measure and tells us that it’s 40 inches long from thumb to elbow. Chris tells him that if the length between your thumb and your elbow is in even inches, your brain is below average. Jeanne measures her arm and finds that the length between her thumb and her elbow is even as well. They act worried, as though Chris is right and not a chronic liar.

Chris continues, and tells them both that he’s heard that if your hand is bigger than your face, your brain is particularly smaller than average. Richard and Jeanne bring their hands to their faces almost immediately. The room goes silent as they contemplate the potential consequences.

Chris briefly considers smacking them both in the face, thereby making them smash their own noses in with their own hands. But he notices that Richard is wearing glasses and remembers that Jeanne is his girlfriend and that it might not be the wisest thing to do. He educates them about elementary school pranks and everybody feels a little bit more ashamed than they did before. Then Richard puts the movie on, and we begin to watch National Treasure.

Rick: Oh my god, it’s 2 hours and 11 minutes long??

Chris: That could include special features!

[A trailer for Herbie: Fully Loaded shows and Richard makes it a point to mention that Lindsay Lohan’s breasts are awesome. The DVD is rewound so that Richard can show everybody and pause it appropriately. Everyone mourns the loss of Lindsay Lohan’s breasts. We all await their potential return.]

The movie opens with a child rifling through a dark attic. It could be the school library from The Neverending Story. There’s lightning and cobwebs and he finally finds an old map or something.

Richard: (cough) Goonies (cough).

Christopher Plummer shows up and looks like he belongs in a nursing home. He’s wearing a bathrobe that I swear I saw a homeless man wearing on the subway once. He tells the child a story about Freemasons and treasure and the Declaration of Independence. In a montage of flashbacks, many historical inaccuracies are passed off as facts. As if to prove that his wild story isn’t bullshit, Christopher Plummer pulls out a dollar bill, further proving that he belongs in a nursing home.

Everybody (thinking): Uh…

John Voight comes on screen with the worst brown/red wig ever and Richard says that he looks like John Denver back from the dead. We’re meant to believe that Christopher Plummer is John Voight’s father and that John Voight has fathered a boy of 10 or 11 at best. It’s about as believable as Voight’s accent in Anaconda.

Suddenly they’re in Canada or Alaska or the North Pole and Boromir and Stanley Goodspeed are looking for a ship buried in the ice or something. Jeanne sees me typing this and tells me that they are not in Canada or Alaska or the North Pole, but in Antarctica.

Richard: Just because the movie plays with facts, it doesn’t mean we should with our review.

Chris: I think the North Pole is Antarctica.

Richard: Who directed this crap?

Jeanne: Your mom.

They descend into the ship, which is full of snow and dead bodies of pirates and it looks like The Thing meets The Goonies. That’s the second page they’ve stolen from The Goonies. If Sean Astin shows up, we may have a lawsuit on our hands.

Richard: What are they looking for again?

Jeanne: We have no idea. Well, they’re looking for treasure.

Nicholas Cage performs magic and figures out just where to look to find whatever it is they’re looking for. They find a pipe. It’s huge; it’s almost a bong.

Jeanne: Let’s get high!

Apparently, the pipe is a clue and not treasure worth billions of dollars and nobody is happy about this, particularly Sean Bean or Seen Been or whatever, depending on who you ask. Nicholas Cage proves his worth by STABBING HIMSELF IN THE THUMB and smearing it on a stamp or something. Actually, does it really matter? I mean, at this point, we know where this is going. He figures out the clue and there’s a lot of goofy dialogue that sounds like that “South Park” episode making fun of Jeff Goldblum’s character from Independence Day. “Iron pen… the iron does not describe the ink in the pen… it described what was penned… it was mineral… no… it was firm…” It’s dumb, and everybody agrees, even the characters in the movie. Point is: there’s a map on the back of the Declaration of Independence that will lead them all to amazing riches. Someone in the movie mentions that that’s a stupid idea. Richard agrees and Jeanne decides that it would be a stupid idea to make a movie about such a stupid idea. Chris is busy typing this, so he doesn’t have a lot to say about it.

There’s a disagreement about how to go about getting to the Declaration. It ends in gunfire and explosions and Nicholas Cage and his Steve Zahn-like sidekick being trapped in an 300 year old boat that’s about to explode. Jeanne mentions something about Chain Reaction.

Richard: Keanu Reeves wants to marry me.

Jeanne: I thought Steve Zahn was in this.

Chris: No, they could not afford Steve Zahn and so we have this guy.

Jeanne: Maybe they’ll kill this guy half way through and bring out Steve Zahn.

Chris: They can’t kill him because he’s the Steve Zahn-like sidekick and he can’t die.

Jeanne: But Steve Zahn’s in this!

