Photo Courtesy © Universal Pictures

Knocked Up

Written and directed by: Judd Apatow

Starring: Seth Rogen, Katherine Heigl, Paul Rudd, Leslie Mann, Jason Segel, Jonah Hill, Martin Starr, Harold Ramis, Alan Tudyk and Jay Baruchel.

I loved The 40-Year-Old Virgin. I mean, I loved it. I have watched it every time that it airs on HBO—especially at three in the morning when it’s either that or The Break-Up—and each time is just as hilarious as the first. The film is more than just a series of brilliant jokes and gags—it is a sensitive and honest depiction of what it is like to have missed out on love, sex, and all of the wonderful relationship drama in between.

Judd Apatow is a whiz at finding beauty in the banal, often underappreciated moments of our lives. He is also a genius at making the most complicated aspects of said lives such as marriage, sex and having kids seem so incredibly simple. The fact that he can do both separately is no small feat—the fact that he does both in all of his films, including his latest effort, Knocked Up, is downright awe-inspiring.

Half of the charm of his movies and TV shows (run, and I mean run, out and rent both “Freaks and Geeks” and “Undeclared.” Now.) lies in not knowing what each character will do or say next so I won’t go into too much detail about what makes Knocked Up such a pleasure to watch—suffice to say that it involves terrific (and surprisingly moving) performances by Seth Rogen and Katherine Heigl, as well Apatow-universe regulars Paul Rudd, Jason Segal, Martin Starr, Leslie Mann and Jay Baruchel. There are cameos galore in the film but it is Paul Rudd who nearly steals the show, as usual. The man is pretty, smart and funny—a brutal onscreen combination.

I must admit however that I didn’t laugh as much in Knocked Up as I did in The 40-Year-Old Virgin. That said, I also feel like Knocked Up is, in many ways, a better film for it. The story and characters are far more well developed, and unlike the former, at the end of the film you come out of it feeling like you’ve learned some really deep life lessons. The kind of lessons that come wrapped in hallucinogenic drugs, infectious diseases and unprotected sex, of course.

Lily@picturesandframesmagazine.com

Photo Courtesy © Fox Atomic

28 Weeks Later (2007)

Directed by: Juan Carlos Fresnadillo.

Written by: Rowan Joffe, Juan Carlos Fresnadillo, Jesús Olmo and Enrique López Lavigne.

Starring: Catherine McCormack, Robert Carlyle, Rose Byrne, Jeremy Renner, Harold Perrineau, Imogen Poots and Mackintosh Muggleton.

Yes, it’s the sequel. But not like Aliens, more like Alien 3. Not like Terminator 2, more like T3. Not like Jaws 2, more like Jaws 3. You get the idea. It seems like the creators of 28WL decided to skip the sequel writing and go directly to the third installment-let downs. So what does this mean for those that have not paid for the price of admission yet? Well, if you are a fan of the 28 Days Later franchise like I am, then you should do the right thing and take yourself (and a date) to the next showing of 28WL. If you are not a fan then you should stop reading right about now because you don’t need any more reasons not to see the film. (But you can’t ignore the fact that 28WL is (at the time that this review was written) the number three film in America with half the number of screens as Shrek the Third and Spiderman 3.)

If you are a fan then this is what you should expect: A great first half hour (this is where the creators spent all of their brain cells) and a less than average conclusion to the film. In the introduction (which is set in the time and space of 28 Days Later) we are shown a group of people that have survived the initial infection and somehow managed to stay hidden. Two of the people in the group will be key players in this new story—husband and wife Don (Robert Carlyle) and Alice (Catherine McCormack). After a great sequence of complete zombie domination we are transported to 28WL, and this is where we meet the rest of our fearless cast. Rose Byrne as Scarlet, the primary infection specialist for the Army (she looks great in uniform); Jeremy Renner as Doyle, a hot shot soldier that follows his heart instead of orders; Imogen Poots as Tammy, the oldest of Don and Alice’s children (beware her beautiful green eyes); Mackintosh Muggleton as Andy, the youngest of Don and Alice’s children and last but certainly not least, Harold Perrineau as Flynn the helicopter pilot (who has a soft spot for Doyle).

The plan is to repopulate Britain, starting with the city of London. The one flaw with this great idea is that for some odd reason the Americans are in charge. Now, I’m not sure if this was intentional or not, probably the former, but when the shit hits the fan the Americans drop the ball, so to speak. (I guess that’s how it goes in most disaster movies, and, oh yeah, in real life as well.) The Americans are trying to bring people back to London and everything is going as planned, that is until Tammy and Andy do the opposite of what they are told and venture into the “DO ENTER BECAUSE THERE IS ZOMBIE SHIT ALL OVER” zone. As you probably guessed, this is the point in the film when we lose the writers, along with everything the first half of the movie was trying to achieve. Blood, gore, explosions and zombie-on-human violence take over the movie here on in. Not that there’s anything necessarily wrong with that but it’s just that 28 Days Later is the thinking man’s zombie movie and the second half of 28WL just stops thinking. Unfortunately, they gave us the shitty sequel now instead of later but who knows? Maybe the third installment will not disappoint—cause you know there’s totally going to be a 28 Months Later.

Juanmarcos@picturesandframesmagazine.com

Photo Courtesy © Fox Searchlight Pictures

Waitress

Written and directed by: Adrienne Shelly

Starring: Keri Russell, Cheryl Hines, Jeremy Sisto, Andy Griffith and Adrienne Shelly.

The entire four seasons that “Felicity” was on TV I never missed an episode. I watched it religiously, taking notes, comparing her college experiences and her friends to mine, and wishing that her guy troubles (dude, choosing between Ben or Noel is like choosing between dark chocolate and chocolate) were indeed mine as well. I loved the characters, their dialogue, their arcs—which meant that I essentially loved the show for J.J. Abrams and all of the other wonderful writers that created this universe.

And yet, mid-way through Adrienne Shelly’s debut film, Waitress, a big, bright, searing light bulb went off in my head: I loved “Felicity” because of Keri Russell. How could I have missed this before, I wondered to myself silently. And why was it such a big deal? This realization came to me at a point in the film when Keri Russell is called upon to demonstrate, through one particular facial expression, how madly in love and happy she is. She plasters an ear-to-ear grin on her face and never lets it go. This would seem stupid, silly or just plain contrived were anyone else doing it, but when Russell does it—man, it actually lights up the screen.

Russell is a subtle actress, so subtle that even though she is playing the lead in a film or TV show, you’ll never really notice just how good she actually is until she is no longer in the scene. She has a presence and beauty that is part Audrey Hepburn and part Mary Tyler Moore—the kind that dazzles, endears and transcends even the restrictive frames of the screen. Waitress is a really nice film; it centers on likeable supporting characters and, for a “romantic comedy,” it features refreshingly pro-feminist undertones. But what truly makes the movie rise above its own flaws and imperfections is the sincerity and grace that Keri Russell brings to the role of Jenna. To paraphrase a familiar TV theme song, she takes a cute little film and somehow makes it all seem really worthwhile. 

