The UnBEARable Liteness of Blogging

via law professor Ilya Somin at The Volokh Conspiracy, I found this delightful little blog post comparing English Bears and American Bears.

Bear with me as I take a bearly deserved break from serious blogging.

On the English side, we have one of my favorites,  Winnie-the-Pooh.

Pooh is first presented as highly imaginative, if somewhat absent-minded. In the first story he tries to fool a hive of bees by disguising himself as a small black cloud in the sky. But he is worried that he still looks like a bear covered in mud and holding a blue balloon, so he asks Christopher Robin to help by holding an umbrella. "Well, you laughed to yourself, 'Silly old Bear!'" says the narrator, addressing Christopher Robin, "but you didn't say it aloud because you were so fond of him."
Soon, however, Christopher Robin loses any reservations about calling Pooh a silly old bear. Sadly, Pooh internalizes the characterization. Their eventual dynamic is summarized when Christopher Robin is dragging him down the stairs by one paw …

hmmm.  I can bearly bear to think of pooh bear being abused.  Silly old bear.

On the other hand, are American Bears really more more assertive and autonomous than English bears?  Or just more brazen?  Here’s one of my favorite American bears:

Also (overly?) self-confident is the muppet Fozzie Bear, who is pursuing a career as a stand-up comedian, despite the fact that people often throw rotten tomatoes at him.

Fozzie gets by with the bear minimun of talent,

I think I agree with Ilya Somin, who says: “The definitive study of Anglo-American literary bears remains to be written, even as its absence gets ever more unbearable.”

And here’s a little music to make your day more bearable:

I do the Bechdel Test for Movies this Weekend

Next time you go to a movie ask these three questions:

1.  Are there two or more women characters in the movie who have names?

2.  Do they talk to each other?

3.  Do they talk to each other about something other than a man?

So, over the 4th of July Weekend I went to the movies.  On Saturday I went to see Winter’s Bone, the story of 17 year old Ree Dolly, a Missouri Ozarks girl trying to find her meth cooking, out-on-bond, missing dad who put the family cabin and land up to secure his bail bond.  There were multiple women in the movie who all had names and who talked to each other.   At first I wondered if the film would fail the Bechdel Test though because, although Ree had lots of conversations with other women, they were mostly about Ree’s dad or Milton, the scary backwoods male head of one of the many branches of Ree’s Ozarks family. 

Ree’s mom doesn’t talk (she had some kind of mental breakdown).  Ree’s conversations with her Ozarks women kin are about her dad or Milton.  Her conversation with her dad’s former “lady friend” April is all about her dad.  Ree does talk to the neighbor, Sonya, about taking care of their horse because she can’t feed it anymore and Sonya gives Ree some pain pills when Ree has been beat up.  And Ree and her best friend Gail do talk about what Ree is going to do with her little brother and sister – whether she needs to give them up to other people to raise.  Those conversations aren’t about a man.  But they are necessitated by the actions of a man – Ree’s dad.  

The film was written and directed by Debra Granik and it won best picture at Sundance.  It’s an odd story in which women are, simultaneously, under the thumb of abusive men and yet stronger than the men.  They enable the abusiveness of the men in many ways and yet go behind their backs to do what they think needs to be done. It is the women who decide to end Ree’s problem and tell her what she needs to know to save her homestead. 

As a movie, I think it is really well done and I really recommend it.  Go to see it.  It will provoke good conversation.  And it will also explain to you why I sometimes want to escape this State of Missouri.   At the end of the movie I said, “they either really did film that in the Ozarks or they found a place that looks exactly like it”.  I watched all the credits.  They really did film it here in Missouri.  In Christian County and Taney County in Southwest Missouri right down by the Arkansas border.  But you don’t have to go to the Ozarks to find insularity and people cooking meth.  You can go to Franklin County, right outside St. Louis, and be scared out of your wits.  And while insularity may be at its peak in the Ozarks, but you’ll find it all over this State.  In many ways this is one scary State. Ironically it is the cities that get the bad rap when it is rural Missouri that no one in their right mind would want to have their car break down in.

I also saw Toy Story III.  In 3D.  My first 3D movie.  What a waste of money.  Not the movie, which was quite cute.  But to pay double the price to see it in 3D.   It would have been perfectly fine in 2D.   The movie failed the Bechdel Test. It had women characters with names:  Mrs. Potato Head, Jessie (the cowgirl), Barbie (yes, THAT Barbie) and Dolly (yes, just Dolly).   And they didn’t only talk about men, they spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to escape the daycare center to which they had been donated (and get back to Andy but they would have wanted to escape even if Andy wasn’t an option). But as far as I can remember they didn’t talk to each other.   Which leads me to wonder why it is necessary that two women characters talk to EACH OTHER in order for there to be a female presence in the film.  Why?   I’m still pondering that.   

Mr. Popper To Come to the Big Screen

I was excited to read that a film version of Mr. Popper’s Penguins is in the offing.

"Mr. Popper" is the tale of a house painter whose dreams of Arctic exploration prompt him to write letters to real explorers. One of them sends him a penguin, which he keeps in an icebox. Soon, Mr. Popper receives a female penguin from a zoo and before he knows it, he has a litter of 12 beaked birds.

When the penguins start to eat him out of house and home, Mr. Popper forms Popper's Performing Penguins, a stage act that goes on tour and causes mayhem at every stop.

I remember the pictures in that book vividly. When we were kids one of my sisters had a teacher named Mrs. Popper.   She is forever linked in my mind with Mr. Popper.

h/t :  Book Bench

It’s Complicated

I went to see another movie over the holidays.  It’s Complicated is a traditional romantic comedy except that it is about old people.  Which is kind of nice since I’m starting to classify myself as an old person.  

Meryl Streep’s character, Jane, and Alec Baldwin’s character, Jake, have been divorced for ten years and she thinks she is finally over it and starting to feel “normal”.   It is clear at the beginning of the film that she is not.   Her friends tell her she needs to date someone but her head is just not there.  This is beautifully presented when her architect and his partner come to present the plans for her new home addition.  Jane’s focus is completely on the man that she knows (the ‘safe’ man) despite the fact that he keeps telling her that Adam (Steve Martin) has done all the work.   It isn’t clear at that point that Adam is a single man but that doesn’t matter.   Jane is not open to new people especially new men.