Richard (sadly): I hope he is…

Richard: We should do Whippets. It would make the movie more enjoyable.

Jeanne: We totally should.

Chris: Aren’t Whippets a kind of dog?

Richard: We totally should.

Chris: But, wait--Whippets are dogs! What the hell?

We pause the movie, to look up Whippets on Wikipedia, and check IMDB to see whether or not Steve Zahn is actually going to show up.

Looking up Whippets does indeed bring up a breed of dog. Further investigation proved that whippits is in fact, the term used for getting high off of whipped cream aerosol cans. The unfortunate discovery is made: Steve Zahn is not in National Treasure. Viewing recommences, with a somber tone.

Nicholas Cage attempts to stop his evil former partners from stealing the Declaration of Independence by walking into the National Archives and explaining that his evil former partners are going to steal the Declaration of Independence because it has an invisible treasure map on the back. The blonde, 25 year old German chick who runs the National Archives (Come on! Do you really think a woman would be put into a position of any authority in Washington, DC?!) scoffs in her foreign accent and kicks them out. Nicholas Cage has a long-winded, monotone speech (sounding much like Keanu Reeves, who will marry Richard one day) explaining that the only way to protect the declaration from the evil former partners is for him to steal it himself. The absurdity begins.

Jeanne: (in regards to the Steve-Zahn-like Sidekick) He’s wearing a full suit, tie, and sneakers?

Richard: It works.

Chris: I went to my dad’s wedding like that.

Jeanne: Aww, honey. I’m sorry.

Chris: It works. And I got sooo many girls! (Chris laughs like a crazy man)

Jeanne: Fuck you. You’re dirty.

Chris: There were like five people there. I’m kidding.

Jeanne: I need to take you to get tested. I don’t know where you’ve been now. I have to get a black light and run it over you so I can see what’s still there.

Chris forces us to rewind the DVD in case we missed some crucial piece of information. He likens National Treasure to “Lost.”

Jeanne: This is National Treasure, not Donnie Darko. We don’t need to see every second.

There’s a long dialog explaining that the Declaration of Independence is under higher security than the Brangelina baby. Nic Cage and his sidekick decide that the best moment to steal the Declaration is when it’s in the Preservation room (not used for making jams and jellies) and there’s a well-timed gala in the next few days that will provide them the distraction they need. We all laugh when the sidekick says, “Game On.”

Nic Cage attempts to warm the heart of the German National Archives director by giving her an old button. She’s moved. Germans are weird.

Richard reveals that the German woman also played Helen of Troy and none of us are entirely sure that her face could launch a thousand ships. Maybe 10 at best. The ball scene begins and it totally looks like The Relic.

Chris: This is like The Relic!

Jeanne: Your mom’s the relic.

Nicholas Cage sneaks into the gala dressed as a workman. He goes into a mens room and tears off his work suit to reveal a tuxedo underneath. That sly devil.

Richard: My god! He’s like Superman!

Chris: That would be James Bond. We need to make a point here that he tore off his clothes to reveal a tuxedo and Richard said, ”He’s like Superman.”

Richard: I wish he were wearing his outfit from Wild at Heart. The snakeskin jacket.

Chris: Which was also the same outfit that he wore in Snake Eyes. Maybe he owns it. Says, “I’ll bring my own costume today.”

It’s the night of the gala. Nic Cage runs into the blonde and hits on her terribly with talk of entrails being taken out and burned. I have a suspicion that we are seeing a brief glimpse into Nicholas Cage as he is in real life. He chugs a glass of champagne and Jeanne says it’s just like Leaving Las Vegas.

Jeanne: He’s just a big lush. Maybe she’s a prostitute.

Richard: She’s no Elizabeth Shue.

Chris (laughing): She’s not. She’s got a long way to drop…

Richard looks sad at the Shue bashing.

Chris: Dude, Adventures in Babysitting! I had such a huge crush on her! Now? I’m just saying she’s… come a long way, baby.

Richard: I love Elizabeth Shue!

Chris: I still think she’s probably a wonderful woman.

Richard: Did you see her playing Joseph Gordon Levitt’s mom in Mysterious Skin?

Chris: No. I don’t want to see her playing someone’s mom! That’s the point. You’re missing the point. I don’t want to see her playing the mom of some twenty-year old kid.

Nic Cage takes the blonde’s champagne glass and craftily lifts her fingerprint off of it with some black powder and a condom. He uses the print to get into a restricted area then unrolls the condom from his finger and pockets it.

Jeanne: That’s for use later. It’s still good.

As Nic Cage is trying to unscrew the Declaration from its bulletproof glass frame Sonn Bonn (Sean Bean) and his henchman (they snuck in through the sewers or something) close in. He makes a run to the elevator with the Declaration still in the frame. The evil former partners burst through the door at the other end of the hall.

