In order to fully catch up, we've got another triple-decker for your pleasure, presented once again in summary:
Our first movie is "The Devil Wears Prada"(2006), which Grimsley brought over last week. I've seen it before and I imagine you have too. I'm sure you love Anne Hathway; I do, she's such a girly-girl, so pretty, nice and unassuming. On the other hand, we've got Meryl Streep's character "Miranda Priestly", the so-called Devil of the title. Wait a minute : forget the "so-called". Miranda's as evil as they come, an arrogant B-Word who could (and would!) give Ol' Scratch a run for his money. Can't you just picture her, lording it over poor Satan, then dispatching him with a "that's all", her patented haughty dismissal? She's an icon of the fashion world whose sense of self-importance is exponentially greater than her value as a human being. She thinks she's All That, but her power vanishes outside her little fiefdom. If she were to walk down the street, no one would know her. Miranda as a character is so unpleasant that it's difficult to relate to her one way or the other. Streep plays her so aloof that she's generates just bored contempt, at least from me. Thank God for Stanley Tucci, providing backbone and comic relief, as "Nigel" her gay style consultant.
At any rate, Hathaway is a recent college grad from the Midwest who's seeking a job in journalism. She comes to New York and applies at "Runway" magazine, run by the much-feared Miranda. She interviews Anne, takes note of her old-fashioned clothes, and asks why she wants a job in high fashion. That's a legit question, but right away Miranda's demeanor is a red flag. She toys with Hathaway before hiring her, probably because she's smart but pliable. One her first day at work, Anne meets "Emily" (Emily Blunt), Miranda's Assistant Number One. Blunt is great in her role as the all-knowing flunky, emotionally wired to Miranda's nerve center. She blurts out specific instructions for Anne to follow if she's to survive more than a day in Miranda World. We know Emily Blunt these days mostly as an action hero, but she's got a flair for deadpan comedy.
The heart of the story is the old romantic triangle arc, played bittersweet but easygoing. Anne has a longtime boyfriend from Chicago, their hometown. He's not overjoyed by her move to New York but accepts it because it's her chance to become a writer : "I know it's what you want", he tells her. But he wonders how she's gonna jump from executive assistant to journalist, especially when she starts to settle into her job. "I can meet a lot of publishers and other writers this way", she explains, and for a while he accepts that also. But soon, one of those other writers is hitting on her every time they meet. He's "Christian Thompson" (Simon Baker), a well-known free lance reporter. Thompson is quite handsome. Hathaway tells him "sorry but I can't, I've got a boyfriend", but he keeps on pushing, until finally It Happens. It's not their tryst, however, that causes the breakup between Anne and her boyfriend. It's her complete transformation into Miranda's high styled puppet. Gone is everything lovable about the old Hathaway. She looks amazing in her new designer duds and Jimmy Choo heels, but the high-gloss persona that goes with her new look is a turn off. She's become a Miranda Mini-Me, hard charging and ambitious, but in all the ways that don't matter, at least not to her boyfriend and other pals back in Chi-town. The real Anne is hidden in there somewhere, but they can't get through to her; she answers only to Miranda.
It's a fun movie in a darkly comic way, but there really isn't much to the story, and as I said, for me Streep's performance - while brilliant - gives you nothing to hold onto with the character. She's obviously not likeable, but you can't hate her either because she doesn't seem genuine. I had to look up Miranda to see if she was based on a real person, and she was : Anna Wintour, the editor of Vogue. If the portrayal is accurate, Wintour must be one of the worst people who ever lived, not because of her actions so much as her obnoxious personality. But really she's just pathetic. The good news for the story is that true love wins in the end, after Hathaway realises what a sellout she's become and gives up her dream of the high life.
Two Solid Thumbs Up for "The Devil Wears Prada". I'd give it Two Bigs if it weren't for Meryl's disinterested characterization.
Next we've got "The Sparks Brothers", which I saw in Woodland Hills last Friday. Twice to the theater in one week, imagine that! But I love Ron and Russell Mael; I became a Sparks fan in 1974, after seeing the band on the cover of Melody Maker, a British music weekly (long defunct). I ran out and bought "Kimono My House" and the rest is history, except for a twenty six year interlude that I'll get to in a minute. The movie is a comprehensive overview of their career. It doesn't delve much into the brothers' personal history save a brief segment about their childhood. But it runs 140 minutes, long for a documentary, and covers the making of each of their twenty five studio albums. It features commentary from a myriad of talking heads (no not David Byrne), including Todd Rundgren, who was responsible for Sparks getting signed to their first recording contract. Also speaking about his time with the band is their first manager, John Hewlett, who before meeting the Mael Bros was in a group called John's Children. "OMG"!, I said to myself, seeing his face up on the screen. "That's the guy.......the one who asked me and Grim if we could "please fuck off' "!