The film is the story of how Jane opens herself up and starts to take chances.   As I said, it’s simply a romantic comedy but I liked it.  I laughed aloud a lot.

All three of the lead actors (Streep, Baldwin and Martin) do a good job, especially Martin who plays Adam in a very understated way.   This makes it all the funnier when Adam and Jane get stoned and Martin gets to use some of his old crazy act.  Baldwin isn’t really much different than his character on 30 Rock but that didn’t matter.   Streep is, as usual, perfect. 

The writers gave Jane three girl friends because … well because three must be the magic number for girl friends in movies.   I say this because Mary Kay Place was almost completely unused except in reaction shots so I wasn’t clear why she was needed.  But no matter.

Jane and Jake were also given three children and they were fine.  But the oldest daughter’s fiance, Harley (John Krasinski), almost steals the movie.   It is hard to do that and play a character that is “perfect” but Krasinki pulls it off.   He is the son-in-law and brother-in-law that every couple would want and he makes this clear without ever being given anything to do that any son-in-law/brother-in-law character is ever given to do in a movie.   And Krasinski pulls off the comedy perfectly when Harley inadvertently discovers Jane and Jake are having an affair.

There isn’t really much to say about this movie, no deep analysis necessary.   It isn’t by any stretch of the imagination multilayered.  This is a film that says that no matter how old you are you are still going to sometimes act and think like an insecure teenager.   A point that is driven home (not subtly) at the end when Steve Martin’s character has a wonderfully adult reaction to a bad turn of affairs and Meryl Streep’s character, in a bit of shock, says something about how adult the conversation is.  

It worked for me. It is what it is and does what it does very well.  If you are looking for a romantic comedy to see in a theater, go see it.   Or wait for it to come out on DVD.   Or both.

At the Movies: Nine

I went to see Rob Marshall’s film version of the musical Nine during the holidays.  I never saw then stage musical so, unlike his version of Chicago (which I really enjoyed), I can’t compare it to the original.  I’ve never seen the Fellini film on which Nine is based either.

Nine is a lot like the film version of Chicago in that all the musical numbers take place in a character’s imagination and supplement whatever is going on in the “dramatic” portion of the film.    Like in Chicago, the numbers are filmed in a strikingly visual way – they mostly take place on an unfinished movie set.   I’ve always enjoyed Rob Marshall’s choreography and wasn’t disappointed.  He also gets really good performances out of his actors, including actors that you don’t automatically think of as “musical” actors.   They all looked like they were having a ball doing the singing and dancing.  And I think Marshall has a natural eye behind the camera – this is a visually appealing movie. 

But I didn’t like it.

Mostly I didn’t like it because I didn’t like the music.   That isn’t Marshall’s fault of course, he didn’t write the music.   But it is hard to like a musical if you don’t like the music.  I thought the music was boring and found myself drifting away in the middle of musical numbers.  I liked the choreography but thought that Marshall was working hard to keep the audience’s attention from drifting away from the music itself.  

In Chicago the choreography complemented the music and the music, lyrics and choreography worked together to create an overall illusion that we were drawn into.  And despite the fact that Chicago is written as a series of vaudeville style acts, each musical act does advance the plot.   I didn’t really find that the musical “acts” in Nine advanced the plot.  I don’t think they were supposed to; I think they were supposed to give the audience insight into the various characters and insight into how the main character saw the other characters. It is a very psychological story.   But that created a problem, at least for me.

In Nine every time there was a musical number it felt as if the action stopped and the plot was put on hold.   The story revolves around the psychological problems that Daniel Day Lewis’ character (a famous Italian film director) is having in coming up with a movie script. With only a few brief exceptions he is never a part of the musical numbers; they are performed for him or about him – he is passive, either taking them in or not even present for them.   I found myself impatient during them.  

I wonder if part of the problem is that Marshall filmed each musical number as the movie equivalent of a vaudeville number.  The numbers mostly took place on an unfinished movie set played outward to an audience.   To me the musical scene that worked the best was the scene involving Nicole Kidman’s character which cut back and forth between live action dialogue between the characters in narrow Italian streets and the  song which took place in a movie set Italian piazza.  It wasn’t filmed like vaudeville – it was filmed a bit more like an old MGM musical number.   The characters weren’t playing to an audience, they were playing to each other.

But although the music was the key problem I had with the film, I also didn’t like any of the characters.   I’m not sure why that mattered.  I didn’t like any of the characters in Chicago, they were not supposed to be likeable.  But I was fascinated by them.  I wanted to know what they would do next.   In this film, the characters are all … stuck.  I kept waiting for them to do something.  Anything.  But they are all waiting for the main character to do something.  Maybe that’s why Nicole Kidman’s character, Claudia, is refreshing.  Because she takes matters into her own hands.

Daniel Day Lewis does such a good job playing an Italian that if you didn’t know who he was you might think he was Italian.  But his character is a self absorbed, chain smoking, rumpled (actually, dirty looking) Italian.   Not anyone I’d want to be around.  And although a lot is made of the fact that the character is a famous film director, we just have to take their word for it.   We see none of his prior work.   Without seeing his “genius” in action it is difficult to understand why anyone would put up with him.   He does nothing but mope around.  

Marion Cotillard does well as his long suffering wife but she isn’t given nearly enough to do except look long-suffering.   Penelope Cruz is his mistress and is little more than a caricature.  Kate Hudson and Sofia Loren are in bit parts that add almost nothing to the film (although it was fun watching Kate Hudson looking almost exactly like her mother back in the Laugh-In days). 

I enjoyed Nicole Kidman.  I’d say that she did a lot with such a small part but that’s partly because her character is key to the plot so she was given something to work with.  But credit where it’s due, she took what was given to her and made something of the two or three scenes she was in. She also, admittedly, owes a lot to wardrobe and makeup who made her look like a dead ringer for Brigit Bardot (although I’m assuming that since she is named Claudia the role is supposed to be a takeoff on Claudia Cardinale, but no matter).  

Judi Dench was, as usual, fantastic and totally wasted in the role.

In the end, I just didn’t care if the main character ever found himself or ever made a movie again.   It is possible that this musical just doesn’t translate well to film, but since the musical derived from a film I find that hard to believe.  So I have to lay the blame for failure at the feet of the director.

I did, however, like watching the Italian scenery.