Lily@picturesandframesmagazine.com

Photo Courtesy © First Look

Paris Je T’aime

Directed by: Olivier Assayas, Frédéric Auburtin, Emmanuel Benbihy, Gurinder Chadha, Sylvain Chomet, Ethan Coen, Joel Coen, Isabel Coixet, Wes Craven, Alfonso Cuarón, Gérard Depardieu, Christopher Doyle, Richard LaGravenese, Vincenzo Natali, Alexander Payne, Bruno Podalydès, Walter Salles, Oliver Schmitz, Nobuhiro Suwa, Daniela Thomas, Tom Tykwer, Gus Van Sant

Written by: Tristan Carné, Emmanuel Benbihy, Bruno Podalydès, Paul Mayeda Berges, Gurinder Chadha, Gus Van Sant, Ethan Coen, Joel Coen, Walter Salles, Daniela Thomas, Christopher Doyle, Gabrielle Keng, Kathy Li, Isabel Coixet, Nobuhiro Suwa, Sylvain Chomet, Alfonso Cuarón, Olivier Assayas, Oliver Schmitz, Richard LaGravenese, Vincenzo Natali, Wes Craven, Tom Tykwer, Gena Rowlands, Alexander Payne

Starring: Florence Muller, Bruno Podalydès, Leïla Bekhti, Cyril Descours, Marianne Faithfull, Elias McConnell, Gaspard Ulliel, Julie Bataille, Steve Buscemi, Axel Kiener, Catalina Sandino Moreno, Barbet Schroeder, Li Xin, Javier Cámara, Sergio Castellitto, Miranda Richardson, Leonor Watling, Juliette Binoche, Martin Combes, Willem Dafoe,

Hippolyte Girardot, Yolande Moreau, Paul Putner, Sara Martins, Nick Nolte, Ludivine Sagnier, Lionel Dray, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Joana Preiss, Seydou Boro, Aïssa Maïga, Fanny Ardant, Bob Hoskins, Olga Kurylenko, Elijah Wood, Emily Mortimer, Alexander Payne, Rufus Sewell, Melchior Beslon, Natalie Portman, Gérard Depardieu, Ben Gazzara, Gena Rowlands, Margo Martindale

Although it hasn’t exactly been getting the ratings that Fox originally hoped for, I’ve been watching their “Who wants to be the next Spielberg?” reality TV show “On the Lot” ardently for the past couple of weeks. It isn’t exactly as guilty a pleasure as, say,  “American Idol” or “America’s Next Top Model,” but it is compelling to watch struggling filmmakers make short films in the hopes of making their dreams come true, and, well, struggle. This week the remaining 18 contestants made short comedic films—some of them were truly incredible (that special effects guy from Canada puts Lucas to shame), and others so wacky that they were actually painful to sit through (wacky taxi, wacky taxi! I can’t believe that guy made the cut). The one thing that definitely became abundantly clear at the end of the show was just how hard it really is to make a good short film.

I bring all of this up because I couldn’t help but think about all of this while watching Paris, Je T’aime, a filmic love letter to the city of lights, comprised of 18 different short films by 18 different directors. The film is an ambitious one, especially considering that these kind of things tend to feature three to four stories at the most (think Alejandro Gonzáles Iñáritu’s films, New York Stories or Beyond the Clouds), but overall the movie succeeds in tying together all of the different visions and paying homage to all of the things that make Paris unique. That doesn’t mean, however, that it doesn’t also feature its share of ‘wacky taxis.’

Christopher Doyle, who as a cinematographer is a visionary, is responsible for the worst segment in the film. "Porte de Choisy" stands out like a sore thumb and is pretty much indecipherable. When compared to his film, everyone else’s seems flawless and perfect, and their conventional narratives are a welcome change to his choppy story. With so many brilliant names attached to the project—Alfonso Cuáron, Gus Van Sant, The Coens, Walter Salles—you would think that more of the films would stand out, but the truly memorable ones are Gérard Depardieu’s "Quartier Latin," Tom Tykwer’s "Faubourg Saint-Denis" and Alexander Payne’s "14th arrondissement." The latter film is funny, sweet and poignant in all the right ways, and is also, I am sad to admit after years and years of French classes, the only film in which I didn’t have to read the subtitles.

Lily@picturesandframesmagazine.com

Reviewing Tribeca: A recap of the 2007 Tribeca Film Festival

Mostly I was surprised. Under whelmed, yes. Angry, too. Mostly, mainly, surprised. Robert De Niro’s name is attached to this. And Amex. And Cadillac. What went so terribly wrong with the films this year? The Air I Breathe reeked of clichéd writing and faulty, ridiculous plotlines, despite an all-star cast featuring Julie Delpy and Kevin Bacon, among others. She’s My Brother, otherwise known as “the Alexis Arquette movie,” was great as a documentary. It just proved how attention needy Hollywood siblings can be, and how one in particular exploited her pending sex change for a film (which was originally meant as a more lucrative TV show). But if you’re going to make a movie entitled She’s My Brother, and herald it as a documentary chronicling the stages of Alexis Arquette’s sex-reassignment surgery, then expect certain people to be a little miffed when said people don’t get to see even one major nip, and instead get a whole lot of tuck. What follows is an in depth look at one of the worst films at the Tribeca Film Festival. And, no, I’m not talking about Spiderman 3.

The Workshop

First-time documentarian Jamie Morgan wants you to believe that he’s had an illustrious life full of fame and success, but despite his privileged life (or, perhaps, because of it) his story still lacks a certain je ne sais quoi. He’s had his photographs grace the covers of magazines such as The Face, and he even had a brief stint in pop music in the 80s, making a cameo in Neneh Cherry’s “Buffalo Stance.” But all of that “fame” has left him wanting and needing more out of life. Enter The Workshop, a seminar promising a new outlook on life, so long as you’re able to have sex with multiple partners, walk around naked all the time, and never get jealous when your sexual partners pair up with other partners. Oh, and as long as you believe in the possibility that all of this sexual energy and healing allows you to open yourself up to the idea of extraterrestrial sentient beings walking and fornicating among us (and, quite possibly, with us).

Ridiculous pseudo-spiritualism aside, the documentary is at its best when it hones in on two of the camp’s “stars,” Laurel and Maddy, as they deal with the jealousy of sleeping with the other’s boyfriend. Not because their tension and pain is particularly fun to watch, but because when the camera is not focusing on the attention-needy Jamie Morgan, it is actually doing a decent job at clearly depicting what goes wrong when a misogynist is allowed to create a warped sense of the universe and charge money upon entrance. Maddy is devastated when her boyfriend, Ryan, sleeps with Laurel. But the camp and its followers are adamant that jealousy is a sign of weakness, that polygamy is natural and mandatory, and that fidelity is nothing more than a social institution. Maddy is left to purge these feelings and forgive and embrace Laurel once again. Then kiss her and engage in an orgy.

As a documentarian, Morgan is extremely biased. There are a multitude of other elements that could have made this film more credible. The connection to aliens, for instance. The film devotes an entire three minutes to camp-goers’ matter-of-fact admittance that they know aliens exist, and that they believe themselves to be aliens. Three minutes. Then it’s back to Jamie Morgan walking around with a guilty hard-on, trying to justify to himself (and the audience, especially the audience) why he should be allowed to stick it in to the many that are willing, despite his “lovely” girlfriend back home in London. (A rather self-serving scene later on shows him owning up to his actions over the phone, with very sorrowful tears over his girlfriend’s hurt and pain. Why didn’t he interject here and just tell her, “Paul Lowe, our spiritual guru, says you’re an idiot for feeling jealous?”)

The other incredibly biased aspect of the film is its treatment of homosexuality. From day one, Paul Lowe demands of his paying subjects that they open themselves up, free themselves from inhibitions and allow the many facets of human sexuality to flourish, to allow them to act on urges that they wouldn’t have acted upon back in the comfort and safety of their homes. So it’s disappointing when the only screen time for homosexuality occurs when a gay man decides he wants to sleep with Laurel, and the many instances when the women want to kiss each other. It’s in these moments when the viewer understands that while some of the seminarians actually may come away changed and affected, most of the others may be in it for the tail. And, if that were the case, wouldn’t they have preferred hiring the services of a call girl? Wouldn’t it have been cheaper?

