A Hell Ten Feet Square for our friend, Harry Angel.

My identification with and love for THE WRESTLER has been growing in the day since I saw it, and then I remembered I wrote a whole piece in Bright Lights Film Journal about BARTON FINK and the use of wrestling as universal metaphor: Blood, Sweat and Canvas a couple issues ago.

"The titles of the wrestling pictures cited by Lou and Lipnik are keys in themselves: "Hell Ten Feet Square" and "Blood, Sweat & Canvas." In each title may be excavated great wealth of meaning vis-à-vis the common man so tirelessly championed by Barton. Barton condemns as blasphemy all roads less traveled to his socialist utopian ideals; he is a fundamentalist of art. The celestial guru Mr. Lipnik, on the other hand, knows that genres may start from different places, but all arrive at the same destination . . . that universal truth that all of us recognize . . . with a little sex in it."

Read my WRESTLER review proper over on Acidemic, to the EXTREME! It probably touches on some of the same recurring obsessions of mine, but they're not just mine, they belong to all of us, to the EXTREME!

And for two similar and similarly great movies about men at the peak and decline of their macho craft, may I recommend you to THE LUSTY MEN and COCKFIGHTER? Nothing wrong with self-hype if you believe in yourself! Boo-Radley!

The Actress Meme: Co-Stars

With a tip of the hat and, perhaps, apologies to Nathaniel R, here is my version of his 20 Actress meme - not just 20 favorite actresses, but 20 outstanding 20th Century co-stars. Here are 10 pairs of actresses (with two bonus pairs for the 2000s) who were not just wonderful individually, but who, co-starring in the same film, managed to make each other look even better, the contrast between them bringing out the distinctive qualities in each. With a nod to the directors who were inspired to cast them opposite each other in the first place.

Katharine Hepburn and Ginger Rogers in Stage Door (Gregory LaCava 1937): A boarding house full of young actresses dying to make it on the NY stage. La Cava makes everyone in this female ensemble film count, but the stars are Hepburn and Rogers. And what a contrast between them! Hepburn is brunette, lean, aristocratic, and angular. Rogers is blonde, working class, wisecracking, and softly curvy. At first, we sympathize more with Rogers’ character. By the end of the film we love all of them.

Marilyn Monroe and Jane Russell in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (Howard Hawks 1953): Monroe is the blonde, looking for money. Russell is the brunette, looking for love. Monroe is a smart girl pretending to be dumb. Russell is a smart girl not pretending to be anything other than what she is. Under the direction of Howard Hawks, they make a great team with genuine comic chemistry — though in a more just world, co-directing credit would be given to choreographer Jack Cole who conceived and directed all the musical numbers (e.g., "Diamonds are a Girl’s Best Friend") that Hawks insisted on having nothing to do with.

Machiko Kyo and Kinuyo Tanaka in Ugetsu (Kenji Mizoguchi 1953): By the time this film was made, its two female leads had already established themselves as international stars: Machiko Kyo for playing the nobleman’s wife who may or may not have been raped in Kurosawa’s Rashomon, Kinuyo Tanaka for playing the title role, an aging prostitute, in Mizoguchi’s The Life of Oharu. In Ugetsu, Mizoguchi cast these two great actresses as rivals: Tanaka as the loyal wife and helpmate of a potter (Masayuki Mori), Kyo as the unattainable, erotic ghost princess who enchants him. In short, reality vs. dream.

Lillian Gish and Shelley Winters in Night of the Hunter (Charles Laughton 1955): The contrast here is between the innocence, not to say gullibility, of youth (Winters) vs. the wisdom of age (Gish). Each woman is defined by her reaction to the psychotic fake preacher Harry Powell (Robert Mitchum). Winters can’t resist him. Gish sees right through him. Winters had already given a great co-starring performance opposite Elizabeth Taylor in A Place in the Sun. Gish’s career, spanning nearly a century, is filled with great performances, up to and including her final co-starring role opposite Bette Davis in The Whales of August. But neither ever topped their work in Night of the Hunter, a film recently voted No. 2 in a Cahiers du Cinema poll of the 100 Most Beautiful Films ever made.

Audrey Hepburn and Anita Ekberg in War and Peace (King Vidor 1956): Vidor’s adaptation of the Tolstoy epic provides another study in contrasts. Warm lithe brunette Hepburn vs. cool zaftig blonde Ekberg. Both rivals for the love of Pierre (Henry Fonda). Both stunningly beautiful.

Kim Novak and Barbara Bel Geddes in Vertigo (Alfred Hitchcock 1958): Jimmy Stewart is a detective. Novak is the object of his investigation, the beautiful ethereal Madeleine. Bel Geddes is Stewart’s old girlfriend, the practical down-to-earth Midge. As Robin Wood pointed out, it is the same dream vs. reality dynamic that we see in Mizoguchi’s Ugetsu. Except Hitchcock takes it one turn-of-the-screw further. Bel Geddes’s Midge disappears about two thirds of the way through the film, and a second Novak appears. Unlike the first Novak, the blonde aristocratic Madeleine, the second Novak, Judy, is brunette, working class, and most important, attainable — the dream vs. reality theme repeated in a different key. Alas, neurotic Man will always prefer that which he cannot have.