Up in the Air

I went to see the new Jason Reitman film, Up in the Air, last weekend.  And I liked it, even though the story is a bit of a downer in this economy.  After all, watching Ryan Bingham, George Clooney’s character, fly around the country firing people isn’t very uplifting when people all around me have been fired in real life.  But it wasn’t as hard to watch as I expected.   And, after all, if you are going to be fired, you might as well be fired by someone who looks like George Clooney and who has as nice a manner as the Ryan Bingham character.

It’s a very timely story, not only because of the current economic times.  It also explores the use of technology.   Breaking up by texting.  Quitting a job by e-mail.  Firing someone on a teleconference.   Technology is good, but some blows need to be softened by delivering the message in person.  On the other hand, unexpected blows are still unexpected blows even if you receive them in person.

And there is really great male-female role reversal in this film.

I wasn’t familiar with the novel, written by Walter Kirn.  According to Kirn it got good reviews and was selling well for a brief time and then … 9/11 happened.  Nobody wanted to read a novel about flying.   Kirn says he never expected a movie of the novel to get made.   But it did.  And it’s good.

But, let’s face it.  I wanted to see George Clooney and I was hoping it was a decent story but I was really there to watch locations.  And to see if I recognized any extras.   The movie was filmed here in St. Louis for a couple of months last spring.  We don’t get that many movies filming here so we aren’t jaded enough to complain about the inconvenience.  We were excited.   But we are also midwestern and polite.  So we didn’t let our excitement interfere with any of the filming.  That would have been rude.

There were George Clooney sightings reported all over town.   I never saw him.  But my sister AB did and so did my cousin MM.  In fact, AB and MM saw George at the same location, outside the little church in Maplewood where the wedding scene was filmed.  Each of them was so excited to see George in person that they didn’t even notice that the other one was there too, standing only a few feet away, until they compared notes later.  My cousin MM actually shook George’s  hand.   Sometimes, if we are really nice, she’ll let us touch that hand.   

We all wondered why they chose that church as a location.  St. Louis has  a lot of churches and many of them are quite lovely.  That one isn’t.  It’s boxy and plain and drab colored.  The day they filmed was a sunny spring day and it was pretty warm.  But there was fake snow everywhere and all the actors had to look cold.

When AB and I went to see the movie, we realized that in the film the church was supposed to be in northern Wisconsin and AB, who lived in Wisconsin for a while, said it all now made sense.  Because it did look like the kind of church you would find in northern Wisconsin.

My friend MZ was actually an extra in the movie, in the wedding scene filmed inside the church.  The casting company was looking for an organist and called a mutual friend who is one of the best organists in the country.  He was pretty excited that they called until it turned out they wanted a woman organist and only wanted him to recommend someone.  So he recommended MZ.  

MZ had some pretty good stories.  The movie people asked her what she usually wore to play the organ and she said she usually wore something black (to fit in with the choir).   Oh no, they said.  No black.  What else would you wear, they asked?   Well, she said.  Sometimes I wear white.    No.  No white either, they said.  We want something floral.  MZ didn’t own anything floral but she went out shopping and found a dress.  On the day of shooting she actually played the organ.   In the movie you see her playing.   Well, actually they only show her hands but WE knew it was her.   And the thing is, you have no idea what she’s wearing.

MZ told us that for the wedding scene the casting people wanted to pick extras who in real life actually DID the things that they would be doing in the movie.   They chose a woman who is actually a wedding planner and had her run around organizing things.   She was the wedding planner one of my colleagues recently used to help with her daughter’s wedding.  I’ve never met her and, truthfully, I forgot to look for anyone doing “wedding planner” things.   Maybe I’ll have to go back and see it again with someone who knows her.

My best friend, H, works in an office building downtown and she called me one day to tell me that they were shooting in the plaza outside her building and there had been “George” sightings.   She never actually saw him.  But I recognized the building in the movie. 

We were told that one reason they chose St. Louis is because they wanted a city that could be “every” city.   And we really do have diverse architecture.  So when George was supposed to be in Chicago he was really knocking on the door of a house in Lafayette Square here.  And let’s face it, nondescript office buildings are … nondescript.   They can be anywhere.   We have a lot of those. 

We were also told that they chose St. Louis because there were going to be lots of scenes in airports and after American Airlines moved its hub out of here … well, let’s just say we have a lot of empty airport to rent out.    It was actually a little annoying to see how nice they were to American Airlines in the movie.  Loyalty.  meh.

After the movie was over AB and I talked about how a lot of the scenes in the aiport weren’t in the empty concourses but were in the main parts of the airport.  They used all four security checkpoints – to make it look like they were in different airports.   I think they used all the entrances too. 

We watched the credits all the way through to the end.  After all, we the taxpayers of Missouri gave them a lot of incentives to come film here, we might as well see our “thank you”.  There were a lot of thank you’s.  Most you would expect – the State, the City, the Airport Authority.   And the St. Louis Blues hockey team.    The Blues?   Neither of us could remember seeing any hockey in the movie.   I wonder what they did?

Amelia

It’s easy to forget that less than 100 years ago no one had ever flown across the Atlantic ocean.  We take it for granted today that we can jump on a plane in the evening and be in Paris in the morning.  But until Lindbergh did it, no one had.   And even after Lindbergh did it, not many other people flew across the Atlantic. It was dangerous.   People died trying.  In fact, the first person to do it after Lindbergh was a woman, Amelia Earhart.   And she ended up in Ireland, not Paris.

Break is Over

Yes, I’m back. My break was a little longer than I originally anticipated when I left for vacation back in July.

And yes. It was The Worst Vacation Ever.

The virus appeared on the second day of vacation and stayed with me the whole ten days. I can’t say it was swine flu because for the first ten days I was in a cabin in the north woods and didn’t bother having anyone drive me the forty miles to the nearest emergency room to find out. But I definitely had flu-like symptoms, and what other kind of flu is going around right now? By the time I got home, it became severe bronchitis (due, probably, to the airplane travel) and I and my doctor were only interested in treating the immediate symptoms. The bronchitis lasted another ten days, followed by a couple of weeks of exhaustion. It has not been fun.

Public Enemies

There's nothing more American than Chicago gangsters, organized crime and the FBI. So that's what we decided to watch for our Fourth of July movie. 