Chris: They’re gonna start shooting at him and the bullets will bounce off the Declaration ‘cause it’s bulletproof glass!

Chris wrote this movie and Nic Cage holds up the glass and the bullets bounce off. He gets into the elevator and the doors shut just in time. He finishes with the unscrewing, rolls up the declaration and sticks it into plastic wrap.

Chris: oh. That’s not a way to treat a 300 hundred year old--

Jeanne: It’d be funny if he took it out and it just disintegrated into ashes.

Nic Cage is seen by the gift shop cashier who accuses him of trying to steal one of the Declaration of Independence posters. He’s broke, so he has to pay with Visa, capital V-I-S-A. Nice way to leave a paper trail, dumbass. It’s product placement at its finest.

Nic Cage runs out to the truck where the Steve Zahn-like sidekick is waiting. Blondie has discovered that Nic Cage is not on the guest list and chases him outside where she sees him with the rolled up Declaration. All hell breaks loose. Nic Cage tries to run. Blonde grabs the Declaration from him. Evil former partners arrive outside and kidnap Blonde and the Declaration while she runs back toward the National Archives. Nic Cage chases in order to protect the German Blonde. A tame excuse for a car chase ensues. Blonde dangles from open door of evil partner’s van, and Boromir steals the Declaration from her. Nic Cage rescues the damsel in distress.

The security guards realize that the Declaration has been stolen. People start shouting “Code Red!”

Chris: “Code Red?” Wouldn’t it be… Code Cosmically Nuclear Fucked?

Nic Cage reveals that the Declaration of Independence that Helen of Troy took from him was a fake one from the gift shop. He proceeds to yell at her to shut up while she whines for him to give it to her. This continues for like 15 minutes, seriously. It’s like an Abbott and Costello routine without the laughter.

Back at the gala: Harvey Keitel is the FBI guy in charge. He rounds up all the guests at the gala into one room to contain the situation.

Harvey Keitel: If we all cooperate we’ll get through this with as little frustration as possible.

Richard: Yeah, you said the same thing to Thelma and Louise and look what the fuck happened to them.

Nic Cage tells blonde chick to shush and shut up over and over. I get the feeling that at any minute he may just start slapping her. She tries to run with the Declaration. Nic Cage grabs it back and tells her to shoo. Misogynist? She demands that he take her with him because she must go wherever the Declaration goes.

Jeanne: I have a feeling that this is a lot like what The Da Vinci Code is like.

They lean in close, whispering things like, “You can’t come” and “I have to come.”

Chris: They make out.

Richard: And their foreplay consists of rubbing the Declaration of Independence up against their naked skin.

Something about a fifteen-year old Benjamin Franklin writing letters as though he were a middle-aged widow named Silence Begood. Are they implying that Ben Franklin was a transvestite? Nic Cage has scans of the letters at his house but it’s swarmed by fed’s because Nic Cage had to plug Visa. The original letter’s are at his dad’s house. The Steve Zahn-like sidekick asks if they should tie up the feisty German. Nic Cage refuses. He’ll wait to tie her up until the third wheel gets killed later in the film.

Richard: Never trust a German chick.

Chris: Is she really German?

Jeanne: Well, didn’t we learn that from Indiana Jones?

Richard: Which this is totally ripping off!

John Voight: Where’s the party?

Richard: In your pants! Actually, it’s in your daughter’s pants.

Nic Cage makes up some crap lie about the blonde being his pregnant girlfriend so that his father will let them in. Little Kal-El.

Chris: Steve Zahn would have totally said something funny there.

Jeanne: I swear to god Steve Zahn’s in this movie!

Chris: He’s not in this movie!

Jeanne: He was in some movie that was just fucking like this.

Chris: Sahara!

Jeanne (sighing): He was in Sahara. How did Sahara get him and not this? With Matt McConaughey.

John Voight explains that he believes the Founding Fathers created the legend of the treasure to keep the greedy, money-hungry British from remembering that they wanted to kill all the Americans. There’s really no treasure, just a long serious of asinine clues.

Nic Cage and the blonde chick rub lemons on the back of the Declaration and a symbol emerges but immediately fades away. John Voight explains that they need more heat.

Richard: And then he sets it on fire.

Jeanne: They should just have sex on top of it.

They stop caring about not damaging the Declaration and bring out the hair blow dryers. It reveals a key to the Silence Begood letters, which John Voight, in his cynicism, donated to a museum in Philadelphia. They tie up John Voight so the fed’s might believe he didn’t help them. They also steal his car and take his cash so they can go shopping at American Eagle.

The Steve Zahn-like character pays a little boy a couple of bucks to write down certain letters from the Silence Begood letters in the museum and run them back to him across the street so that they can avoid Sein Bone (Sean Bean) and his evil henchman.