Joan Crawford and Bette Davis in What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (Robert Aldrich 1962): This might be the ultimate in actress pairings. Crawford and Davis play the Hudson Sisters, Blanche and Baby Jane, former stars condemned now to a kind of Sartrean hell, a decaying Hollywood bungalow where each in her way tortures the other. The contrast here is between Davis’s overtly aggressive bitchiness and Crawford’s passive aggressive "niceness." You decide which is scarier.

Ingrid Thulin (right) and Gunnel Lindblom in The Silence (Ingmar Bergman 1963): Bergman had a knack for discovering outstanding actresses and casting them opposite each other. So why did I choose Thulin and Lindblom in The Silence as opposed to, say, Birgitta Pettersson and Lindblom in The Virgin Spring or Liv Ullmann and Bibi Andersson in Persona? Because, for me, Thulin was the most sensitive and intelligent of the Bergman actresses, and Lindblom the most erotic. Here, appropriately, Thulin is cast as the embodiment of mind, and Lindblom as the embodiment of physicality, two sisters, opposite in character, traveling by train with a little boy (the unformed ego?) through an unknown country.

Margit Carstensen and Hanna Schygulla in The Bitter Tears of Petra Von Kant (Rainer Werner Fassbinder 1973): Fassbinder’s tale of lesbian angst casts the scarecrow-thin Carstensen as a fashion designer who lusts after a model and protégé played by the sullen voluptuous Schygulla. Carstensen gives a brilliant mannered larger-than-life performance as the obsessed designer. The sensual enigmatic Schygulla is a perfect foil.

Shelley Duvall and Sissy Spacek in 3 Women (Robert Altman 1977): Duvall and Spacek are co-workers at a desert health spa. Duvall is a tall wide-eyed extrovert who observes nothing. Spacek is a short plain introvert who notices everything. Spacek idolizes Duvall. Eventually they change places. Superbly acted, this is the best of Altman’s "dream films," a movie of genuine hallucinatory power.

SPECIAL BONUS PAIRS FOR THE 2000'S

Naomi Watts and Laura Elena Harring in Mulholland Dr. (David Lynch 2001): Lynch’s casting of slim blonde Watts opposite dark voluptuous Harring evokes the blonde/brunette pairings of Hitchcock (Vertigo, The Birds, Marnie) with Watts and Harring playing at least two versions each of their characters in the film’s mirrored halves, two opposing versions of the old story about a young actress (the remarkable Watts) who comes to Hollywood with dreams of stardom, one version triumphant, the other tragic. Harring plays a pivotal role in both stories as the film's mysterious femme fatale.

Rebecca Hall and Scarlett Johansson in The Prestige (Christopher Nolan 2006) and Vicky Cristina Barcelona (Woody Allen 2008): In The Prestige, my favorite Nolan film to date, the tall brunette Hall and the short curvaceous blonde Johansson play, respectively, the wife and mistress of a 19th Century stage magician (Christian Bale). In Vicky Cristina Barcelona, Hall and Johansson play friends touring Spain. Johansson is the free-spirited one. Hall, in an extraordinarily sensitive performance, plays the one with the repressions and conflicts.

A Double Dysfunctional Mickey Xmas

I've survived the family Xmas, and what saved us was the power of the movies. This got me to thinking about all the best dysfunctional family holiday films. I don't mean the ones where everyone's just got some cute quirk or shouts a lot, I'm talking about the ones where addiction, insanity and weird masculine paranoia run riot, down to the dark, deep generational core. The thing every child of a dysfunctional family needs to learn is to love and accept the clownery... without succumbing to the dark side, if you will. Go crazy, get drunk or get the hell out of there before you explode, but anyway you choose, you're still gonna die, and so are they, and love isn't love if it's got conditions.

Good films can acknowledge the drug use, the alcoholism, the violence, all without judging -- characters may judge, but not the actors, not the director... Sidney Lumet's film version of Eugene O'Neill's Long Day's Journey Into Night is one of my favorites in this regard. BUT I've just seen another one, or rather two:

RUMBLE FISH (1983) and BULLET (1996) - While I pump up to go see the Wrestler, I'm catching up on my Rourke films. Rumble Fish and Bullet each seem to cast a weird shadow over the grave of James Dean. What if Dean survived but just became trapped in a cycle of Rebel Without a Cause-style JD films, for Roger Corman, let's say? He'd make sure to add enough of his own ideas to make the films memorable and great, but they wouldn't add up. Instead of three clasics, there'd be a slew of b-grade stuff with little nuggets of Dean brilliance peppered throughout. Did this happen with Mickey Rourke?

Such is the case with Bullet, especially, which I like because like me, Mickey's hard-edged Jewish doper has a crazy survivalist brother who is very into guns and home defense, like my brother! Mickey's brother here is played by Ted Levine, of "Put the fuckin' lotion in the basket" fame; he's clearly having a blast. I also identified in the scenes where Levine trains the neighborhood kids in the OJ Simpson deadly arts, or manipulates his mother into buying tasers from the back of Soldier of Fortune magazine.

The other brother is played by a very young Adrien Brody, barely recognizable under a callow tan. He's stuck with the burden of "artistic potential" which means the more fucked up older brother (as Jason Robards played him in Journey) refuses to let him get high, cause he gotta make something of his self. Damn, who needs that sort of pressure? Especially when Mickey makes becoming a streetwise, punchdrunk junkie seem like such a grace. But even so, his art is actually damned good. Is there nothing this film gets wrong? It's worth its weight in Dark Knight hooplah, I'll tell you that much. The way Rourke takes a punch reminds me of Heath Ledger in Dark Knight. The rest of the "heroes" hide behind armor and high tech gadgets, these guys just Fight Club it out with their bare fists, til their faces are unrecognizable.