If you've not heard that story (and you probably have), a brief explanation is in order. Following their December 1975 concert at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium, we waited at the Hyatt House on Sunset for Ron and Russ to show up. I'd discovered they were staying there earlier in the day, and when we got to the hotel after the show, we sat by the elevator on their floor and waited. Finally, at least an hour later, the boys emerged from the lift. With them was their manager, whom I now recognize as John Hewlett. He saw us sitting there, and without missing a beat, without even a "hello" or "excuse me", he simply said "could you please fuck off"? Ron and Russ were silent as the three of them walked past us (Ron carrying an Adam-12 lunch pail). We were so taken aback by Hewlett's statement that we didn't even respond. It was well past midnight and we were exhausted. Instead, we just went home, but we never forgot the way in which Mr. Hewlett politely told us to leave. "Please" and "Fuck Off" in the same sentence! He's much friendlier in the movie, though, as he recounts his time with Sparks during their initial period of success, which took place mostly in England. They couldn't get arrested in the States back then, and the situation's only slightly better now. But they can sell out all their shows in major cities like New York and L.A.
Have you ever noticed that we've got several great "brother bands" that hail from Los Angeles? Besides Ron, Russ and Sparks, there's Van Halen and The Beach Boys. Way to go, Bros! But back to the movie, I loved it. Only in the middle did I feel uninvested, and here's where my above disclaimer comes in. You see, I was an enormous Sparks fan when they started, and I'm an enormous fan now, but between 1977 and 2003, I wasn't a fan at all. This is because in '76, they made a terrible album called "Big Beat", and after that they changed their sound completely and went disco. A long string of albums followed in that style, and I just wasn't interested. Then astonishingly, in 2002 they made a comeback, with a genius album called "Lil' Beethoven". Every record since has been exceptional. It's been a reunion for all us estranged Sparks fans.
Again, the movie is very good. Edgar Wright did a yeoman's job of amassing and assembling a truckload of material, from old photographs of the Maels to clips and interviews of Sparks throughout their history. The first 45 minutes is the best part, where Todd and others who were there talk about the early days and their struggles. Once it settles into the long "album after album" format, it's still good but becomes a little rote. All in all though, Two Huge Thumbs Up for "The Sparks Brothers". I don't think it's gonna be of general interest, however. You've probably gotta be a Sparks fan to enjoy it. /////
Our final feature for this evening is "The Wreck of the Hesperus"(1948). Willard Parker plays "John McCready", a captain who steers his ship into the rocks during a storm. He loses his commission and takes a job with a salvaging company owned by Edgar Buchanan. Now, Buchanan - though a fine actor - will always be "Uncle Joe" no matter what role he happens to be playing. Therefore, as always, he's "movin' kinda slow" at the junction between honesty and deceit. He tells McCready that shipwreck salvage is a legitimate business. Bitter at being landlocked, the former captain agrees, and in a legal sense it's true. It's not against the law to recover goods from a sunken merchant ship. It is, however, quite illegal to cause the wreck yourself, which is exactly what Uncle Joe is doing.
He's got cronies who set up lanterns on the most dangerous part of the shoreline. Sea captains assume these are beacons of safe harbor when indeed they're the opposite. Ships are lured toward the rocks and crash against them. Uncle Joe then extricates the goods, be it gold or furniture or clothing (hopefully gold). He gets rich this way, rich enough to lobby against the construction of a lighthouse that would protect against future shipwrecks. At the present time, nobody knows about his lanterns, and doggonnit, a lighthouse would render them obsolete! Then he wouldn't be able to crash ships anymore, and of all the injustice in the world......"well I never"!
With his gravelly twanged voice and deliberate, earnest manner, Joe is able to fool the townsfolk for a time, and John McCready also. But then he sinks a ship captained by McCready's brother, the "Hesperus" of the movie's title. At first, John chalks the wreck up to the usual conditions - the rocky coast and his brother's inexperience. But then he finds a lantern hidden within the rocks. The demise of Uncle Joe is in the offing.
Is there a genre for Shipwreck movies? If not, then there should be, if the spellbinding "Hesperus" is any indication. It plays like one of those "waves crashing on the beach" mysteries, be it "Portrait of Jenny" or "The Monster of Piedras Blancas". The night sea gives a haunted quality to any film, and Buchanan's salvage scheme in this movie adds a ghoulish tinge to the proceedings. It's set in 1830, an obscure time in American history, half a century past our Independence and three decades before the Civil War.
I give it Two Big Thumbs Up and highly "wreck"-ommend it. I was waiting to use that line as I'm sure you can tell. ///
That's all for now, and I hope you had a nice day. I send you tons of love, as always.
xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
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