Public Enemies is the new movie starring Johnny Depp as fabled gangster and Public Enemy No. 1 John Dillinger.  Directed by Michael Mann with a screenplay by Mann, Ronan Bennett and Ann Biderman, the movie is shot in digital which gives it a patina that is a little different from other big films.  In fact, I'd recommend watching it simply to watch the cinematography.   Mann makes it feel as if he went back in time to locations exactly as they were in the early 1930's - there is nothing "movie like" about the cinematography except the portions where the reporters show up and then it takes on a bit of a newsreel feel.  

Depp gives a great performance.  Very understated, his Dillinger is a man who is calm on the outside but driven on the inside with an appealing arrogance that comes across in the eyes and the corners of the mouth.   Christian Bale plays government agent Melvin Purvis whose best attribute seems to be his patience and sharpshooting ability and who is put in charge of the Chicago office because he killed Pretty Boy Floyd.  Having the two main characters played in such an understated way could have slowed down the action but Mann juxtaposes the calm of these men with the characters who surround them who are unpredictable in dangerous ways.   There are only a few women in the film and the main woman character is, of course, the love interest, Billie Frechette, played by Marion Cotillard.  I found the character uninteresting as written and Cotillard didn't add anything that I could latch onto.   The best scene involving Cotillard is really a statement about the methods of interrogation used by the FBI rather than any kind of disclosure about her character.  Although there was some chemistry between she and Depp, there wasn't enough, I thought, to sustain the bare bones script.  It was never really clear to me what they saw in each other and, more, what they needed from each other (or rather what he needed from her). 

That, in fact, is the biggest problem with the film:  Mann seemed more interested in making a statement than in telling a story.   There is little to no explanation about what made John Dillinger become John Dillinger.  There is little to no explanation about why Frechette became Dillinger's one and only (and really why she would put up with him, although her lack of money would explain a lot of that). In each case there is enough that, after the movie, we could speculate.  But during the film it isn't there and that makes it hard to attach to the main character and hope that he gets away.  The "bad guys" in this film are bad and you wouldn't want them living next to you.  Dillinger is a criminal and he's going to meet his end one day and the audience knows that and I didn't sense any disapproval of that in the theater.  

On the other hand, Purvis has no back story and the government is portrayed as inept and, in fact, more of a danger to the citizens of Chicago and Wisconsin than the gangsters, violent though the gangsters are.   So it is almost impossible to root for the "good guys".   The only group that seems competent and not particularly dangerous is the group that represents organized crime; they are only about the money and when Dillinger's antics bring greater government scrutiny down on Chicago and threaten to lead to federal crime legislation that could be used to shut down their gambling operations they decide he is a liability. But the organized crime characters in the film are also shadowy and undeveloped so it isn't as if the audience is going to attach to them in any way.

I think that's what Mann wanted.  He wanted this ambivalence.  The title of the film is Public Enemies in the plural not the singular and I walked out of the film thinking that all of them, the gangsters and the government agents, were enemies of the public, endangering the lives of ordinary citizens on a daily basis.  The scene at Little Bohemia in Wisconsin where Purvis kills ordinary people who are simply leaving the bar to drive home is particularly chilling (maybe more so because it was shot on location in Wisconsin and the digital photography made it look like a place I could stop at for a drink next month when I'm up in the north woods).  The scenes outside the Biograph are also chilling because you realize that all of the bullets are flying as ordinary people are leaving the movie theater on a hot July night in Chicago (and maybe more chilling because I've been to the Biograph Theater in Chicago).   Interestingly there is a sense that Dillinger dies the way he would want to die, he would never want to be locked up forever.  But there is no audience satisfaction from knowing that fact.  What we were left wondering was why 10 government agents could not have taken one man alive and what would it have been like to have been walking out of the theater that night?

I do think Mann intentionally told the story this way to create this ambivalent feeling.  But it is a flaw.  A film without a character to attach to leaves you walking out feeling unfulfilled.  On the other hand, it is brilliantly shot with outstanding editing, it is well acted and the last 20 minutes or so are very suspenseful especially the intercutting between the actual Myrna Loy, Cary Grant, William Powell gangster movie that Dillinger is watching in the theater and what is going on around him.  Depp is such a charismatic actor that he doesn't need dialog to make a character and the last 20 minutes of this film show that.  So all in all I would recommend it with reservations.

This and That: Dance, Mystery Novels, Blog Comments and Movie Architecture

Some stuff:

Dancer/Choreographer Merce Cunningham has announced that his company will be disbanded after his death because "he thinks his dances have a better chance of surviving over the long haul if his associates concentrate on making them available to other companies instead of keeping his own troupe going."  Terry Teachout writes in the WSJ that this is the most "significant dance-related piece of news to come along in years."

Ian Rankin retired his famous detective John Rebus but he's not retired from writing.  His new detective is Malcom Fox and Rankin auctioned the opening pages of the first Malcom Fox manuscript for charity.  The novel is set for release in September.

I decided to put Sarah Waters' new novel, The Little Stranger, in my pile of vacation reading.  A few weeks ago Waters wrote a column in  The Guardian in which she discussed the relationship of this novel to Josephine Tey's mystery novel, The Franchise Affair.  I read all of Tey's novels years ago and I'm thinking of digging out The Franchise Affair and re-reading it.  But I can't decide whether to read it before or after The Little Stranger.

I got a chuckle out of  post by Scott McLemee at ArtsJournal in which he clarifies that he doesn't think the problem with online communication is too many people thinking they are important or thinking they are part of the conversation.  No, the "issue is people acting like assholes."   Yeah, I think that pretty much sums it up.  I'm pleased that my commenters have (so far) been the exact opposite. :)

Finally, Architect's Journal recently selected the top ten star wars buildings.   What do you think?  I've always wanted to visit the Cloud City, I would have ranked it higher.

Come and Meet those Dancing Feet

42nd Street was really good.  If I sound surprised it's because MUNY productions for the last 15 years have mostly been mediocre.  But this was a good show with lots of good dancing.

Considering that the temperature was in the high 90's with a heat index of 108 and when the show ended after 10:30 the temperature was still in the upper 80's, that's saying a lot. And the rain held off, the drops didn't start falling until the drive home.  Which is good because this wasn't Singing in the Rain.  Which has been on my mind all night because of comments on my earlier thread.

So here's a brief scene in honor of Andi:

Sunshine Cleaning

I thought it was going to be a comedy. It was billed as a comedy. The previews were funny. And, truth be told, parts of it were funny. But it was really one of those slice of life dramas in which the characters experience the absurdities of life and they (and you) just have to laugh. That's not the same thing as a comedy. And I wanted a comedy.