Meanwhile, Tupac Shakur drives around in a limo and cuts off the drug flow to the white Coney Island area pushers because he's pissed Rourke stuck him in the eye. It's a stock heavy role, by Shupac has fun with it. And everyone digs on Isaac Hayes songs, which Rourke himself used to score the film with, to fine effect. It's one of those movies that could so easily suck, but Rourke co-wrote the script and clearly knows the mileu, and the the big muscle-bound Steven Bauer-style sidekick actually gets outed by Rourke! How much more Xmas can you get? Mickey tries to show him how he's a repressed, latent homosexual. It's the Mickey Rourke equivalent of Long Day's Journey into Night or a more family-themed version of Abel Ferrara's King of New York, and if you like the Wrestler--or Christian Bale's Harsh Times--it comes highly recommended.

In Rumble Fish, Coppola's heavily stylized, seemingly improv-ed adapataion of the S.E. Hinton novel, Coppola's "distancing" techniques and the percussive score and the gorgeous black and white and the gorgeous Matt Dillon and the gorgeous legs of Diane Lane can't hide the fact that Mickey's "proto-1980s" look is just... sad. You can smell the death of the 1970s on his skin, even with the silver screen between you-- and when, at the end, he frees all the pets in the pet store, I could only shrug... training wheel symbolism! He pulls it off, of course, with his amazing sense of being at ease in his own skin, but just like Coppola's zeo-tropes and whistles, the Rourke magic is more underlined than felt, by me at least... and the characters are all sketched in with nowhere to go. Even so, they rock, and as the signs all say "The Motorcycle Boy reigns" - and when Dillon's slack-jawed rumbler follows Motorcycle Boy Rourke around like little brothers do, you begin to understand how men create themselves from whatever material is around, and can turn straw into gold, or vice versa, just by watching their older brother play pool.

In all these cases, the mom suffers admirably, or in the case of Rumble, is gone, but drunken daddy Dennis Hopper seems actually pretty cool, so it's all going to be okay. There's a fun feeling of improv between Dillon, Hopper and Rourke in their few scenes together in Fish, which reminds me of the great interplay between Robards, Ralph Richardson and Dean Stockwell in Journey, and it's too bad that Paul Schrader couldn't have done more with Nolte and Coburn in similar scenes in Affliction. If you only get the drunken alienation and miss the affection and love, you miss the whole fucking point. There's real eccentric dysfunctional love all across the board in both these fucked up pictures, and that's a rarity worth scoping, even if your own family's relatively sane.

And speaking of punching the mirror, damn does Mickey do a lot of that both in Bullet and Rumble. There's even some "rat" symbolism (as in the placing of a rat on the body of a dead pigeon). Rumble Fish and Bullet are really great on a double bill, and I should know since I just watched them both for the first time back to back, thanks to the awesome recommendation of Kim Morgan. May I mention her name again? Kim Morgan! She's my "The Motorcycle Boy." Read her great piece, Seven Screwy Santas, and burn the lest vestige of Xmas out of you! Now excuse me while I kiss the sky, I mean, punch some mirrors!

An Atheist's Guide to A Charlie Brown Christmas

Continuing an annual orgy of cartoon watching I decided to take a lengthy look at this classic in socio-philosophical, rather than belletristic, terms. Unfortunately, the full Atheist's Guide runs over 2,000 words, and would clutter up the blog, so I've only posted an abridged version below (the "Reader's Digest" version). The piece can be read in its entirety, with many more details and screenshots, here, so if some of the argument seems sketchy please hear the whole thing out before flaming. Then, flame away! Merry Christmas...urr...Happy Holidays, everyone!


It is the opinion of many that religion should be respectfully omitted from public affairs, whereas others feel that the Christ story is too central to Christmas’ significance to ignore (indeed, would anyone demand the bowdlerization of the miracle in the Chanukah narrative?). As a painfully nepantla Christian-turned-Atheist, I see accuracy and honorable candor on both sides. But I also know as a Christian-turned-Atheist that consolidating the inalienable rights of a secular world and the unavoidable heritage of an over-zealous community are nearly impossible to do. This is the tension that bristles my head every time I’m confronted with a cross pendant, or Gideon’s Bible, or matzo triangle (ie, the Host). It is the fervent war between logic and tradition, with roots extending back to the birth of modern deism.

This war – which was a very different one in the 1960’s – nearly cost us one of the most endearing holiday TV specials of all time, but, paradoxically, is also essential to its success. The reasons for this are remarkably complex by children’s entertainment standards. But, then, A Charlie Brown Christmas had the advantage of being written by a remarkably complex man who, also, would somewhat abandon Christianity later in life (if we are to believe the few public quotes he made on the topic, anyhow). The friction between the rock of Jesus and the hard place of cruel, quotidian living is perhaps central to the appeal of Charles Schulz’s Peanuts, and certainly to the Christmas special. The nativity comes to us swaddled in such cynicism that it seems hand-tailored for the lapsed evangelical.