Charlie Ortiz - Writer

DVD'S:

Dumplings (2004)

Directed by: Fruit Chan

Written by: Lilian Lee

Starring: Ling Bai, Tony Leung Ka Fai, Miriam Yeung Chin Wah.

It’s been a while since I’ve been truly disturbed by a film. I guess that’s thanks in part to the American horror genre and all of its ineffective gore: Hostel, The Hills Have Eyes, House of 1,000 Corpses and House of Wax, just to name a few. Japanese horror flicks like Ringu and The Grudge do, however, have an effect on me (it’s that little kid thing, man, it freaks me out) but the overall willies feeling hasn’t really happened to me in a long time. I guess I should be thanking the Chinese director Fruit Chan for achieving what others have failed to do.

I originally saw Dumplings in its short film version as part of the Three Extremes, an Asian horror film collection. I highly recommend the collection but “Dumplings” was by far the best of the three short films (Chan-wook Park’s short “Cut” came in a close second and the last one, “Box,” directed by Takashi Miike, was my least favorite). Recently (late at night, as usual) I happened to be browsing through the Sundance channel and discovered that the full-length version of “Dumplings” was playing. Originally when I saw the shorter version I concluded that the story was great but I felt that it had been rushed—now I know why. The endings are also very different; I’m not sure which I like better but they are both interesting in their own way.

The story deals with youth and the things that we are willing to do to retain or recover it. The three main characters in our sick tale of vanity are Mrs. Li, Auntie Lei and Mr. Li. Mrs. Li is an aging soap-opera star looking for a way to preserve her youth and regain the love of her rich, unfaithful husband. Auntie Lei is a sixty-year-old woman that sells homemade dumplings and promises youth to whomever wants to pay for it. Of course, the fact that she looks 30 (thanks to the special ingredient in her dumplings) also helps to attract plenty of business. Mr. Li is the aforementioned rich, unfaithful husband that has noticed a change in his wife but his curiosity leads him right to Auntie Lei and her secret of youth. As the story progresses things become more and more desperate for everyone except Auntie Lei. She seems to be the source of evil in their lives, granting her customers both their greatest wish and their greatest nightmare. At the end of the film you are left asking one very important question: What are you willing to do to regain your youth?

Juanmarcos@picturesandframesmagazine.com

“Dan and Casey at the Bat:” “The West Wing” - Season 7 and “Sports Night” reviewed.

About three weeks ago, my boyfriend and I decided to revive the Netflix queue with an Aaron Sorkin love-fest: “The West Wing” - Season 7 and all of “Sports Night,” as fast as we could mail them back. It was fantastic. Watching Josh and C.J. battle it out with Dan, Casey, and Natalie on the 8 o’clock news hour made me seriously question whether the best times of my life have actually been spent watching television.

The seventh season of “The West Wing” begins after the Democratic and Republican primaries, with Matt Santos and Arnold Vinick squaring off for the 2006 presidential election. It’s hard to imagine that the show could top its own carefully hewn idealism, but Santos (Jimmy Smits), with his chiseled jaw and complete lack of political cynicism, manages to give Toby Ziegler a run for his money. 

That said, the show has changed a lot. With Josh running the Santos campaign, C.J. running the White House, and Leo campaigning on his own, the staff is pretty well divided. Watching the show feels a little bit like watching a group of seasoned runners who long ago split for different teams, but still get together every other Friday to reminisce at the local pub. It’s still great television, but it’s nothing like the good old days.

“Sports Night” is the opposite extreme – at twenty minutes per episode, the show is raw, uneven, but often brilliant comedy. Sorkin’s idealism tends to stick out around the edges – there’s a lot of self-conscious talk about the show’s African American managing editor, the implicit misogyny of the sports world, and the ritual self-examination of the liberal elite. But there’s also a sense that you’re watching something totally new – a sitcom that takes itself seriously, and isn’t afraid to make big statements.

The great thing about watching the two together is that they really are two halves of the same package. Sorkin has spent the best years of his career writing about writers struggling to make it – whether it’s two co-anchors working on an evening sports program, a pair of comedy writers, or the assistant communications chief struggling to help his boss hang on to the White House. If there is strength in adversity, it’s most painfully true for Sorkin’s writers, who constantly struggle to articulate his idealism on every page.

Sorkin has also managed to capture something really compelling about workplace drama. One of my favorite moments in “Sports Night” comes when Natalie, the perky assistant producer, hands Dan an audition tape to review, and he has to choose between boosting her confidence and telling her the truth – that she’s not quite ready for broadcast yet. This is a great exchange, because it puts Dan’s integrity on the line with Natalie’s career. Sorkin deals with the drama of the workplace in a way that does not denigrate or demean it – his characters are silly and often ridiculous about their work, but they are also passionate about what they do.

If “The Office” makes us cringe for hitting too close to home, “The West Wing” and “Sports Night” create an ideal of what home should be – in this case, on the office couch, trading suits at 7 o’clock in the morning because we just can’t bear to leave the office. There’s a certain adolescent pleasure for a struggling 20-something to watch a group of smart and articulate 30-somethings do their jobs and do them well. It’s like watching a snapshot of exactly where you want to be in ten or fifteen years – hassled and overworked, and loving every minute of it.  Lusting for the office is a weird thing to wish for, but if art is about living vicariously, I want to live forever in Sorkin’s world.

Katie Gradowski – Temp Jockey

Photo Courtesy © Touchtone Pictures

Déjà vu

Night Interior: The Brooklyn Gang, along with special guest star Lily the Editor, have sat down to once again bring a little joy into our readers lives. Knowing that somewhere out there you’re reading this and hoping that you don’t laugh out loud and scare the person in the next cubicle brings a smile to my face. This month we’re bringing you Déjà vu and, yes, it’s one of those time travel movies that if you try and think about too hard you’ll end up crazed and muttering to yourself in a dark room watching The Lake House and crying. That’s why we’ve watched this movie—so that you won’t have to. We’re givers.

The preview’s roll and it’s The Queen.

Richard: Who the fuck is gonna think that somebody who’s watching Déjà vu would also be interested in watching The Queen?!

Chris: (Chris was the only person who seriously wanted to watch Déjà vu when it was out in the theater so he feels compelled to come to its defense) Why wouldn’t they?

Lily: Are you saying that people who watch Denzel Washington movies are black and black people don’t care about the Queen? Is that what you’re insinuating?

Jeanne: Or else it’s all the people that are watching it for Jim Caviezel.

Richard: No! It’s because they’re Tony Scott fans and they’re not gonna care.

Lily: Tony Scott directed this?

Chris: He also did Man on Fire.

Richard: Man on Fire is like the one movie that I don’t hate Denzel Washington in.

Lily: Here’s the thing about that. It’s like the last time where that stupid technique that he uses actually didn’t seem lame.

Richard: The blue?

Lily: Yeah, the different filters.

Richard: The Michael Mann look? (to Jeanne) You’re sitting really really close to me right now, Jeanne.

Jeanne: (whispers) I could get closer.

Richard: (laughs uncomfortably) Please get your hands away from my rectum.

Lily: Why don’t you like Denzel Washington?

Richard: I think he’s very wooden. I don’t think that he has a lot of talent.

Jeanne: And he hates black people.

Richard: No, I think he was good in Malcolm X and I think that he was good in Man on Fire.

Lily: Inside Man? Bad?

Richard: I thought that he was okay in Inside Man.

Lily: Hurricane?

Richard: Oh, and I thought he was good in Hurricane. I thought that he should have won the Oscar for Hurricane and then he won for fucking Training Day.

Lily: Yeah, it was retarded.

Chris: No! I love Training Day.

Jeanne: That’s ‘cause you want to be a cop who can freak out and beat people up.

Chris: What was bad about it?