Richard: If Guillermo Del Toro had made this movie…

Chris: …that kid would be dead! He’d have been hit by a bus.

Richard: Yes!

The next clue leads to the Liberty Bell. Richard Sharpe… I mean Sean Bean, is close on his trail. He paid the little boy from the museum $100 (no doubt full of hidden maps and notes to even more secret treasure!) to tell him that last set of letters he was going to give to the Steve Zahn like sidekick. With the help of Google Sean Bean is able to continue his pursuit.

The shadow of the steeple, where the bell used to be housed, points to a brick in the wall with a mason symbol. Nic Cage climbs over the roof (no one notices, of course) and pries it out with a Swiss Army knife (with surprising ease for having been embedded there for 300 years).

Chris: It’s glasses.

Richard: 3D glasses… invented by Ben Franklin so that he could watch The Thing from Outer Space. We have Benjamin Franklin to thank for Spy Kids: 3D.

One of the characters calls them an “ocular device.” What the fuck is that? I mean seriously. They’re glasses.

Jeanne: Are they taking out the Declaration of Independence in the middle of a Historical Museum?

Richard: The Declaration of Independence in 3D. It’s still better than Captain EO.

Chris: Hey, Captain EO was pretty cool, man.

Richard: Remember you’re being recorded saying that.

Nic Cage sees a trippy 3D image on the back of the Declaration of Independence that tells him to go to Wall Street. Nic Cage sees Sean Bean outside of the Liberty Bell Museum and decides they must separate so that he can’t get both the glasses and the Declaration. Cage takes the protective tube that contains the Declaration and keeps it and gives them what is essentially a Tupperware container in a feeble attempt to protect the most important document in America’s history.

Richard: I like the fact that it’s kind of also a romantic triangle.

Chris: It’s not! At all.

Jeanne: It’s more like a third wheel.

Richard: No, but you see that guy is…totally into Nic Cage.

The blonde and the sidekick nearly get the Declaration run over by a car and then by and eighteen-wheeler and then Sean Bean steals it. They suck is the point.

Chris: See what I’m talking about. That shit needs protection.

Jeanne: But it’s got the luck of the Irish.

Chris: But does she?

Chris: I bet that was a Pepsi truck.

Richard: Oh, no. Is that Sheen Been?

Chris: I like how his name changes every time he’s mentioned. Sheen. 

Nic Cage gets arrested by Harvey Keitel. Sean Bean gets away. Nic Cage works with Harvey Keitel to arrange a meeting with Sean Bean so that he can help get the Declaration back and maybe not go to jail for quite as long. At the meeting, Sean Bean reveals that he kidnapped John Voight and gives Nic Cage a way to get away from the Fed’s so that he can help Sean Bean find the treasure. Nic Cage dives off a pier and is grabbed by an evil henchman in scuba gear and they jettison away to continue the pursuit of the treasure.

They all show up again at Trinity Church at the corner of Broadway and Wall Street. Jeanne gets excited because she works right by there. Of course, the church is completely vacant and has absolutely no security. What has happened to our post-9/11 world? Upon further inspection of the Declaration with the Spy Kid’s 3D glasses (ocular device), Nic Cage sees that it also says there’s some street under the church.

As they wander the church, carefree and with no fear of being spotted by anyone of authority, they find a tomb with the name of the street from the back of the Declaration. Why, it’s no street at all! A henchman batters down the stone covering the tomb. No respect for the dead. And they yank out the coffin. The corpse immediately falls through the rotted out bottom of the coffin and onto the floor. Pretty gross. The Goonies + Indiana Jones = National Treasure.

They all climb into the tomb and it leads into a giant underground room with a huge spiral staircase heading down and several dumbwaiters strung along the sides. As they’re descending it all starts to crumble. Honestly, you’d think a bunch of “masons” would have constructed a sturdier staircase. A henchman falls into what appears to be a bottomless pit in the center of the room. Nic Cage and the blonde are in a collapsing dumbwaiter. She falls to the bottom and so does the Declaration. Jeanne says it’s like Spiderman.

Everyone suddenly remembers a great scene involving a hero and a blonde, German woman dangling over a bottomless pit trying to grab a historical item…hmmmmmm.

After Nic drops Blondie so that he can save the Declaration, he apologizes. She says it’s okay; she would have done the same thing.

Jeanne: ‘Cause I like paper more than people, too!

They find the treasure, of course, and the bad guys get their comeuppance.

During the last scene, Ilsa tells Nic Cage that she has a map for him. “Where does it lead to?” he asks.

Jeanne: Her clitoris!

Richard: Still, it was better than Crash.