The plot is fairly simple, though (unfortunately) timeless. Christmas approaches but Charlie Brown is depressed because of the viral spread of “commercialism”. Concerns over what Santa may bring (the ever-mature Lucy wants “Real Estate,” Charlie’s younger sister simply desires “tens and twenties”) preclude the spirit of the holiday. In this respect, the TV special surely shows its age, as the commercialization of Christmas has become not only a tradition in its own right but a cliché (indeed, American culture in particular is fixated upon the social sacrament of gift giving – were we to curtail this gesture, our economy would collapse). We no longer worry that we’ve succumbed to commercialism; we now obsess over living up to the burden of commercialism’s promise. Can we dare to spend enough? To buy enough? To own enough?. Add to this the copious Charlie Brown and Snoopy merchandise for sale at all your local Wal-Marts and the anachronism appears far bleaker.

But even for Charlie Brown and Company, addressing commercialization is no simple matter. In the original special, what the “Authentic Christmas Spirit” entails is, for the majority of the running time, excruciatingly vague: Charlie Brown does not even know what it is that he is supposed to feel at Christmastime. What is Christmas all about, anyway? Cue Linus and his ubiquitous blanket to the stage.

Everyone has by now heard the story that the network executives who screened A Charlie Brown Christmas balked at the scene where Linus quotes the Gospel of Luke. The irascible Schulz gave them an ultimatum – either include it, or cancel the special. In truth, this may have been due to Schulz’s natural recalcitrance rather than any religious devotion, but he won the argument, and won it big time. In hindsight, however, Schulz’s hissy-fit possesses editorial logic; frankly, the story of A Charlie Brown Christmas would not function without the turning point brought on by Linus’ “witnessing”. And what follows in the plot might be the most inventive interpretation of the Christ myth on this side of Kazantzakis’ Last Temptation.

Charlie Brown, energized as one typically is by a good sermon, finds peace with himself and his twinkling world. But after taking his stem of a Tannenbaum home to decorate, he finds that Snoopy’s garishly ornamented dog house has been awarded first place in a neighborhood competition (the prize of which, according to the newspaper, is “money money money,” preceding the O’Jays.). Charlie is again devastated – commercialism has won. He puts a single red ball on his scrawny plant and it keels over with the weight, as if genuflecting to commodification. Charlie Brown exclaims that he has “killed it,” and walks away, despondent. His friends gather around and decide they’ve been too rough on Charlie and his sub-par tree, which, as Linus observes, only needs “a little love”. Forming a holy ring of group effort they uproot and transplant Snoopy’s dog house decorations. Charlie returns, shocked, and seemingly happy with the arborist enhancements. The program ends with a hymn, albeit a benign one (“Hark the Herald Angels Sing”).

The tree’s trajectory is clearly meant to parallel that of Christ. It is found in an ordinary setting and hardly seems an exemplar of its species, but its vulnerability offers Charlie Brown hope. And it is only after being “killed” by Charlie Brown and dominated – betrayed, one might say – by commercialism that the tree can be resurrected as an immaculate being. Like most Christmas stories, the theme of this one is salvation – not only of Charlie Brown and a gang of avaricious sinners, but of mankind, by way of metaphor.

The irony sets in, however, when we consider what the “tree” – as well as the gospel recitation – is saving Charlie et al from. It should be offering deliverance from the commercialization of Christmas, and yet the tree is only considered a resounding success when it becomes aesthetically pleasing – showy, even. This plot hole of sorts was no doubt unintentional, but the metamorphosis of the tree has become one of the special's most memorable moments: perhaps because it mirrors our inevitable embrace of commercialism?

But maybe this is too cynical an interpretation of such a touching ending. I find myself respecting the religion of A Charlie Brown Christmas year after year because the ultimate assertion is not at all transcendental. It’s not piety or mythology that brightens Charlie Brown’s spirits, but the neighborly support of his friends -- it’s the sweat of human kindness that makes a difference. The Christ figure – Charlie Brown’s tree – does not resurrect itself after three days but is pumped full of new vitality by a group that manipulates it for their own purpose. It is, much like the modern Jesus, a passive messiah – a man-made metaphor for salvation rather than a corporeal manifestation of it. Only when the others resolve to embody rather than simply parrot the true meaning of Christmas does the “spirit” of the holiday take hold and allow the plot to conclude.

Whether consciously disenchanted with his faith or not, Schulz may have unwittingly birthed a new form of moral entertainment with A Charlie Brown Christmas. It is hard, in fact, to imagine a children’s franchise quite so philosophically hip. We feel the nihilist sting every time Charlie Brown’s foot circles upward and trips him rather than connecting with Lucy’s football; we identify with Linus’ frustration over the Great Pumpkin’s silence even more than pleas for divine intervention in Bergman films. Schulz may have initially imagined his characters as illustrations of the universality of the Christian message, but we love them because they represent the universality of human suffering.

The full Atheist's Guide

Jane does Tennessee Williams! PERIOD OF ADJUSTMENT on TCM - 12/12 at 10:30 AM (EST)

Here's a catchy little number that's not on DVD and should have/could have been included in that Tennessee Wiliams boxed set of a few years back. There's not a lot of reviews on the web for this one, and there should be. I couldn't even find any decent pictures to steal. So I put up Jane from her Hanoi period. Is she not awesome!?