Lily: No, I don’t think it was bad but I don’t think that it was what people made it out to be—like this amazing, revolutionary film.

Chris: I don’t know about that but I really like it a lot.

Richard: I saw Harsh Times. It has Christian Bale saying, “Yo!”

Lily: Oscar winning?

Richard: Maybe he didn’t say “Yo.” Maybe he did say “Yo.”

Lily: I mean Training Day kicks the pants off of King Arthur.

Chris: I don’t know about that. I don’t remember what else was out that year.

Richard: Every sentence he said I expected him to say, “Esse.”

Lily: What?

Chris: Wait, so what we came up with is that you don’t actually mind Denzel Washington at all.

Lily: Yeah, ‘cause you seem to like a lot of his movies.

Richard: I like some of his movies but I think that he’s way overrated and I wouldn’t see a movie just because it has Denzel Washington.

Lily: Wow, that’s really amazing to me.

Richard: I think that he’s kind of hot.

Lily: Kind of hot?? They did a study that said he has the perfect face.

Jeanne: (To Lily who has opened up her computer exposing the creepy, 70’s porn star looking, mustachioed face of John Mayer) Oh, God! Put that away!

Richard: Are you fucking kidding me?

Lily: Yeah, that he has a perfectly symmetrical face.

Richard: (To Jeanne) Are you trying to give me a high five?

Chris: So does Michelle Pfeiffer.

Jeanne: No, I was trying to hide John Mayer’s fucking creepy porn star face.

Richard: It’s not a porn star face. It looks like a dirty sanchez though.

And just when you think that it’ll never happen…the movie begins! It’s New Orleans and people are arriving to board a ferry in the harbor.

Richard: There’s a bus. There are sailors. Are they homosexuals, Chris?

Jeanne: (Shouts to Lily who’s not taking this reviewing thing seriously and has chosen the start of the movie to go to the kitchen.) Lily! You’re missing it. There are sailors and the Navy! (Richard begins to sing “In the Navy” in the background.)

Val Kilmer’s name flashes through the opening credits.

Richard: Val Kilmer. Fuck me.

Lily: As in, like, Val Kilmer fuck me or…

Richard: No as in like fuck me, Val Kilmer’s in this movie.

Lily: Oh, thank god.

Richard: He was all right in Spartan.

Lily: And he was actually really good in…

Richard: (At the same time) Oh, he was great in Kiss Kiss Bang Bang. Basically this whole commentary is going to be me saying ‘Yeah, I hate that guy, I hate that…no, no, I like him.’

Chris: (At the same time) It’s gonna be ‘I hate that guy, I hate that guy…well, what about this movie? Oh, I really like him in that. Well, what about this movie. Yeah, I really enjoyed him in that, too.’

Adam Goldberg’s name flashes through the opening credits.

Richard: I like Adam Goldberg.

Jeanne: Here you go. Did you like him in The Saint? ‘Cause you couldn’t have liked him in that.

Richard: I never saw The Saint.

Lily: That movie was atrocious. He had like a German accent.

Richard: Not only is Jesus in this movie but Pnub is in this movie! (Okay, after some Wikipedia searching I’ve found out what the fuck Richard was talking about. So Pnub was one of the guys in Idle Hands.)

Everyone laughs except Jeanne.

Jeanne: Who’s Pnub?

No one answers. So sad. Instead Lily and Richard discuss the pronunciation possibilities of Pnub.

Jeanne: Was that like Sufjan. (Referring to singer Sufjan Stevens whose name is pronounced like sixteen different ways in our house. Most commonly, we just call him Chiffon.) If Sufjan Stevens ever reads these I would like him to know that we call him Chiffon.

Richard: Also we live in your neighborhood and Lily wants you!

Jeanne: Lily sometimes stands outside your house naked.

Lily: Oh My God! I don’t!

Richard: Singing your songs.

I almost forgot that we were watching a movie. The opening scene of Déjà vu has everyone on the ferry and it’s pulling out of the harbor. A little girl (We’re pretty sure that it’s Dakota Fanning’s less evil little sister) accidentally drops her little dolly off the side of the ferry. We all immediately go to a dark place and imagine little Elle Fanning diving off the ferry after her doll. I don’t know why we harbor such hostility toward the Fannings’.

Lily: I like being on those ferries that you can bring your car on.

Chris: I don’t think you’ll like being on this one.

Lily: Is it gonna sink?

Jeanne: Do you like that one from The Ring. You could bring your car on that one.

Lily: No!

Richard: Oh my god! That was the best scene.

Jeanne: And a horse.

Richard: I’d never seen anything like that before.

Jeanne: A horse plummeting to its death?

Richard: Yeah.

Jeanne: The best part is that they did kill a horse in the making of that scene. They killed a couple. They had to shoot the scene like ten times. Whole families of horses were slaughtered.

Richard: I don’t think Naomi Watts would have participated in that.

The Beach Boys “Don’t Worry Baby” plays as the ferry sails out to its imminent demise or at least that’s what we think we saw in the commercial for this movie.

Chris: I like how the Beach Boys are precedent to mass death.

Lily: Is that what’s really going to happen?

Chris: It was in the commercial. Didn’t you see the trailer?

Richard: Jerry Bruckheimer produced this movie. It’s gonna be awesome.

Jeanne: That sounded like sarcasm.

As “Don’t Worry Baby” blares, we see a man peak into one of the cars that’s parked in the lower decks of the ferry. He sees a bomb just seconds before it explodes and takes out the whole ferry, Elle Fanning and all. Turns out she would have been better off had she jumped off the side after her doll.

Chris: It’s like John Denver in Final Destination. Now whenever we hear the Beach Boys…

Richard: That’s the song from the end of Never Been Kissed.

Jeanne: Now when you hear it you’ll always think of burning bodies…

Lily: Is it?

Richard: Remember when he goes to meet her…

Lily: At the baseball stadium?

Richard: And you think that he’s not gonna show up but he shows up…

Lily: And he’s Michael Vartan and so hot!

Chris: Do you know what happens after the credits roll? He explodes!

Richard: Drew Barrymore survives though. She’s a survivor.

Lily: She survived that lame movie with Hugh Grant.

Richard: (Bringing the banter back to the film) Look, there’s Denzel Washington. He’s totally the star of the F-ing movie.

Jeanne: He should get an Oscar for this.

Lily: (To Richard) Dude, you’re totally going to come off as a racist in this by the way.

Richard: I am?!

Jeanne: Richard’s a white supremacist!

Lily: ‘Cause here’s the thing, he’s (referring to Denzel) loved by everyone…by everyone!

Richard: I know!

Chris: Nigga Please! Richard is the least racist person I know!

Jeanne: (To Chris) I am not putting that into this review! You just shaved your head…don’t start saying shit like that!

Lily: (Getting back to serious talk) No, I actually…you’re not the only person to say that about him…as far as acting goes. I actually like him a lot.

Chris: I think he’s good.

Lily: I mean he’s no Ed Norton.

Jeanne: (To Lily) You only like Ed Norton because he’s a white supremacist. It’s the only reason that you like Richard.

Lily: (Laughing) Because he’s a white supremacist?! Wow, you really are a self-hating gay.

Richard: That’s why I never take off my shirt. I don’t want you guys to see the swastika.

Lily: (Attacking Richard and trying to pull up his shirt. This isn’t the first time she’s done this to him either. There’s always some excuse…Nazism, ingrown chest hairs, aliens…) Show us your swastika! Show us your…Jeanne! I see it there.

Jeanne: Is that why your nipple always feels erect? Is it part of the tattoo?

Richard: Stop talking about my nipples, man.

Lily: And all of the piercings he has. That means you were dating Fairuza Balk.

There’s a collective “Eww” from everyone on the futon.