END

Mysterious Skin and The Woodsman

There are some movies that are so improbably good, so adept at ducking their political trappings, that they stick in the mind long after the credits roll.  I saw Nicole Kassell’s film The Woodsman four months ago and I still can’t get it out of my head. The movie features Kevin Bacon as a recovering pedophile trying, albeit unsuccessfully, to pass as a functional member of society. “He’s damaged goods,” confides one character, and indeed he is—friendless, avoidant and full of bleary-eyed self-loathing.  It is a visceral reminder: Stay away from parks and playgrounds, because if you don’t, you could end up just like him.

The Woodsman was hailed for its intimate portrayal of an untouchable subject, but it was neither the first film to address child molestation nor the most aggressive. We never see Bacon get anywhere close to a relapse—the closest he comes is a few longing, guilt-ridden looks at a little girl in the park—but throughout the movie, he maintains an iron-clad composure, suppressing both his guilt and his frustration to be the picture of perfect atonement.

Compare this to a movie like Mysterious Skin, where the sexuality practically bleeds off the screen. Watching Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s seething boy hustler is like watching porn in the library reading room—breathless, erotic, and so well behaved it’s dangerous. It’s no accident that Gordon-Levitt is cast as the lead in this movie. With those mournful eyes and impish dimples, his sex appeal is distinctly cherubic—old enough to be legal, but still attractive, still boyish, and still painfully young.

It’s hard not to feel uncomfortable watching Mysterious Skin.  The sex is vicarious and thrilling, but while the story maintains its critical stance, there is something weird about playing up sexuality in a film about child abuse.  It’s not that Araki fails to indict his offenders—if anything, the film is ruthless in showing what happens when abuse is repressed—but in showing us in such alluring detail, he also implicates us in the action, crossing into gratuitous territory and then daring us to say that we didn’t secretly enjoy coming along for the ride.

This transition towards high eroticism is inevitable, I suppose, as filmmakers become more comfortable within the genre, and as the topic itself becomes more mainstream.  Mysterious Skin’s virtue lies in its ability to make the viewer squirm. Hard Candy came out last month and is said to verge on exploitation—lust, deception and a little bit of torture to boot.  I haven’t seen it yet, but I can’t help but wonder if this tactic misses the point.  While there’s certainly a juicy irony in allowing ourselves to be seduced by underage sex games, these movies are also pointedly resonant. After all, they address a very real and controversial issue, which seems to contradict the satisfaction one usually takes from a good soft-core flick.

Moreover, in cashing in on the sexual innocence of their youthful leads, these stories miss what makes pedophilia truly interesting to watch on-screen.  This is where The Woodsman stands out.  Kassell’s film is not just about guilt—it’s about repression and what ultimately happens when desire (even unthinkable desire) is indefinitely deferred.  There is no revenge plot, no cat-and-mouse games, just Walter, sitting alone in his tiny apartment, trying to find a way to live with himself. If there is tragedy to be found in this strange sub-genre, I can’t think of a better place to look. 

- Katie Gradowski, Temp Jockey

BOOKS:

Groucho and Me, The Essential Groucho and The Groucho Letters: Letters to and from Groucho Marx

Letter to Peter Lorre

Dear Peter:

It was very thoughtful of you to send me a book explaining James Joyce’s Ulysses. All I need now is another book explaining this study by Stuart Gilbert who, if memory serves, painted the celebrated picture of George Washington which hangs in the Metropolitan Museum. I realize that there is some two hundred years’ difference in their ages, but any man who can explain Joyce must be very old and very wise.

You disappeared rather mysteriously the other night, but I attribute this to your life of crime in the movies.

Best to you both.

Regards,

Groucho

An exchange from Duck Soup:

Mrs. Teasdale: “I was with my husband to the very end.”

Groucho: “Huh! No wonder her passed away.”

Mrs. Teasdale: “I held him in my arms and kissed him.”

Groucho: “Oh, I see. Then it was murder.”

I can count the names on both hands—the names of the people who shaped me as a child and ultimately formed the person that I am today. There are the writers—Alcott, Lewis, Salinger, Cleary, Shakespeare; the actors—Jimmy Stewart, Humphrey Bogart, Paul Newman, River Phoenix, Winona Ryder, Bette Davis, the two Hepburns. And then there’s Groucho.

Born Julius Henry Marx on October 2, 1890, Groucho is one of the first solid memories of father-daughter bonding that I remember to this day. Going to the local video store every Saturday night right after church and renting the familiar titles, over and over again. Duck Soup, A Day at the Races, The Cocoanuts, A Night at the Opera, Animal Crackers—we rented them because my dad loved them, and because each time that he would pick-up one of their VHS tape covers he would nod his head in approval and say, “Esta es buena.”