Made in 1962, this is a shrill but ultimately touching and funny film that occurs almost in real time, ala the stage play. It's being shown on TCM the 23rd, no doubt because it occurs on Xmas, and there's a hilarious side track with neighborhood carrolers who get offered drinks at every house they go to, so by the time they get halfway around the block, they're sloshed and need to be hauled into the police station on drunken disorderly charges. Tony Franciosa is actually great playing a warm, complex and ultimately good-natured guy. How often does that happen? In the films I know him from, he's cringing and scheming in misguided bids for his father's affection. Here he's finally standing up to the father-in-law, whom he works for, and is a jerk who needs to get told the what's what and has troubles of his own, sack-wise, so it's a reversal of roles where Tony gets to play the prodigal for a goddamned change. And he knocks it clean out of the park. It's easy to cringe, but it's hard to make us not cringe if you're going to be "nice." But he does it. Meanwhile Tony's fellow Korean War vet buddy Jim Hutton has married Jane Fonda, who is in her drop dead gorgeous hubba hubba oh you kid phase. You just can't believe any girl could be that beautiful and yet take everything so goddamned seriously. Only with Jane it works. What was it Roger Vadim said in MEMOIRS OF THE DEVIL?

Jane thought she had no personality and was desperately trying to find her identity. In front of the camera she analyzed herself, shut herself away in introspection and looked for an intellectual justification for her every word, every movement, every smile. She was basically afraid of herself. She thought through hard work she could "fabricate" a talent for herself, but refused to admit she already had something unique, infinitely rarer and more precious than fortitude or will-power." (1975, p. 165)

Damn right, Roger! And somehow this misfocused intensity makes the panicked blandness of Jim Hutton a perfect foil. He pulls out all the stops in his effort to keep away the fear of intimacy. Frankly, Fonda's so hot, I might be scared of the pressure to get it on, too. (It's honeymoon jitters that makes him want to spend Xmas with his old buddy Franciosa's dysfunctional family). Hutton comes off as if he's trying to sneak away from all this intense Williams adulthood and back into some cozy sexless sitcom like Bewitched. No one likes to chip off their frozen masks and armor to expose the quivering warm human within, and perhaps no playwright before or since has ever been so keenly observant of these human defense mechanisms and yet so compassionate; Williams pulls off his character's masks like a kind but determined doctor, then gives them a nice lollipop. Everyone gets great dialogue and chances to shine like crazy diamonds, which they never fail to grab. And best of all is how the weakness perceived by Vadim becomes Fonda's strength; her character's life lessons are Fonda's acting lessons and nothing is more beautiful than watching her learn them and find her intellectual justification at last, in the brilliant sea of Williams' dialogue

This being a dramatic comedy and not an oppressive Anna Magnani showpiece (like The Rose Tattoo), what we end up with here is something true and beautiful and moving, where the characters actually change and grow in a believable and inspiring fashion and laughs and fond feelings are had by all. The perfect thing to watch with your own dysfunctional family or "sig other", PERIOD OF ADJUSTMENT should not be overlooked just because the name makes you think it's going to be some tired Brady Bunch-esque farce with Doris Day and a room full of disgustingly cute children. Think again! And Plug it into your TIVO: TCM- Tues 12/23 at 10:30 AM. (EST)

A Muppet Christmas: Letters from Another Era

The by now hideously distended Muppet franchise received another subpar entry on network television last night in the form of "A Muppet Christmas: Letters to Santa". Is anyone else willing to admit that they actually sat through this thing in its entirety? Furthermore, did anyone else actually like it for the most part, taking it for what it was? Both Nathan Lane and Uma Thurman turned in decent if half-assed cameos -- the holiday season's tv candy.

I'm of the mind that any Muppet special is worth sitting through at least once (provided that it contains real Muppets and not animated ones, ie "Muppet Babies," etc). The "Letters to Santa" special also marked the first time Jim Henson's lovely creations were filmed and then subsequently broadcast in High Definition -- a curious landmark for a gaggle of scrappy creatures built from discarded felt and halved ping-pong balls. I was raised on a steady diet of "Emmet Otter" and "Fraggle Rock" VHS tapes and always wondered how such artifacts would survive the leap to digital. The added depth and definition offered by DVDs, for example, is not particularly kind to "Emmet Otter's Jug Band Christmas," which is constantly transitioning between miniature marionette sets and half-scale puppet ones.

Still, there's an intimacy to puppetry -- or even muppetry -- that digital animation, or animation of any kind, can't precisely duplicate (though its goals are, granted, quite disparate). The fact that there's a human hand occupying the tiny heads of Kermit, Fozzie, Gonzo, et al makes all the difference, particularly when that hand pulls off a moment of jerry-rigged emotional authenticity (Muppet faces -- eyes and eyebrows -- are not all that expressive, and Kermit, for example, must crinkle his lips to express confusion or disgust, a behavior that Henson himself was the undisputed master of).

I was rather saddened to learn, via the end credits of "Letters to Santa," that the voices of the Muppets were not also their physical manipulators. Aside from a few exceptions (ie Mama Otter), Henson continually insisted that this be the case, and much Muppet dialog was recorded while the puppeteering was taking place in the early days. There is plenty of Muppet magic missing from "Letters to Santa": Jerry Nelson* and Jim himself have gone on to that great Muppet Workshop in the sky, along with writer Jerry Juhl (no one could write a lame joke like Jerry Juhl), Frank Oz is directing comedies we need not speak of and Paul Williams looks half-dead, also contributing a smattering of phoned-in compositions. But people die; careers crumble; artists age. Traditions, on the other hand, in some respects should not. If there's any confusion regarding who's to blame for most of this, it's easily cleared up by the Disney logo that tags the special. I am not particularly looking forward to the upcoming Muppet movie, but it all poses a rather complex existential koan: Are these Muppets better than no Muppets at all?