Lily: There’s one that’s good for the “Kill, Fuck, Marry” game.

Jeanne: I think that she’d be too easy to be the kill.

Lily: Hold on, it’d be Fairuza Balk…who else? Who else is really disgusting?

Jeanne: Oh…Chloe Sevingy.

Chris: Rose McGowen?

Lily: No, Rose McGowen is the most positive one in that light.

Jeanne: Bijou Phillips?

Richard and Lily: Yes!

Lily: Okay, who would you guys?

Richard: I would actually marry Chloe Sevigny.

Lily: No way! She’s been with Vincent Gallo!

Richard: Well, I’d just marry her. I wouldn’t have to fuck her.

Jeanne: You didn’t see Big Love. She was a shitty wife in Big Love.

Richard: I’d fuck Fairuza Balk and kill Bijou Phillips.

Lily: Aww, man. Those were some bad options.

Richard: (Back to the movie) Oh, man, what was that? Part of the bomb or something? Denzel…

Lily: It looks like someone’s retainer.

Richard: I wish that Jodie Foster would show up and liven things up.

Lily: It’s been five minutes. That’s so sad.

Jeanne: This is the first dialogue.

Chris: (In what will become a growing schism between him actually wanting to watch the movie and Lily and Richard thinking that they would have rather reviewed Charlotte’s Web and showing that by laughing drunkenly through all of the dialogue) Shhhh!

A heavy set cop surveys the crime scene while drinking a diet Pepsi.

Lily: He’s drinking a diet Pepsi.

Richard: He should, fat fuck.

Lily: Joe drinks diet Pepsi.

Richard: Is Joe a fat fuck?

Lily: No. I always wonder, ‘Why drink diet Pepsi?’

Richard: I used to drink diet.

Lily: Really? But isn’t it sweeter.

Richard: It tasted good.

Jeanne: I actually like it.

Richard: It probably gave me cancer. That’s awesome. I actually remember it saying on the can “May cause cancer in small laboratory animals” and I was like, ‘Well, I’m not a laboratory animal, so…’

Jeanne: And that’s not nearly as intimidating as those chips that said, “May cause anal leakage.”

Lily: Or the Slim Jims that said, “Made from mechanically separated chicken.”

Jeanne: I only eat chicken parts that have been separated by hand.

Lily: Let me tell you, Val Kilmer gets more and more bloated every time…

Jeanne: That’s Val Kilmer??

Richard: That’s Val Kilmer, yo.

Lily: I don’t know. All of his weight seems to go to his face.

Richard: It’s all going to his neck.

Lily: Maybe he’s having that George Lucas thing! Maybe he has a goiter!

Chris: He has George Lucas syndrome!

Jeanne: Denzel turned his cap around. This is when he goes bad boy.

Richard: Oh, I thought that was when he goes down.

Jeanne: On Val Kilmer?

Lily, Richard and Chris: (groan) Oh, no.

Lily: No one should be subjected to that.

Richard: I wouldn’t wish that on Denzel.

Denzel and Val Kilmer wander around the scene of the ferry explosion. Denzel is a super badass and tastes dirt and stuff to determine if this was an accident or a bomb.

Richard, Lily and Jeanne are talking and laughing and paying no attention to Denzel’s efforts to solve the ferry explosion.

Chris: Am I going to have to watch this whole movie again by myself!?

Jeanne: Yes.

Richard: And then you can experience Déjà vu.

Someone runs up to Denzel to tell him that a body has been pulled out of the water and they want a profile.

Richard: They probably pulled a lot of bodies out of the water. Why would that one be special?

Jeanne: Maybe it was wearing a shirt that said, “I blew up the boat.”

Richard: (Snorts very hard and very loud) Ow, that hurt my noise. Don’t make me snort anymore, Jeanne, unless you’re going to give me heroin.

Jeanne: I get extra points.

Chris continues to get huffier and huffier about all of the talking over the movie. Dude, that’s what these reviews are all about!

Richard: I thought that we picked it because it was a bad movie.

Jeanne: Chris wanted to see it. He also wanted to see Next.

Chris: I know that’s going to be bad.

Lily: That, actually, you should review when it comes out. You should also review National Treasure 2 when it comes out.

Richard: That was where it all began for us.

Jeanne: That’s why it’ll be awesome when we review National Treasure 2.

Richard: I don’t know if I’ll be alive by the time that comes out.

Jeanne: Can I get your air conditioner?

Denzel gets a call about the body that washed up on shore. It’s a woman with burns over a lot of her body. Denzel says that they should expect to see a lot more bodies like that washing up. BUT it turns out that this woman’s body washed up on shore like an hour before the explosion! Denzel heads to the coroner’s office where we watch them look her over.

Jeanne: (Stating the obvious) Hey, that’s the girl from the preview. That’s the girl he wants to save.

Lily: She’s beautiful.

Jeanne: Um…

Lily: Not burned.

Denzel walks up to the dead woman’s white mom and asks her to come with him so that she can identify the body.

Chris: That girl’s black.

Jeanne: My mom’s white!

Chris: I’m just saying…Richard was thinking it.

Jeanne: That’s ‘cause you’re both the white supremacists of the house.

Richard: I am not! Look at him…he has a shaved head.

Jeanne: You have Nazi nipples.

Lily: (Laughing) Nazi nipples…what do Nazi nipples look like?

Jeanne and Chris: Little swastikas.

Chris: We’re missing the movie!

Jeanne, Lily and Richard launch into a conversation about stealing and sniffing dead people’s clothes. It was brought on by Denzel taking one of the dead girl’s sweaters for evidence.

Jeanne: Maybe he keeps a collection of women’s clothing that he gets from murder victims.

Lily: Maybe that’ll be the twist.

Richard: Yeah, I’m sure that Denzel Washington would be really up for playing a cross-dresser. (Sarcastically) He’s super gay friendly.

Lily: Do you think he hates gays?! Is that what you’re saying?

Jeanne: Except for the ones that he sleeps with.

Chris: (To Lily) That’s Isaiah Washington. They all look the same to you!

Richard: Oh My God!

Jeanne: I’m missing the sweater talk.

Lily: (Deeply concerned) No really, did you hear something about him? Does he not like gays? Who says?

Richard: Remember when Will Smith was going to do Six Degrees of Separation?

Lily: Yeah, he did it.

Richard: Denzel Washington said something to him like, “Oh, you better watch out. You better not kiss a guy.” You should look it up online.

Lily: I am gonna look it up online.

Jeanne: He was in Philadelphia though.

Lily: Playing a guy that was really uncomfortable with it though. I just thought that he was a really good actor.

Richard and Jeanne laugh.

Lily: (Formulating her google search) Denzel Washington + HATE GAY?

Chris: No, it’s like Natural Born Killers where Woody Harrelson is actually insane.

Richard: Philadelphia was actually a documentary.

Jeanne: Richard said Tom Hanks is dead.

Chris: (Realizing that we’ve all just ignored ten minutes of the movie we’re supposed to be watching) We totally also just missed this whole thing for a second time! Uh oh, Déjà vu!

Jeanne: Oh. We’re gonna watch this scene like seven times!

Richard: We don’t usually get movies that are this involved. Like the Covenant. You don’t have to pay attention.

Chris: I would like to point out that Richard’s doing the robot.

Jeanne: That’s weird.

Richard: You’re weird.

Jeanne: Your mom’s weird.

Richard: My mom is weird.

Lily: (Actually looking up whether Denzel Washington is a homophobe) It doesn’t say anything about homophobia but it does say that he’s refused to kiss his white, female co-stars.

Richard: Who would want to kiss Julia Roberts. She would suck him in completely with her gigantic mouth. David was wondering if Charlotte’s Web is gonna have a scene where like the spider lays down on a bed laughing with like her webs flowing around her.