But I enjoyed it anyway, up to a point. And that's saying something.

Sunshine Cleaning, with Amy Adams, Emily Blunt and Alan Arkin is a decent film that doesn't quite go anywhere but that's ok. Amy Adams plays Rose, the former head cheerleader who didn't marry her quarterback-turned-police-detective boyfriend but she had his child and still fools around with him in cheap motels. To support herself and her now elementary-school-aged son, Oscar, she cleans houses and dreams of getting her real estate license.

Her younger sister Norah (Emily Blunt) has trouble holding down a job but she does baby sit Oscar on the nights Rose is out. Norah still lives at home with dad, Alan Arkin, who seems to have now been typecast in the crochety and eccentric but loveable old man roles. Or maybe that it just seems that way because this film was produced by the same people who brought us Little Miss Sunshine.

When Rose learns that she can make good money by starting her own business cleaning up crime scenes she talks Norah into working with her and a series of vignettes ensue as the sisters clean up varying degrees of disgusting crime scenes. It is a journey for the two sisters and they each learn things about themselves and each other along the way.

Amy Adams must be exhausted. Since 2007 she has starred in Enchanted, Charlie Wilson's War, Miss Pettigrew Lives for the Day, Doubt, and now Sunshine Cleaning. She will be in the new Night at the Museum which opens soon. And in August her film with Meryl Streep (her second), Julie and Julia, will open. That's a lot of films to do in a few short years. And she was great in all of them, including this one. She brings a sincerity to her roles that makes me believe completely in whoever she is playing.

This is the first writing credit for Megan Holley and it had the feel of a first time script from someone with a lot of potential. It was a good premise and some of the scenes were really well done - either funny or poignant. But unlike, for instance, the characters in Juno, the eccentricities of these characters sometimes seemed drawn for effect rather than to arise naturally. Norah, for instance, at times seemed to be created as a foil for Rose and bordered on caricature. On the other hand, the subplot between Norah and Lynn, the daughter of one of the victims Norah and Rose have cleaned up after, could have been an entire movie if it had been fleshed out.

This film was written by a woman and directed by another woman, Christine Jeffs, who has only a couple of other films to her credit. It is a story about a woman trying to find herself and make a place for herself in this world. I'm glad I saw it. But I was really in the mood for more of a comedy.

Here's the trailer:

Bwahahahaha

Via Kottke I found an extremely useful website: How to be a Successful Evil Overlord. The author notices something that I also have noticed but he (unlike me) puts some thought into a solution:

I've noticed that no matter whether they are barbarian lords, deranged wizards, mad scientists, or alien invaders, they always seem to make the same basic mistakes every single time. With that in mind, allow me to present...

The Top 100 Things I'd Do If I Ever Became An Evil Overlord

Didn't I tell you this was a very useful site? Here are my favorites:

21. I will hire a fashion designer to create original uniforms for my Legion of Terror, as opposed to some cheap knock-offs that make them look like Nazi stormtroopers, Roman foot soldiers, or savage Mongol hordes. All were eventually defeated and I want my troops to have a more positive mind-set.

23. I will keep a special cache of low-tech weapons and train my troops in their use. That way -- even if the heroes manage to neutralize my power generator and/or render the standard-issue energy weapons useless -- my troops will not be overrun by a handful of savages armed with spears and rocks.

50. My main computers will have their own special operating system that will be completely incompatible with standard IBM and Macintosh powerbooks.

52. I will hire a team of board-certified architects and surveyors to examine my castle and inform me of any secret passages and abandoned tunnels that I might not know about.

65. If I must have a computer system with publicly available terminals, the maps they display will have a room clearly marked as the Main Control Room. That room will be the Execution Chamber. The actual main control room will be marked as Sewage Overflow Containment.

81. If I am fighting with the hero atop a moving platform, have disarmed him, and am about to finish him off and he glances behind me and drops flat, I too will drop flat instead of quizzically turning around to find out what he saw.

Time to go conquer the world ...

This & That: TV, Movies, etc

Some stuff:

• I went to see Duplicity, the new movie with Julia Roberts and Clive Owen. I was ambivalent. I enjoyed it - but not as much as I expected. And it seemed a little long. Roberts and Owen play spies (CIA and MI5 respectively) who leave their agencies and team up to make money doing corporate security - by stealing from their employers. They have chemistry - when they are together the sparks fly. But when they aren't together things kind of drag. And maybe I was distracted or bored at the end, but I can't figure out how Owen's character ended up where he did with what he did. And I consider that a flaw, not a benefit. The director, Tony Gilroy, also directed Michael Clayton which I also enjoyed but found totally unbelievable.
• After three episodes, I'm still good with Castle. It's not the greatest TV show ever made, but it keeps my interest on Monday nights and Nathan Fillion is never anything but great. And things have changed since the days of Murder She Wrote: now they solve crimes using blue tooth technology.
• Right before Castle comes on, Dancing with the Stars is on. I've never watched the show before although I've caught glimpses. And I've never bothered to sit through the whole thing this season, but the 15 minutes or so that I've seen has been pretty enjoyable. It makes me wonder if there has been an upsurge in ballroom dancing since it went on the air. I'm a total klutz so the idea of dancing backwards in high heels in front of an audience makes my stomach hurt. On the other hand, the idea of being able to dance like that at a wedding reception or anniversary party sounds like fun.
• Have I mentioned that I love hulu? Right now you can watch all episodes of Cosmos with Carl Sagan. And funnily enough, I've been thinking of Cosmos lately. Every time someone on TV talks about the billions and billions of dollars we are spending on the financial bailout I hear Carl Sagan's voice. Billions and billions ...
• A very practical website I found via Justin Fox (Time's economics blogger) is Still Tasty where you can find how long your favorite food or beverage will last and how to store it. According to Fox the "creator is a retired food safety expert with the Canadian government." It answers questions like "Is it better to store my bread on the counter or in the fridge?" (on the counter). I also found that I can keep my opened jar of Strawberry Jelly in the refrigerator for up to a year.

Make a Movie of ...

Booking Through Thursday asks this question:

What book do you think should be made into a movie? And do you have any suggestions for the producers? Or, What book do you think should NEVER be made into a movie?