Watch the special on HULU and simply close your eyes during the commercial breaks.

*Correction: Jerry Nelson is still alive and kicking, just retired from the Muppets (thanks to "Seeing I" for the correction). According to Wikipedia, which I hesitate to reference, he may reprise his role as Gobo for an upcoming Fraggle movie -- indeed, the film would truly suffer without his natural innocence. Robin the Frog in "Letters from Santa" was, simply, not Robin due to Nelson's absence.

Top Ten (Male) Performances of 2008

Last year saw two amazing movies that cracked the "unconscious masculine myth-making" mold, No Country for Old Men and There Will Be Blood. This year... hmmm, the movies didn't crack much mold, but if there were still plenty of resonant masculine archetypal performances to admire. The performances chosen for this list either transcend their movies (Ledger's Joker), or in some cases are the movies (The Wrestler) or in some cases just add that certain special supporting something (Franco!) that the film would be lost without. I haven't even seen The Wrestler yet--so these are not necessarily in order, but...

1. Jon Hamm as Don Draper (Mad Men, season 2)
Yeah, I know it's not a film but a TV show, but fuck you. Hamm's the man. You got to get past his resemblance to Kevin (HERCULES) Sorbo and similar TV beefs and dig the fierce gravitas and cagey intellect. To me this show calls to mind whole fields of liberal arts study, as in realizing that "What Dad does at work" is every bit as mythic as the Oedipal primal scene. Hamm's Don Draper functions at that mythic level. He is a God among men, with that cigarette and that drink he is immortal, the penultimate 1960s-70s dad we all imagined with that alchemical equation of fear plus love that equals loyalty.

2. Robert Downey Jr. as Iron Man
When Downey's Tony Stark declares "I am Iron Man" to a bevy of stunned reporters I cheer the way I haven't cheered since Kevin Spacey "woke up" in American Beauty. In a comic book world gone dead with cliche, Downey brought in speed freak adrenalin, some remnants of Kim Morgan's macho fey and enough hipster jive moves to launch his own fleet of pirate ship franchises.

3. Heath Ledger in Dark Knight Returns
Time will tell if Ledger's performance here is actually remembered as genius ala James Dean in Giant or Tim Carey in Head. No doubt about it though, Ledger brought something new and genuinely chaotic and original to the screen. It's not proven, but it's mythically proper--in that weird way roles foretell the destiny of their stars--that we imagine Ledger "saw too much" in his pursuit of the core of giddy madness within capitalism's poker-faced slow burn suicide, and so had to pay the Faustian heavy price, or in more blunt terms, the Joker got him. whether or not that's true, the man left us a concise howl of rage against the machine that's hip to its own anachronistic absurdity, Tyler Durden crossed with Mansons both Marilyn and Charles. Stand it on a shelf with Brokeback Mountain and right there you have a body of work that should put him in any pantheon.

4. James Franco in Pineapple Express - If you've ever hung out with real dope smokers, you know these types too well: the neurotic/paranoid intellectual loafer (Rogen), the wide-eyed innocent (often a snowboarder, Franco)--and the townie with the secret grow room (Danny R. McBride). Everyone's good here but Franco steals it all. While Rogen seems to be always struggling to keep up with his over-written improv and McBride is batting low balls, Franco just reacts--moment to moment--at the bright THC-colored world around him with a rapturous stoner innocence that's hard to fake.

5. Mark Strong in Body of Lies - While Leo sulked and suffered and Crowe minced and beat on his new pot belly, a movie was supposed to going on about the Middle East. Strong alone seemed to have a grasp on this, and played his Jordanian Intelligence official with the same mix of classy intellect and affectionate maturity that we see in the first two Godfathers and Mad Men and not many places else.

6. Mickey Rourke in The Wrestler - I haven't seen this yet and it's a crime. He gets on the list just for the trailer at this point, but he's gotta be there. It's just the way it is. Would you rather I lied? (NOTE: I HAVE SINCE SEEN THIS).

7. Josh Brolin in W or Milk. I haven't seen these either, but I feel good knowing Brolin's out there, stretching.

8. Colin Ferrell in In Bruges - I saw this one, and "That's for John Lennon, you yankee fuckin' cunt!"

9. Ralph Fiennes in In Bruges - The weird humor of In Bruges just wouldn't work without the fatalistic poetry and deadpan humor of anchorman Fiennes, as William Hurt from David Cronenberg's A History of Violence.

10. Jason Statham in Transporter 3 - And just about every goddamned other fuckin' movie this year. He rocks! He's all we have now that Vin Diesel is gone. He's more of a rock than a star, so you don't imagine him getting seduced into the Euro-jet-set lifestyle and forgetting his badass roots, the way some Diesels have done. For all those Bullit-headed Saxon mothers' sons, he's the class struggle vindicator, and for the other lads, he digs on cars and he'll fuck up your shit in a hot minute. In that sense he's not only the successor to Vin Diesel, he may even be the closest thing we've got right now to Charles Bronson! And just wait til next year!

Everybody's Dream Girl - Bettie Page (1923-2008)

Is there an art to being photographed? I believe there is, and when I say that, I am thinking of four artists in particular, all of whom reached their peaks in the 1950s - Elvis, Marilyn, James Dean, and the late Bettie Page. All of them had a special gift for communicating directly to the viewer through the camera's lens. The images they created will outlast all of us.