Jeanne: I think it’s going to turn out that he was on the ferry…in an alternate universe.

Richard: I think he set the bomb in an alternate universe.

Jeanne: Your mom set the bomb in an alternate universe.

Richard: Oh my god, my mom is the bomb!

Jeanne: …in an alternate universe.

Chris: Jim Caviezel’s the bad guy ‘cause he hasn’t been introduced yet.

Jeanne: Jim Caviezel can’t be the bad guy ‘cause he’s J.C.

Lily: You know what movie I like with Jim Caviezel?

Chris: Frequency?

Lily: Yeah!

Jeanne: Ugh. I hate Frequency.

Lily: Really?

Jeanne: I thought it was sappy.

Lily: When did that come out?

Jeanne: A while ago.

Lily: I think that I saw that in the theater with Greg.

Jeanne: On a date?

Lily: No, it wasn’t a date.

Chris: Did you guys make out?

Lily: No. We had sex though.

Jeanne: That makes it a date.

Chris: No it doesn’t. They didn’t even kiss.

Jeanne: They had sex without kissing? Did he pay you at the end?

Richard: Everything that I know about sex I learned from Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman.

Adam Goldberg comes onscreen. He’s playing some nerd working with a government agency that can look back in time or something. I don’t know. We’re not really paying much attention.

Lily: Why’s he always playing a nerd?

Richard: He has sex with Christina Ricci.

Lily: You jealous?

Richard: Of her.

Lily: Richard isn’t doing well. This movie isn’t going to make for a good review.

Chris: Probably not but I’m still interested in the movie.

On that note, Lily and Richard give up and go to bed.

The End.

The Saturday Night Itinerant Brooklyn Gang is:

Jeanne Lopez, Cookie Monster

Rick Sayre, Pop-Culture Critic

Christopher Wilson, Vampire Hunter.

With Special Guest: 

Lily Percy as the Editor

BrooklynGang@picturesandframesmagazine.com

MUSIC:

Grey Gardens vs. Spring Awakening

The 2007 Tony Awards will be handed out on June 10^th, so I thought I’d take the opportunity to review the cast albums for two of the big contenders for “Best Musical.” Spring Awakening led the nominations with 11 nods, followed closely by Grey Gardens with 10. What I realized while listening to these albums is that when it comes to musical theatre, I am a traditionalist (with maybe the exceptions of Hedwig and Debbie Does Dallas, the latter which is actually pretty traditional if you disregard the fact that it’s based on a 70s porn film). Cursory listens to the highly touted Spring Awakening led me to shrug it off as one of those shows that tries very hard to be edgy, but doesn’t quite pull it off. Upon closer listen, I found that I still felt that way for the most part.

There are a few exceptions, such as the opener, “Mama who bore me” and “The dark I know well.” “The word of your body” is also a beautiful song. However, I don’t know if it is possible for a Broadway recording to have an electric guitar that doesn’t sound cheesy and canned. There are some good moments throughout, but they don’t make up for an album that seems lifeless, or a show that seems to take itself way too seriously. Perhaps it’s the subject matter? I’ve certainly reached an age where I roll my eyes at teen angst. Maybe this is a musical for a younger generation. It’s possible that teens and 20something Broadway babies feel about Spring Awakening the way I felt about Rent when it came out, or the way another generation felt about Hair. At the time they were both revolutionary musicals that spoke to a new generation in a way the musicals of their parents never did. Plus, it has lots of cursing and taboo sex! It gets kudos though for not being another film spin-off. Um. Hold that thought.

At age 33, I’m equally distant from my teen angst years as I am to the years of middle-aged loss and despair that Grey Gardens features, and yet that show is the one that I found myself really connecting to. Based on the cult documentary film of the same name about an aging mother/daughter living in a decaying Long Island mansion, Grey Gardens seems like an odd inspiration for a musical. The first act, set in 1941, takes place when the house called “Grey Gardens” was in its splendor—which provides a glimpse into the past of Edith Bouvier and Little Edie Beale, and helps to explain how they end up where they do in act two, which is set in 1973, during the filming of the documentary.

Anchoring the album is Christine Ebersole, who amazes as Edith in the first act and Little Edie in the second. Act one’s sophisticated, elegant songs could have been written in Broadway’s heyday by Rodgers and Hammerstein or the Gershwins. (Act two is darker and funnier in the 70s Sondheim style.) May Louise Wilson, a Tony nominee for the 1998 revival of Cabaret, is a real firecracker as the now-elderly Edith reflecting on what she had (“The cake I had”) as opposed to Ebersole’s Edie who is constantly haunted by everything she never got. Never is that more beautifully expressed than in the gorgeous song, “Around the world.” I should note that there are two recordings of Grey Gardens available, the original having been recorded for the off-Broadway production last year. The differences between them are evident in the first act of the show, which was heavily revamped, with several songs replaced, including the delightful “Being Bouvier.” The finale is also quite different from the original version. Both recordings are fantastic and hint that the creative team of Scott Frankel and Michael Korie is one to watch.

In honor of Little Edie, here’s the final word:

Grey Gardens: Staunch!

Spring Awakening: Shove it under the goddamn bed!

Rick@picturesandframesmagazine.com

The Band - The Best of a Musical History

For music fans interested in a variety of styles such as rock ‘n roll, folk, jazz, blues and even a little country, and who are curious to see if they can be fused together, The Band is the group of musicians to check out. Since becoming a fan of their work a little over a year ago, I’ve continuously been amazed at their ability to find music and storytelling in anything they approach.

The latest compilation to be released is The Band: The Best of a Musical History. It is, in effect, a cliff’s notes version of the six-disc box-set A Musical History that was released in 2005. This condensed version includes several recordings made before the band adopted the name, The Band. Featuring a version of “Who Do You Love?” backing up Ronnie Hawkins, and a track as Levon & The Hawks, the album begins where The Band did. Also included are songs The Band performed backing up Bob Dylan: “Can You Please Crawl Out Your Window?” and “Forever Young.”

As far as The Band’s material goes, the obvious tracks like “The Weight,” “I Shall Be Released” and “Stage Fright” are here, as well as the lesser known but wonderful “Life is a Carnival” and “King Harvest (Has Surely Come).” The rest is a musical hodge-podge of hidden gems, live performances and earlier versions of songs from their seven studio albums.

The real treat here, however, is the DVD, available in the two-disc deluxe edition. It includes a live version of Marvin Gaye’s “Don’t Do It,” a staple at Band concerts, plus three other performances from live shows. Additionally, and for my money the best part of the disc, there is footage of The Band in their home studio in Woodstock, recording a take of one of their finest songs “King Harvest (Has Surely Come).”

For people being introduced to The Band for the first time, it’s better to go with 2000’s “Greatest Hits” on Capitol Records’ The Band: Remasters series. But for those looking to further their fascination with these gifted musicians, this is a musical history you’ll want to discover.

David@picturesandframesmagazine.com

Rufus Wainwright – Release The Stars

Rufus Wainwright’s voice is like a drug—intoxicating, exciting and completely overwhelming. I look forward to his albums the way that addicts look forward to their next dirty fix—it is a want and craving that somehow transforms itself into a need.

Surprisingly, not everyone feels this way about Wainwright’s music. Much like Bjork, Tom Waits, Radiohead, etc., all of which are artists that many cannot be bothered to actually listen to, Wainwright has a rabid cult following that allows him to sell out concerts in San Francisco, New York and pretty much all over Europe, yet rarely, if ever, provides him with any semblance of mainstream success. Maybe it’s his voice, which is operatic and soars above even the most basic pop songs. Or maybe it is his unyielding bravado—performing “Gay Messiah” onstage (a song that features lyrics such as “baptized in come”) wearing a toga, a crown of thorns and a drag queen’s mask while two hunky Roman soldiers crucify him to a cross.