I'm always interested in people's thoughts on this because I love books and I love movies. But so seldom do good books become good movies.

 

Here's my answer. Are you sitting down?  Really. You should sit down.  Here it is ... The Biographer's Tale, by AS Byatt. 

 

Stop laughing.  I have my reasons.

 

If you want to know why, click "More".  If not, just leave your own ideas in the comments.

 

Anyone who reads this blog will know that I'm a huge fan of AS Byatt.  But The Biographer's Tale is my least favorite Byatt novel and I found it almost unreadable in certain respects.  So it might strike some of you as funny that I think it could be made into a film.  But I do. I've thought so ever since about a week after the first (and only) time I read the novel and was caught up in thinking about how the novel just didn't work.  When suddenly I thought, but it would work as a movie.  I just never thought I'd get the chance to tell anyone this idea.

For those of you who haven't read it, I can't recommend that you do.  But I'll give you a brief synopsis.   Phineas G. Nanson is a graduate student who tires of academic life and is uninterested in completing his dissertation.  He is tired of post-structural literary studies and wants "facts".  His advisor recommends that he instead write a biography of an obscure writer who only wrote biographies: Scholes Destry-Scholes.  Nanson attempts to research Scholes'  life but, in the end, discovers very little about Scholes, certainly not enough to write a biography.   To support himself as he conducts his tedious research he becomes employed at a travel agency that helps people plan special fantasy trips.  In the course of the story he also becomes lovers with two women, a Scandinavian bee taxonimist and a radiologist.  In the end he is not able to finish the biography but he does become a fiction writer.

Not the most exciting plot in the world.  Those immersed in academia might find parts of it amusing; others might be bored. But the plot is not necessarily the reason that it didn't work as a novel.  The problem with this novel was that Byatt forces the reader to go through every bit of tiresome, pointless research that Nanson goes through. 

When Nanson finds that Scholes had begun work on three biographies, we are forced to read the excerpts of these biographies that he has found.  All right, perhaps this was not pointless from the point of view of the reader because the fictional biographies are of real life persons (Carl Linneaus, Francis Galton and Henrik Ibsen) and we the reader figure out that Scholes inserted a bit of ... fantasy into his biographies.   But although not pointless, they take up a great deal of the book and interrupt the narrative (and while Byatt is making statements in this novel about narrative it is still annoying).  Each of these three real life people were involved in the science (or art?) of classification.  And classification plays a big role in this novel.

Nanson also discovers a huge collection of notecards on which Scholes kept notes. As Nanson slowly works through them he tries to classify them and fails.    As a reader we try to impose a narrative on them and fail - there is no rhyme or reason to the order of the cards and the quotes on them are not identified so it is impossible to tell what was a quote versus what was an original thought of Scholes'.  This notecard examination goes on for quite some time and is the main reason that I found the novel almost unreadable. 

So why on earth would I think this would make a good film?  Because if you cut out those sections of the novel in which the reader must read what Nanson reads (not the idea behind these sections but the actual fact of having to read them), the story of Phineas Nanson is actually ... a tale.  A fairy tale, even.  And one that lends itself to a visual medium.

Byatt loves to create tales and she often inserts them into her novels.  She did it in Possession and in Babel Tower.  She also wrote a small book of tales.   And I'm usually bored by them.  But this entire novel is a fairy tale and it works if the reader can get past all the research she is forcing us to do. 

Here are the details that I left out of my synopsis.  Phineas G. Nanson is a "little person".  Not really a dwarf.  "Small but perfectly formed."  Maybe like a hobbit but without the furry feet.   He is given advice by Professor Goode - a Merlin or Gandalf like person.  The two women with whom he becomes involved are like opposite twins of myth - one a bee taxonimist, all outdoors and golden.  The other a radiologist, all indoors and silver.  There is a mysterious stranger who lurks at the Travel Agency and is threatening in some vague way (his name is Bossey) all of which leads up to an "encounter".   The Travel Agency itself is one of those magical places that inhabit British children's literature - Phineas "just notices" it on the street one day.  He realizes that he needs a job and it just sort of appears.  A plain building with a magical interior . 

The particular reason I think this would work in film is because as the story moves forward his life become more colorful - literally.  (In the novel his writing becomes more interesting too). And it would work so much better if you could actually see the color and the other visuals.  The story opens in shades of brown and gray (London, the interior of a classroom) and ends in a field of bright flowers.    In between he moves between a gray existence (reading all those damn notecards) to color (the Travel Agency).   I can picture an Amelie like colorization technique as different objects become colorized until by the end his whole world is color.  And all the parts that were boring to read?  We could see what he sees as he reads them - as they become more fantastical.  A sort of movie of the mind showing us that what were supposed to be solid documentaries about great men became works of fiction.

I think it could work.  

The most amazing thing to me is that the whole fairy tale thing was not even noticeable to me through most of the novel.  Thank god.  If it had been blatant I would have given up early on.  I don't like fairy tales.  But it was done so subtly that I didn't even realize it until late in the novel when Phineas gets into an argument with the very likeable but slightly naughty gay owners of the Travel Agency and the word "fairies" is flung around.  Gasp.   Of course I assumed it was just a slur thrown against two gay men.  Until a few pages later when it dawned on me that they were not only gay they were exactly like fairies.  Real fairies (well, you know what I mean).   Think Tinkerbell.  She is essentially good but unreliable.  She grants wishes but they might not turn out as you expect.  She has a temper and gets jealous.  She can be mischievous.  And that's what the Travel Agency owners are like. They have made Phineas' life better by employing him but they are also ... difficult.  And it was at that moment that I put the whole thing together and realized that Phineas was living in a fairy story although he thought he was living another genre of narrative altogether.  And once he released himself into fiction his life became happier.

Now can't you just see a filmmaker wrapping his arms around that concept? 

Oh, and by the way, I never thought I would ever blog about The Biographer's Tale. 

 

Enchanted April

We had a beautiful weekend and all the red buds are in bloom.  But now the weather has gone back to freezing and I can't wait for spring to be here to stay. 

So, I watched Enchanted April.  I watch it every year usually at the beginning of March, just when the weather is starting to break and there is a hint of spring in the air but spring won't be here in full force for a few weeks.  It helps me get through those weeks.  (I also usually watch Bull Durham to get in the mood for baseball season, but it's too early for that.)