As Queens of the Still Photograph, Bettie and Marilyn had no rivals. Bettie was unique in that we know her almost exclusively through her pinup photographs - and a handful of mostly silent softcore "stag" films shot by Irving and Paula Klaw. She could look cute and cuddly - or dominant and mean - but whatever persona she adopted, the essential adorable Bettie always shined through.

I never met her, but I've talked with people who knew her fairly well (including one of her lawyers), and she was apparently just as sweet and charming in real life as she appears in her photos, with a delightful Southern drawl that most of us never heard. Following her '50s heyday, she went through a dark period, but the most important thing is that she got through it, and that she lived to enjoy her cult fame. In her photos she could be all things to all people, yet paradoxically she was always irreducibly herself.

See GreenCine Daily for more.

ADDENDUM 12/17 - Televangelist Robert Schuler delivered the eulogy at yesterday's memorial service held at the Westwood Village Memorial Park. Hugh Hefner attended. So did painter Olivia de Berardinis and Bettie's Teaserama co-star, Tempest Storm. After the service, Page's casket was taken from the chapel to a "shady grave site," just a few yards from the crypt of Marilyn Monroe.

Via the L.A Times.

FREE ASIA! Death to the IFC oppressors!

If you ever want your film to be actually seen outside the festival circuit, please don't let IFC pick up your distribution. Both Catherine Breillat's Last Mistress and Abel Ferrara's Go-Go Tales star Asia Argento, got great reviews at the festivals, were picked up by IFC and promptly shelved into oblivion. These films are from 2007, for God's sake. What are we waiting for here?

Meanwhile, the other Argento films that came out that beautiful year are already on DVD, Boarding Gate and Mother of Tears. And they're great, and we love them and we love Asia. But IFC meanwhile, you know, they're "waiting" for... what? For the zeitgeist to be right? Asia's zeitgeist is NOW, baby! They must be dumber than an Adam Sandler Christmas. I got no loves for those that would cock-block the American people from their cinematic goddesses, or me from Asia in everything she worked so hard to be in!!! Will you not rise with me, will you not stand up with me against IFC and all the other dumbass distributors who pick up great films and then go out of their way to make sure no one ever gets to see them?

Turn Off at Synecdoche

Charlie Kaufman’s Synecdoche, New York is not one of those films (e.g., Baz Luhrman’s Australia) that lurches toward the audience with its metaphorical arms wide open, shouting "Love me!"

On the contrary, Synecdoche seems perversely designed to turn off mainstream audiences - like a person who wants to be accepted warts and all, and if you’re not prepared to accept him, her, or it that way ... then the hell with you. From a philosophical point of view, the film is saying that if your embrace of life includes only the *good* parts, you’re not embracing life.

Here are three of Synecdoche’s major "turn-offs":

The Title: As noted in my initial review, the majority of potential ticket buyers won't know what a synecdoche is (a part that represents the whole), much less how to pronounce it, or that the title is a pun on the city of Schenectady, New York.

The Emphasis on Disease and Dying: Theater director Caden Cotard, played in the film by Philip Seymour Hoffman (with Samantha Morton, above), wants to stage a performance piece about EVERYTHING. In that respect, he is a stand-in for writer/film director Charlie Kaufman who wants to make a movie about EVERYTHING. "Everything," of course, includes the three Ds - Disease, Decay, and Dying - an inextricable part of all of our lives that we mostly deal with by way of the fourth D - Denial. Thus, even though the film is equally, if not more, concerned with life’s positive aspects - Love and Creation - the way it constantly reminds us of Caden’s and the other characters’ physical vulnerabilities is a turn-off. Indeed, some people are ready to leave the theater after that first shot of the protagonist’s discolored excreta. (See, for example, the hysterical reaction of Mr. Rex Reed.) If anything, such reactions to the film demonstrate that, all things considered, there is nothing more revolting to human beings than their own insides.

The Absence of Religion: For a film that purports to be about EVERYTHING, the most surprising omission is any reference to churches, religion, or the clergy. (At least, nothing that I can recall.) It’s not that the film has a negative attitude toward religion. Religion, in the traditional sense, simply doesn’t exist in this world. In its place, almost all the film’s characters worship at the altar of Art. They dedicate their lives to it. Alternatively, the entire film can be read as metaphysical allegory of Creation and our role in it. Likewise, the film offers no opinions with respect to the Afterlife. We’re here now, it seems to say, in this particular time and this particular place. Let’s make the most of it.

So long, Beverly Garland (1926-2008)

In addition to losing Forry Ackerman (see below), we lost another icon of the classic horror genre, Beverly Garland, this weekend. Garland was a true Hollywood survivor, battling and slinking her way through several Roger Corman quickies in the 1950s (including It Conquered the World, Swamp Women and the under-appreciated Gunslinger!), and going on to play Tuesday Weld's mom in Pretty Poison, as well as Kate Jackson's mom in TV's Scarecrow and Mrs. King. . She also ran a Holiday Inn named after her, and that, aside from being Kate Jackson's mom, is one of my dream jobs. I could go on and on and on, but you can probably find a better obit in the LA Times, elsewhere.