Either way, I admire Wainwright and his music for many of the same reasons that I admire and love Freddie Mercury: for his complete disregard for society’s conventions and views, and for his conviction to follow his own voice, no matter the cost. Release the Stars is Wainwright’s fifth release and he has said in various interviews that it is essentially a summation of his entire musical career to date. I agree. The album features many of the trademarks that fans have come to expect and love from Wainwright: melodies that sound both familiar and completely original; a backing orchestra filled with abundant strings that call to mind the powerful arrangements of many luminary composers; raw, sly and sincere lyrics that cut straight into your heart.

“Do I disappoint you/in just being lonely/and not one of the elements/that you can call your one and only,” Wainwright sings in the haunting album opener, “Do I disappoint you?” Wainwright can rest easy as his new album, with its beautiful, bittersweet love songs (“Slideshow,” “Not Ready to Love”), catchy pop tunes (“Between My Legs,” “Sanssouci”) and sweeping epics (“Tulsa,” “Going to a Town,” “Release the Stars”), is everything but disappointing. Elton John says that there is no better songwriter working today than Rufus Wainwright, and as much as I hate to agree with anything that catty man says, he’s completely right. I haven’t been able to stop listening nor singing any of the songs off of Release the Stars, and I don’t reckon that I will be able to anytime soon.

Lily@picturesandframesmagazine.com

BOOKS:

McSweeney’s 23

With Stories from: Wells Tower, Roddy Doyle, Shawn Vestal, Ann Beattie, Chris Bachelder, Deb Olin Unferth, Christopher Stokes, April Wilder, Clancy Martin & Caren Beilin

Don’t let anyone lie to you: the short story is in renaissance. Granted, short stories themselves are not so much in renaissance as is the mainstream accessibility to them. With magazines including McSweeney’s to thank, there’s little trend more important among the collegiate and post-collegiate arts community than that of hunkering down to snag a few pages of a short before the business of life settles in on the day. With all this said, short story writers still get the shaft in the moneymaking and fame-developing games. Hence, when the opportunity arises on these online pages, short stories will be written about, consumed morsel-by-morsel as if we were mothers nibbling on our newborn’s toes. (If this never happened to you as a child, frankly, I pity you. Baby toes are quite a delicacy.)

In McSweeney’s 23 estranged brothers, intellectual teenagers, negligent fathers and murderous Polacks vie for attention in stories that traverse the range of genre and tone. The compilation opens with Wells Tower’s “Retreat,” a look at two brothers as they, and as they always have, fall apart from each other, dancing with intimacy only rarely. The distinction between the macho façade of the story’s characters belies their underlying desire to meet one another in a shared space of emotional comfort. Quite lovely in its brash, masculine themes, “Retreat” reveals male connections in a mode of tenderness that’s not often explored.

Following this, Roddy Doyle’s “Black Hoodie” takes on cultural and racial prejudices through the eyes of teenagers. Without falling into the didactic, Doyle allows his characters to experience and comment on prejudice with unique and engaging voices. The vernacular he works with is that of a young person’s mind with its “kind of” and “likes” splashed in not for color but for the creation of authentic voices. It’s an easy and fun story that highlights society’s worst, and it’s perhaps this lightness of spirit that renders the story so effecting.

With “My Son, There Exists Another World Alongside Our Own,” Chris Bachelder digs into the tenuous relationship between a father and son with humor. Told as a letter written from the negligent parent, the story reaps the benefits of man’s encounters with sex—or rather his inability to accept sex. Writes Bachelder: “You will suspect sex on public transport, sex beneath restaurant table, sex behind yonder rock. Son, if my letter has a single point, it is this: In such suspicion you will be right.” From there on, the story unfolds in laugh-out-loud fashion and pinpoints just how scared we all can be of good things.

Also stand out in the compilation are Deb Olin Unferth’s “Bride” and Caren Beilin’s “I’m the Boss So Do What I Say,” both of which deal with romantic love gone awry. Both told from male points of view, the plodding of each story harkens to a sense of unexplored helplessness. Both main characters, for one reason or another, are unable to unglue themselves from the women they loved and lusted after. A gripping honesty defines both pieces, each welcoming the reader with grace into worlds bereft of peace of mind.

At alternating moments funny and sad, McSweeney’s 23 is in absolutely perfect form, a reminder that the short story form deserves kudos. It’s a creative medium right now that’s just that damn good.

Noralil@picturesandframesmagazine.com

No One Belongs Here More Than You

Stories by Miranda July

There’s something about Miranda July; perhaps the charm that sketches her equal parts the precocious child and sensual misfit. Her works are often spoken of in terms of preciousness, a term slathered over her debut feature film Me and You and Everyone We Know, yet July’s concerns reach into the dark places of the heart, seeking out there a kernel of emotional truth and in such slip away from the precious to—what some critics have already called—the essential.

Over a series of sixteen quiet but poignant stories from this debut collection, July traverses the worlds of yearning loners, exploring their desires for romantic and familial love and for connection that runs beneath surface layers. While “Majesty” digs deep into the organically perverse and extends a warm embrace to the sexually explicit, “How to Tell Stories to Children” avoids any shock value, refusing to entangle itself in its own bitterness and rather errs on the side of kind-heartedness. There’s always angst in these stories, but the levels of its expression flow in such a way as to create a constant mood explored from unexpected angles. It’s as if July here holds out a hand, pulling the reader along a narrative journey where her feet never hit the ground. The quality of her prose reveals a mysticism, a sense of life as both important and negligible, as if the moment matters and yet elusively it does not.

However, it ought be noted that the collection, much like Me and You and Everyone We Know, will not—moreover cannot—win over every reader. There’s a necessary hesitation with which a reader most approach this collection in that it’s quite specific, quite stylistic and quite markedly the brainchild of July’s blend of individual vision. Her perspective as a writer pervades every line of the collection, much in the way say, that Jack Kerouac’s perspective infuses every line of his. With so little departure from the writers’ point of view to the page, No One Belongs Here More Than You creates an emotional space that’s beautiful and yet hard to visit. It seems to say too much that’s true, and yet that truth is so personal that it hits universality without living consistently in universality.

A collection for readers with a love of lyricism and the grit to accept both the dire and the hopeful, No One Belongs Here More Than You approaches classical themes while still pandering to its styles; it’s of the present and yet of anytime, an ungrounded although focused view of how man wants, needs and learns to reconcile these within his reality.

Noralil@picturesandframesmagazine.com

The Secret

Rhonda Byrne

On its surface, it’s a hopeful idea: Every man creates his life. He attracts onto himself all that he desires—be it wealth, love, good health or joy. He is the master of all because it’s only through his perceptions that everything exists and carries power as it does. It’s a historically attractive philosophical outlook, elevating man to a seemingly limitless spiritual arena and has catered to Christians, transcendentalist poets, scientists and hippies alike over the generations. Yet, as uplifting as the idea reads in these lines, the thesis is somewhat diminished in Rhonda Byrne’s bestseller The Secret.

Unabashedly commercial, the essay compilation, poorly strung together through pull quotes and with its transitions merely defined by minor shifts in font treatment, creates a situation of dual reaction. At once the book seduces, inoculating the consciousness with thoughts such as: “The feeling of love is the highest frequency you can emit.” or “Expectation is a powerful attractive force. Expect the things you want, and don’t expect the things you don’t want.” The messages, as innocuous as they appear at first, do reach the depths of some wholesome inkling desire within the ego to attain perfection.