Even as a kid, with my rather limited vocabulary, I grew to love them to. At first, simply because my father clearly did, but as I grew older I came to recognize a part of myself in Groucho, saw myself reflected in his greasepaint mustache, in every one of his puns, sarcastic wisecracks and unstoppable wordplays. I related to his love of language, of words, and his passion for spinning them around, chewing them over and then releasing them onto unsuspecting but willing ears.

Reading these three books that are brimming with Groucho’s humor, intelligence, heart, wit, humanity, bawdy perverseness and painful sadness, is like taking a trip through time via my own personal Delorean. There are jokes that I never got at the age of six, nine or 13 that now make me cry with laughter. But no matter how much time passes, I am amazed at how little my love for this man has changed.

-Lily Percy, Editor

MUSIC:

Snow Patrol – Eyes Open

“If I lay here/If I just lay here/would you just lie with me and just forget the world.”

It’s like singer Gary Lightbody knew exactly the kind of images that his lyrics would evoke, like he knew that his words, accompanied by melodies that both lift, console and break the heart, would make any listener want to lie in bed all day or sit on the F train waiting for forever to come, begin and then come again.

I was caught completely off-guard by this album. To be perfectly honest, before Eyes Open, I had never even heard one Snow Patrol song. I knew that they had opened for U2 in Europe, knew that they were Irish…and that’s about it. Now there isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t hum a line or sing a lyric off of  “Headlights on Dark Roads” or “It’s beginning to get to me.” Their songs are infectious—begging to be played on radio stations and MP3 players all across the world, and if I’m not mistaken, if my head is not too far up my ass, I believe that they already are.

-Lily Percy, Editor

Josh Ritter - The Animal Years

There is an ancient truth dug deep within the talent of singer-songwriter Josh Ritter. On his latest record, The Animal Years, he uses a kitchen table canvas and exquisite art to supply the staples that his recipe of epic folktale calls for. A natural storyteller, Ritter’s wisdom, grown from a life as a journeyman, effortlessly fits the grooves of your treasured porch rocking chair, scratched and scraped with character.

This record finds Ritter at a beautiful life juncture, an intersection of dreams and vision. While he’s been at this for a while, time spent in the shower of his song will make you feel like it’s all come out of nowhere, his brilliance a form of divine intervention. You understand right away that his insight has developed from remarkable teachers, an upright heart, and taking the long way home; his acoustic intake of life imparted in the lessons of Bob and Bruce.

A measure of the rightness and infinite quality of his words can be found on the record’s closing track, the standout “Thin Blue Flame,” one painted through a sculptor’s hands:

“I woke beneath a clear blue sky/The sun a shout the breeze a sigh/My old hometown and the streets I knew/Were wrapped up in a royal blue/I heard my friends laughing out across the fields/ The girls in the gloaming and the birds on the wheel/The raw smell of horses and the warm smell of hay/Cicadas electric in the heat of the day/A run of Three Sisters and the flush of the land/And the lake was a diamond in the valley’s hand/The straight of the highway and the scattered out hearts/They were coming together they pulling apart/And angels everywhere were in my midst/In the ones that I loved in the ones that I kissed/I wondered what it was I’d been looking for up above/Heaven is so big there ain’t no need to look up/So I stopped looking for royal cities in the air/Only a full house gonna have a prayer

Hello, Starling is the greeting listeners will share with his latest treasure, his emergence.

- Jehan Mondal, Staff Music Critic

SPOTLIGHT:

Orson Welles

May 6, 1915-October 10, 1985

“The word genius was whispered into my ear, the first thing I ever heard while I was still mewling in my crib, so it never occurred to me that I wasn’t until middle age.” – Orson Welles

            An expert in Shakespeare. A student of magic. Well-versed in puppet theater. An amateur violinist, pianist, painter and sculptor. This was Orson Welles…at age ten.

                Born George Orson Welles in Kenosha, Wisconsin on May 6, 1915, the future artist was being groomed as a prodigy from the earliest possible age. His mother Beatrice and a close family friend, as well as Welles eventual guardian, Dr. Maurice Bernstein insisted that Orson was an absolute genius and introduced him to a variety of art forms. Welles often claimed that he was never a true prodigy, but rather a very well cultured young man. “You look at the real prodigies and I look like nothing compared to them,” said Welles, “But if you tell a small child he’s going to be a great musician, and you keep after it, and if he’s pretty good—you know, you have to be fairly good to sustain it—it gives you a certain authority.”

                Welles was introduced to Shakespeare at a fairly young age and was particularly adept at studying the Bard’s works. His mother being a pianist of some accomplishment, Orson was also introduced to music as a child. He learned to play both the piano and violin. However, when Orson was eight, his mother passed away and he never really played music again.