In her 50+ year working career, Garland was always a welcome presence on set, with "an infectious laugh" and loads of friends. What can we learn from her? Well, perhaps it's telling that even as a Corman fan I never really made the connection that she was in all these other pictures and shows. That's no dis, but something I can imagine she would have been rather proud of as an actress. It's one thing to be a scenery chewer who sees every role as a chance to grab a statuette or cult infamy, yet another to quietly nail your part so well you yourself remain unseen, and thus are able to slide from playing sex symbols to on-screen mother roles without needing to disappear until the public wonders where you are and you stage your comeback. Garland's 50 year career is filled more with good honest work than Oscar nominations of camp infamy, but she never needed to make a comeback, never fell into the "old bat" typecast any more than she let herself be constrained by the narrow parameters of the sex symbol. She brought enough nuance and gusto to make the character come alive, but refrained from scenery chewing and never impinged upon the momentum of the story.

A class act all the way, Hollywood is lucky to have had such a great lady in its midst for so long. If there's roles to play beyond this world, I'm sure she's right now passing the audition to play mother to the angels as opposed to a nubile victim writhing in the many tentacled vice grip of Corman's menagerie; but then again she could always do both, and damn well.

(Read a great interview with Garland about the fine old time she had making the horror film pictured above right, here.)

Bye Bye Forry (Forrest J Ackerman, 1916-2008)

I just learned by way of CINEBEATS that Forrest J Ackerman, a man who inspired so many of us - as film fan and friend to film fans, as a writer, as the editor of Famous Monsters of Filmland, as a literary agent, and one of the world’s leading collectors of all things science fiction and fantasy related - has passed away. There will be no more trick or treating at the Ackermansion.

Forry (aka "4E," "4SJ," or "Dr. Acula") is pictured above, most likely on the set of Roger Corman’s The Day the World Ended (1956), with the film’s female star, Lori Nelson, and its three-eyed mutant monster designed and played by the great Paul Blaisdell. He is holding an Eastern European sci-fi magazine of some kind - not at all surprising since Forry coined the term "sci-fi" and attempted to collect every sci-fi magazine every published.

As I wrote here, "Forry made liking monster movies respectable. Forry made writing about monster movies respectable."

GreenCine Daily is collecting tributes here.

Early Warning re "Early Hawks Blog-a-thon"

FOB ("Friend of Bright Lights") Ed Howard writes in to announce: "my new blog-a-thon, which will run from January 12-23, 2009 and will focus on the early films of Howard Hawks. More details here. I'm announcing it far in advance to give time for the word to spread and for those who are interested to get ahold of the films if they haven't seen them before. I would really appreciate a mention at the Bright Lights blog to get the word out to any Hawksians who might be interested in participating or at least reading."

Please note that the blog-a-thon will encompass only those films made by Hawks prior to Bringing Up Baby in 1938 (i.e., nothing later than 1936). I, for one, consider this to be an excellent idea. Like those two other great directors of the human comedy, Jean Renoir and Leo McCarey, Hawks had a long and fruitful career that included several late *masterpieces,* but I also consider that, like Renoir and McCarey, Hawks was at his most consistently interesting and inventive in the 1920s and '30s as he and the cinema discovered his (its/their) voice. So heed Ed's warning, and check out these films if you haven't seen them already.

Ed Howard's blog, Only the Cinema, can be read here.

Happy Birthday, California Mountain Snake!

It's a birthday today for DARYL HANNAH, beloved uber-babe whose been immoralized in at least two classic films: Bladerunner and Kill Bill. Even if these were the only two roles she ever played, with the 25 years between them spent driving around in her bio-diesel El Camino, she'd still be a 100% badass. But she's proven her chops at comedy (Splash!), ensemble chick flicks, indie late night cable crap (The Hit) and outside the cinema as a tireless advocate of environmental and human rights. But for all that, I wouldn't be writing this if not for her greatness as Elle Driver AKA California Mountain Snake in Kill Bill, wherein she locks swords and long strands of blonde with vengeful hitwoman Uma Thurman and out-scream of rages her by a quarter and a half.

Don't get me wrong: Uma rocks, but she's too inherently "nice" to really be a convincing killer, and I'd say ditto for Lucy Liu and Vivica Fox. Are they fun as badass assassins? Yes. But do you get that sickly thrill in your spine that comes from watching pure female serpentine evil in motion? No. No matter how much Clint Eastwood sneer Uma puts in her voice, or how loudly Lucy Liu shouts at her yakuza bosses, it's still easy to see their inner core of maternal decency -- part of the point, I guess, but whether merrily infiltrating a hospital to slip Uma a lethal dose or just leisurely reading from her omnipresent little notepad while Michael Madsen writhes in pain from mamba bites, Daryl Hannah is a first class bad ass--no maternal core of decency (she's never married or had kids [?] which helps, undoubtedly) and the combo long blonde hair and eye patch, not to mention the very snazzy suit and boots... that's all just icing, baby.

What's one of her secrets? She's really tall, her beauty and poise hides a pretty formidable stature. Also, she seems like she's lived... she has the same aura that Josh Brolin or Micky Rourke has, the aura of someone who has gone off and done crazy things and traveled the world and the seven seas and been forgotten about and/or forgotten about Hollywood long enough to bring something back to it from the wilderness, some secret grail prize for our stale society to gaze upon and possibly, hopefully wake from its overly civilized stupor to go ride against the evil banality of corporate downpressers. She's hot, older by just the right amount, where it's still totally sexy, and when she throws her self into a sword fight you're actually scared, for and of her at the same time, that's the true ultimate mark of a badass chick. And that's my salute to Daryl, and this is for Pris (breaks finger)!