Starring Josie Lawrence and the always wonderful Miranda Richardson, it also has a great performances by Joan Plowright and Polly Walker.  The director is Mike Newell (Four Weddings and a Funeral) but much credit for the success of this film must go to the screenwriter Peter Barnes and especially the cinematographer Rex Maidment for the juxtaposition between the grey, rainy London in the first half of the film and the sunny, wisteria filled Italy of the second half of the film.

The film is based on a novel by Elizabeth von Armin written back in the 1920's called The Enchanted April.  As far as I know it is still out of print but my local library has a copy and I read it a few years ago.  The film is fairly true to the novel and, in fact, is somewhat more believable than the novel.  I'm not sure why this is true and it may just be my own deficiency as a reader in being able to form adequate pictures in my mind.  But the story is about the transformative nature of beautiful surroundings and, since just watching the film each year transforms me, I find that the film works slightly better than the novel.   After all, it is one thing to describe rainy, cold London and warm, sunny Italy and another thing to see it.

Also, an essential part of the story is that Lottie Wilkins "sees" things as they should be and she makes it so.  And the portrayal of Lottie by Josie Lawrence is so perfect that I completely believe that Lottie "sees" things that are as they should be.  For instance, in the novel:

But Mrs. Wilkins was not listening; for just then, absurd as it seemed, a picture had flashed across her brain, and there were two figures in it sitting together under a great trailing wisteria that stretched across the branches of a tree she didn't know, and it was herself and Mrs. Arbuthnot -- she saw them -- she saw them.  And behind them, bright in sunshine, were old grey walls -- the medieval castle -- she saw it -- they were there ...

There is something pedestrian about this "sight" whereas Josie Lawrence adds her intense gaze and affirms that she sees it.  It is going to happen.

The story is simple; it takes place after World War I.  Two middle class married women (Rose Arbuthnot and Lottie Wilkins) live in the same London suburb, belong to the same church and the same London woman's club, but they don't really know each other very well.  They find that they are both sick and tired of the cold dreary February London weather as well as their own lives and they decide to plan a trip Italy for a month of sunshine.  They see an advertisement for a wisteria draped castle and decide to rent it.  They do not intend to take their husbands. Rose is emotionally estranged from her husband and Lottie's husband is somewhat overbearing. 

The two women cannot afford the castle on their own however, so they advertise for two other women to share expenses with them.  Unfortunately they receive only two applicants and must accept both of them.  This is part of the "magic" of the film - that four so different women end up together sharing a house in Italy.  The other two women are Lady Caroline Dester a beautiful spoiled flapper who is bored with her single life:  

Lady Caroline came to the club in Shaftesbury Avenue, and appeared to be wholly taken up by one great longing, a longing to get away from everybody she had ever known.  When she saw the club, and Mrs. Arbuthnot, and Mrs. Wilkins,  she was sure that here was exactly what she wanted.  She would be in Italy - a place she adored; she would not be in hotels - places she loathed;  she would not be staying with friends - persons she disliked; and she would be in the company of strangers who would never mention a single person she knew, for the simple reason that they had not, could not have and would not come across them.

The fourth woman is Mrs. Fischer, a lonely old lady living in the past who frowns on "modern" ways.

Although the women have little in common with each other, each of the four women seeks transformation and finds it in the Italian sun.  The two husbands, who also end up in Italy, also are transformed. 

It is a bit of a fairy tale but sometimes we need a fairly tale in the last cold days of winter.   And even if you don't believe in magic, it's always nice, when the weather is bad wherever you are, to think of Italy as it looks at the end of April.

This and That: Book Clubs, Children's Books, George Clooney, etc.

• So, who watched Castle? It was ... good enough to pass the time on the typical brain dead Monday night. I was doubtful during the first half hour but I liked the second half. Although they could lose the mother character.
• I belong to two book clubs and neither one of them has ever considered that we should turn the club into ... well, a club. But a book club in Canada did. They built themselves a private club complete with a bar serving premium liquors.

  The board originally hoped to sell 120 two-person memberships at $100 each; they've now sold 340 and are considering capping the number, Hunziker says.

  “And this is in a town of 700!” she points out.

  Sounds like my kind of book club! (h/t HeyLady)

• When I was in third grade my favorite book was Baby Island. Don't ask me why. I think the whole idea of being washed up on a desert island just fascinated me. Today the idea of being stranded on a desert island with a boat of babies sounds like my kind of hell. But I still remember Baby Island fondly. And Carrie brought back those memories by mentioning it in a blog post about good books to read aloud.
• Did I mention that George Clooney is here shooting a movie? It's called Up in the Air and, while lot of it is being shot at the closed D Concourse out at the airport, they are also shooting downtown. Lots of sightings starting to happen. For instance, George shoots hoops at St. Louis University's arena. The local paper even published an interactive map where fans could pinpoint where they had seen him . My favorite entry was the one that claimed to see him in Springfield Missouri (about 3.5 hours from here) where he was caught scaling a fence trying to peek in the window of Brad Pitt's childhood home. Of course as The Riverfront Times pointed out, if George had been all the places people spotted him:

he'd almost certainly be dead or in jail by now. One reader reports seeing him "harassing midgets" in Granite City. Another saw him drinking a forty in Fairground park, and yet another reports witnessing the actor as he stabbed a man at a Popeye's restaurant and stole the victim's three-piece meal and fruit punch.
Yet another reader says he beat Clooney in a go-kart race in St. Charles. The actor has also been reported at numerous east side gentlemen's clubs where he supposedly has an insatiable thirst for the "chocolate milk" -- whatever that means.

Today one of my colleagues told me that she spotted him. Yep, live and in person. And I believe her. I hope I spot him and get to talk to him. Because I really want to have a political conversation with him. Really.

Judging

At Happy Hour last Friday we had a discussion about watching movies versus reading books.  It made me wonder how other people judge movies and books.  For me, the way I judge movies and books are totally different although I'm not sure, in the end, that I'm harder one or the other.  I just reach my conclusion in different ways.

I have a simple way of judging whether a movie is "good" or not.   For me, a perfect movie is one that I experience totally in the moment.  From the moment the lights go down in the movie theater until the moment the closing credits start to roll I will forget I'm in a movie theater and I will inhabit the world that is created on the screen for me.  I completely suspend disbelief.