                Eventually Welles was sent to the Todd School for boys, where he furthered his interests in theater. As a student he began acting in various plays. At one theatrical competition at the Todd School he was initially disqualified because the judges were convinced that the two actors playing the parts of Marc Antony and Cassius in “Julius Caesar” were grown men. In fact, both roles had been played by the teenage Welles.

                After graduation, in order to avoid going to college, Welles went to Ireland on what began as a painting excursion. As his money ran out, and with no more paintings to sell, he attempted a new endeavor at the Gate Theatre in Dublin. “To stay out of school, I went on the stage,” recalls Welles. “I only fell in love with it afterwards.” He lied about his age, met with the creative directors of the theater and began his professional stage career. He received rave reviews for several of his performances. But after a while he felt he was not going to be able to advance any further and returned to America.

                Within the next few years, Welles joined the Katharine Cornell Theatre Company and toured the country. One night in New York, after a performance of “Romeo & Juliet,” he met John Houseman for the first time. The two would form a tumultuous but brilliant creative partnership that would last the better part of the next ten years. It was also during this period that Welles became an actor on the radio, featured most notably in the popular news re-enactment program “March of Time.”

                In 1936, Welles and Houseman were put in charge of the Harlem division of the Federal Theatre Project (part of President Franklin Roosevelt’s Works Progress Administration). Welles gained instant notoriety in New York and the theater world by directing an all black cast in an adaptation of William Shakespeare’s “Macbeth.” The “voodoo” Macbeth, as it came to be known, was thought to be particularly brilliant, as it had been adapted by Welles to take place in Haiti, with the three witches being changed to sixty voodoo witch doctors. Many feel this was one of the two greatest Shakespearean productions in the modern era; the other being Welles’ adaptation of “Julius Caesar” set at the Nuremberg festival.

                “Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men?” became one of the most popular catch phrases of the 1930s. It was the opening line of “The Shadow” broadcasts, the program for which Orson Welles played Lamont Cranston beginning in 1937. The money he would make on “The Shadow” and other radio programs would often go to help pay for the productions of his Mercury Theatre Company; a trend that would become an enormous part of his career throughout much of his life.

                It was also on the radio that one of the biggest moments of Orson Welles’ career would occur. In 1938, for Halloween, the “Mercury Theatre on the Air” performed an adaptation of H.G. Wells’ “War of the Worlds.” His idea was to perform the show as an actual news report of Martians invading earth. It is estimated that approximately nine million people listened to the broadcast. Roughly 1.7 million listeners were frightened into panic, believing the attacks were real. Many towns across the country were flooded with people running into churches. Interstates were clogged up with the paranoia of evacuation. It is often regarded as one of the most notorious hoaxes in history. The show’s success made Orson Welles a national star, and inevitably led him to Hollywood.

“I always liked Hollywood very much. It just wasn’t reciprocated.” – Orson Welles

                In 1940, at the age of 25, Orson Welles signed a contract with RKO pictures that gave him complete creative control over the producing, writing, directing and editing of a motion picture. At the time, only Charlie Chaplin had such authority over his own films. Welles planned several productions, including an adaptation of Joseph Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness,” but with a looming Second World War on the horizon, the studio simply could not afford such a costly production. Finally Welles settled on making a film based on the life and career of several contemporary moguls, mainly media tycoon William Randolph Hearst. What resulted was one of the greatest films ever made, Citizen Kane.

                Citizen Kane is the character study of a man who seems to have everything in terms of financial wealth and material items, but really has nothing. Widely considered to be the greatest American film, it was technically groundbreaking upon its release in 1941. The use of deep focus, wide angles and long takes were stunning, new concepts at the time. Orson also used theatrical dissolves, with foreground and background lighting, to transition many of the flashback scenes. Another unique quality about the film was its non-linear narrative. The movie begins with the death of Charles Foster Kane and his dying word “rosebud” leads us to the people who knew him best telling us about his life. Each character talks about their memories of Kane over the years, so the audience never actually sees events in chronological order. We often go from young to old and back again, constantly picking up pieces of the puzzle. Perhaps the greatest piece of the puzzle is the ending itself; the mystery of rosebud seems to mean nothing, but really means everything.

                Once Hearst learned that Kane was primarily based on his life, he fought to have the film destroyed. As one of the most powerful men in the world in 1941, Hearst very nearly succeeded. Though the film was finally released, it was not in any way a box-office success. It was very quickly dismissed by the studio and written off as a failure that didn’t make much money or win many awards. This also partially led to Welles’ difficulties with the major Hollywood studios over the next few years. Citizen Kane would remain the only picture Welles ever made with complete creative control and studio resources.