Each page of The Secret promises betterment and a chance to reinvent circumstances for the positive. With the “Creative Process”—indeed capitalized as such with more than a bit of pretension—the dominant thought is to ask, believe and receive. All realities are summed in this tertiary process. First the request is presented to the mind; the mind embraces the request not as a potential but as an absolute; and, from this blind faith belief in the absolute, the reality manifests. Examples of this are peppered through the book; people heal themselves of terminal diseases, they overcome financial dilemmas, and they call lovers and friends into their lives. None of this is miraculous, says Byrne. It’s merely working with “The Secret”—also, irritatingly capitalized with pretension.

For a mainstream Western audience, the book plays upon the idealism and rugged individualism so prized in the successful, or at least semi-successful, capitalist environment. However, outside the scope of the often-limited worldview created by this socio-political state of general stability, the book’s demand for constant positive thinking and for creating life without regards to external influences works in complete naiveté. As often as it’s true that people create their own lives, it’s also true that the social landscape defines how a person responds to his own existence.

By neglecting this baseline reality, Byrne falls into the trap of explaining away mass moral pitfalls—for example, oh, say genocide—with this assertion: “If people believe they can be in the wrong place at the wrong time, and they have no control over outside circumstances, those thoughts of fear, separation, and powerlessness, if persistent, can attract them to being in the wrong place at the wrong time.” She supplements this by saying that communities of people radiate a frequency that coincides with the frequency of the event. Keep in mind; this is a new age book. Everyone in this world is made of energy.

On one level, this idea reinforces the generally embraced notion that mind state defines reality. If you believe you are weak, you are. If you believe you are alone, then you are alone. On another level, this idea is utterly nonsensical.

As a case in point, let’s briefly review the economic reality of the Holocaust. After World War I, Germany had a massive debt to repay the likes of which left thousands of citizens in abject poverty. With their historic sense of financial savvy intact, the intellects of the Jewish-Germany community remained comfortable as the pressures of poverty spread nationwide. Naturally, therefore, resentment of the have and have-nots flared, helped on no less by Adolf Hitler, and anti-Semitism sparked as much over culture as over economic strife. Now, according to Byrne’s model, the members of the affluent Jewish community would theoretically have been calling onto themselves individually all the best. Their thoughts would have focused on financial success, health and happiness. Yet, there’s that trickery genocide to consider. Essentially, the assertion reconciles the difference by saying that the affluent and successful Jews felt powerless during the events that led up to the development of the ghettos and concentration camps, and thereby attracted the creation of both. Or, more aptly put, using the “ask, believe and receive” model: the Jews asked for it. Frankly, that’s a hard pill to swallow, almost as hard a pill to swallow, as say a person charging a rape victim with, “Oh, she or he asked for it.”

Fittingly, on a note about global awareness, Byrne writes that she no longer reads news articles from the mainstream media. She finds them despairing and negative, the influence of which will infuse those two elements into her life. Although Byrne makes the solid point here that media does in fact play to the moral worst for marketability, her intimation that ignorance of global issues should be held above knowledge and positive action for change edges the border of horrific.

The litany of other complaints to lodge against The Secret includes: its intimation that if you want to be thin, you shouldn’t “observe”—aka hang out with or in any other way associate with—fat people; its utter redundancy al la this quote by Lisa Nichols “You have two sets of feelings: good feelings and bad feelings. And you know the difference between the two because one makes you feel good, and the other makes you feel bad,” and, Byrne’s inability to avoid the self-reflective without tagging a savior complex, as in the last lines of her biography, “and through her vision, bring joy to millions.”

Overall, The Secret serves one function and one only—to make money. As a self-help book, it’s little more than a reminder to read copious amounts of poetry, Eastern philosophy and religious text. It’s the book equivalent of a one-night stand, as quickly read and forgotten. For a killer dose of self-help, look to Carlos Castaneda, who even in his fiction and oddity, is at least entertaining.

Noralil@picturesandframesmagazine.com

FICTION:

“Moving Gum”

By Charlie Ortiz

“I want another dog,” I tell Nathan as we approach the two-for-one sushi place on St. Mark’s Place. “Over my dead body! We just got a dog, Charlie! What’s wrong with the one we have?” he asks me with the same tone he used the first time I brought up getting another dog, and every time after that. (I’m nothing, if not persistent.) “Besides,” he says finally, preparing to deliver the same killjoy line he’s used each and every one of the seven times I brought up getting another dog, the line that usually shuts me up, the line that stops my argument dead, “You don’t have any money for another dog.”

Which is the truth. Which is why I haven’t gone behind his back already and bought another puppy from a breeder on the Web. Which is why I keep bringing up the dog topic: in the hopes that he’ll buy me one. We’re at the restaurant now, and we’re inside, but it’s crowded, real crowded, and there are no seats. The hostess says we can sit outside, by the entrance to the restaurant. There are only two tables outside, the one we’re sitting at, and the one where the Mexican family is sitting at. The hostess hands us our menus.

“What about Willow? Don’t you love her? You just got her a month ago. How could you not want her anymore?” he asks me incredulously. “Of course I love Willow,” I say. “It’s precisely because of Willow that I want another dog. I want a companion for her! What if we get better jobs and we’re not home for hours?! I at least want her to have a little brother,” I continue. But he’s looking at me with a slightly annoyed face. “First off, no money. Second, what makes you think I want a boy dog, anyway? They mark everything!” Nathan tells me, matter-of-factly. “Well,” I tell him, “Willow doesn’t love me nearly as much as she should. She’s defective. I want another dog!”

He’s responding now. Something about not knowing what I’d be getting myself into, but I’m distracted by the four pieces of gum on the floor, right near the door to the restaurant. Three of them are purplish, but one is bright pink, and all are the size of my thumb. Nathan is still talking about Willow and how much she loves me and how every time he wakes up, Willow is curled up like a ball next to me, not him. I’m about to reply when out of the corner of my eye I think I see the bright pink gum start to move.

From Nathan’s point of view, I must look crazy: staring at the floor, jaw dropped open in disbelief, not talking, not even blinking. From somewhere in the distance I can hear his voice asking, “What the hell is wrong with you? I’ve been talking to you for like five minutes! Are you even listening?” I finally look up into Nathan’s eyes and say, “That piece of gum just moved.”

“HUH?” he asks me. “You’re staring at gum? I’m talking to you about our future and you’re staring at gum?” He turns around to stare at the moving gum but he is not as shocked or impressed as I am. I blurt out, “WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT?”

“I dunno. Who cares?” he says. But I do. I care greatly. I want to know why it is that a piece of gum is moving. Did a worm crawl into it and get trapped? Is a family of ants taking it back to its lair for their queen? Is this some new gum that snaps, crackles, and pops in your mouth like those candies from the 80s? By this point the numerous possibilities have made my body rise and my legs move forward, and I am walking away from Nathan and towards the gum with jaw still dropped.

I am standing above the moving gum and inspecting it closely. The lighting is minimal, but I begin to see clearly the piece of gum that has held my attention for the last five minutes. There is no creepy crawly worm, no signs of ants or other tiny insects, but there is a small black speck on the piece of gum.

Holy shit. It’s an eye! And there are legs! And a tail! Oh my God, it’s a fetal puppy! It’s an aborted puppy…no, no, A MISCARRIED PUPPY!!! I run back to the table and tell Nathan. “It’s a WHAT? Charlie, that’s ridiculous, how is that even possible?”

“I dunno, but if it doesn’t get help soon it’s gonna die. We can’t let a puppy die,” I say and now I’m back on my feet and bending over the frail thing below me. It’s struggling. And it’s breaking my heart. Its little legs are kicking and its entire body seems to be jerking, trying to move, trying to find the warmth and security of a mother’s bell