“What spoiled me is having had the joy of that kind of liberty once in my life, and never having been able to enjoy it again.” – Orson Welles

                For Welles’ next picture, he chose an adaptation of Booth Tarkington’s “The Magnificent Ambersons.” Welles had planned an outstanding production that he felt would have been his greatest picture. “It was a much better picture than Kane, if they’d just left it as it was,” said Orson Welles. The Magnificent Ambersons would be the first of several Welles’ pictures that movie studios and producers would have re-edited against his wishes. Welles’ original cut of the film was 135 minutes long. RKO previewed the film in Pasadena, showing Ambersons, a turn of the century drama, after Captains of the Clouds, a flying action movie with James Cagney. The screening received a horrible response and the studio had the picture cut down to 88 minutes, taking out an unbelievable combined 47 minutes of Welles’ original picture. Sadly this would not be the last Orson Welles film to be altered by studio hands.

                In 1948, Columbia Pictures released Lady from Shanghai. What is now considered to be one of the classic film noir pictures of the 1940s was the next to join the list of pictures that would not be released as Welles had originally cut them. Mostly remembered for its famous house of mirrors sequence, Lady from Shanghai had a musical score that Welles thought was laughable. Even its great funhouse scene was a mere shadow of what Welles had intended. He recalled, “That was a real sequence before [Harry] Cohn got at it with his scissors.”

                The experience proved to upset Welles so much that he left Hollywood to direct pictures in Europe for the next ten years. Before he would walk away from studio pictures however, he would act in Carol Reed’s 1949 film noir classic The Third Man. In one of the great performances of his career, Welles turned Harry Lime into one of the most memorable film characters in history. The Third Man was one of many acting jobs Welles would take to finance his own work such as his 1952 film adaptation of Othello, which won the first prize at the Cannes Film Festival.

                In 1955, Orson would make Mr. Arkadin (a.k.a. Confidential Report). Though a very good picture, it would prove to be one of the most puzzling examples of Welles lack of control over his work. Not only did producer Louis Dolivet release a re-edited version in Europe, but Warner Bros. also released a different edit of the film in the United States. Ultimately there would be five different versions of the film in circulation. By the end of his career, almost half the films Welles directed would be released to his dissatisfaction: The Magnificent Ambersons, The Stranger, The Lady from Shanghai, Mr. Arkadin and Touch of Evil.

                1958 would deliver the final blow that would keep Welles from ever directing in Hollywood again. Like several of his previous projects, Touch of Evil was severely re-cut by the studio. Infuriated with the changes, Welles wrote a passionate 58-page memo, describing each change and the problems with it. He desperately asked Universal Pictures to honor his requests. The director’s demands fell upon deaf ears as each of his points were ignored.

                Welles would continue to direct films for the next twenty-five years, although many were never completed. Among those he did finish was Chimes at Midnight, which many consider to be his best film after Citizen Kane, and was also a personal favorite of Welles. Also during this period, Welles made F for Fake, an avant-garde documentary on the world of illusion and “fakery.” Yet despite any films Welles would make, he was usually considered a has-been who had squandered away his talent and never lived up to his brilliant first picture. Later in life, Welles would not easily discuss Citizen Kane. He hated the fact that most people felt that it was all he’d ever done with his film career.

                For the rest of his life, Orson Welles would play bit parts in movies, make television appearances and do commercials for whatever money he could get to make his movies. He developed a love/hate relationship with the movies. In 1998 Touch of Evil was re-released, edited to fulfill Welles’ original intentions, and the Criterion Collection recently released a comprehensive version of Mr. Arkadin, but Welles would pass away long before he could realize how much he was appreciated. Both Martin Scorsese and Francois Truffaut have stated that Welles is responsible for inspiring more people to become filmmakers than any other director.

                Orson Welles died of a heart attack in 1985, a misunderstood artist, not knowing he would ultimately be remembered for more than just one great movie.

- David Sayre, Staff independent filmmaker/essayist

“I think I made, essentially, a mistake staying in movies. But it’s the mistake I can’t regret. Because, it’s like saying I shouldn’t have stayed married to that woman but I did because I love her. I would have been more successful if I’d left movies immediately; stayed in the theater, gone into politics, written, anything. I’ve wasted the greater part of my life looking for money and trying to get along... trying to make my work from this terribly expensive paint box, which is a movie. And I’ve spent too much energy on things that have nothing to do with making a movie. It’s about two percent moviemaking and ninety-eight percent hustling. It’s no way to spend a life.” – Orson Welles

Orson Welles’ director filmography:

Citizen Kane (1941)

The Magnificent Ambersons (1942)

The Stranger (1946)

Macbeth (1948)

The Lady from Shanghai (1948)

Othello (1952)

Mr. Arkadin (1955)

Touch of Evil (1958)

The Trial (1963)

Chimes at Midnight (1966)

The Immortal Story (1968)

F for Fake (1973)