Of course no movie is perfect.  There is always a moment in every movie (or two or five or fifty moments) when I am pulled out of the story and I remember I'm in a movie theater watching a man-made creation.  Sometimes it's because a camera shot is TOO good and I'm reminded it is a camera shot.  More often it is because of a lapse in continuity or a problem with characterization or inappropriate soundtrack or some other event that arose out of a choice the filmmakers made.  The moment I start to wonder why the creators made that choice (even if I think it is a brilliant choice) I'm pulled out of the movie and it becomes a little less perfect for me.  For me, the structure of a movie needs to be invisible and I should only notice it after the movie is over and I start to think about why I liked it.

I walk into every movie believing that it could be the perfect movie experience.  For me, movies are like math tests.  Everybody has a perfect score in that single moment before the teacher says, pick up your pencil and turn over your test.  Then ... the points start to come off.  And my red pencil is ruthless. In the end, most movies that I see end up having what would be an average grade if I were grading them.

Novels are different for me.  I assume that every novel I pick up is average.  There isn't anything wrong with average.  You can say nice things about average. So I often say nice things about novels that I don't think are particularly special.  I try to find something good about them, I try not to be too harsh in pointing out the things that I think didn't work. 

But the way I experience a novel is exactly the opposite of how I experience a movie.  I am always aware that a novel is a man-made creation and some of my favorite novels have found me talking to the author (sometimes aloud) as I read.  Complimenting or berating her.

So, if I were grading a novel, I would start with the idea that the novel is average and I would look for ways that it deviates from average in either good or bad ways.  As I read a novel I'm looking  for structural elements that I like, that make me think "ah that's where you are going, very clever to have set it up this way". 

This can work a couple of ways for me.  Sometimes I'm entranced by structural elements as I read.  I'm enjoying the story but at the same time I'm enjoying the structure.  I stop to re-read sentences, I go back to the start of chapters to see how the author has managed to trick me.  That's fun.  In the best novels (at least my definition of the best novels) my reading might evolve this way but I am also aware that I'm going to have to re-read the novel.  That the structure is being revealed to me in such a fashion that the beauty of the whole structure will only be revealed when the novel is finished.  And at that point I'll have to go back and re-read to see how the author did that.

If I don't notice structural elements while I read it's usually a sign that at the end I'm going to classify the novel as just average.  This doesn't mean that I don't enjoy the plot or like the characters, I just don't like them enough to classify the novel as above average.  (I read so many novels that "average" is a pretty wide category, sort of like a Bell curve). 

Let me be clear, I don't think there's anything wrong with this.  I don't think "C" is a sign of failure.  It's a sign that a book is just fine, it's not bad, there's nothing particularly wrong with it but it just didn't grab me and make me want to re-read any part of it.  Just as I don't think there's anything particularly wrong with a movie that's average, I just won't want to see it again.

I have no idea if my way of looking at movies and novels is common or uncommon.  It's just the way I do it.

The End of the Big Read

I intended to go to one of the discussions of To Kill a Mockingbird sponsored by local booksellers and libraries as part of The Big Read but the weather didn't cooperate on the night there was one near me. I also intended to go see an exhibition at the St. Louis Regional Arts Commission today, done in connection with The Big Read. At least, I thought it was today. But when I looked again this morning to see the times I discovered that it was yesterday.

So my final Big Read post will be this, a talk given by Charles J. Shields, the author of A Portrait of Harper Lee:

This was given in San Francisco and it is about an hour in length. But very interesting. Harper Lee will give no interviews and did not cooperate at all in the writing of this biography. Part of me respects her privacy. Another part of me hopes that she leaves all of her papers to a research library so that they can be studied after she dies.

Harper Lee was known as Nelle and she was one of four children. Her father really was a lawyer and her older sister became a lawyer and joined the father's firm. Nelle's father wanted Nelle to also become a lawyer and join them but Nelle never finished her degree because she didn't like the law and she wanted to be a writer. I find her sister's story fascinating. There were very few women lawyers in the 1950's - some, but very few. According to Mr. Smith, Nelle's sister still goes into her law office even in her 90's.

Also, there really was someone in the town on whom Boo Radley was based.

Another interesting part of the talk is about the role Harper Lee played in helping Truman Capote with his book In Cold Blood. A few years ago a film was made, called Capote, about the writing of that book. The actress who played Harper Lee was Catherine Keener, here's the trailer:

Golden Globe Awards

The biggest party in Hollywood was held Sunday night.  I actually went to some movies this year and even saw a number of the nominees.  That hasn't happened in a while so I ended up watching the whole thing.  Turns out that I saw a number of the winners too. 

The producers tried to get everyone glued to their seats with the first award as we wondered whether Jennifer Lopez was going to keep her dress properly aligned to cover her in the appropriate places.  But after that :

• Slumdog Millionaire was a big winner. Best Motion Picture (Drama),  Best score, Best Director.  Best screenplay (motion picture) - Simon Beaufoy was the screenwriter.  I didn't read the novel so I can't say how it compares to the original work, but the film did give me nightmares and yet I can imagine seeing it again because it did pull off the happy ending. It is a hard story to pull off and I thought he did pull it off.  I saw two of the other nominees:  Doubt and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.  I thought Slumdog Millionaire was the best written of the three.   I did not see Frost/Nixon or The Reader so I can't compare it with that.  
• John Adams (the HBO Series) was the big winner in the made for television movie categories. It won best movie.  Tom Wilkinson won Best Supporting Actor, Laura Linney won Best Actress and Paul Giamatti won Best Actor.  I didn't see it (no cable) but I was given the DVD set for Christmas.  I'm waiting for a snow storm or a deep cold snap to watch it.  I read the book when it came out a few years ago and thought it was fantastic.   I really liked Laura Linney's yellow gown but I can't find a picture of it anywhere.
• Bruuuuuuuuce won Best Original Song - Motion Picture for his song "The Wrestler" from the new film The Wrestler.  Always nice to see The Boss.  Mickey Rourke won Best Actor in a Motion Picture (Drama) for that film.   The crowd went wild.  Maybe, like me, they had thought he was dead.  Truthfully I would not have recognized him - he looks very different from his days in Diner, The Outsiders and Rumblefish.  Not to mention 9 1/2 Weeks.   
• Wall-E won best animated feature film.  I didn't see the other two nominees but I loved Wall-E - especially the first hour. 
• 30 Rock, which I finally watched a few times this year, won the big television awards: Best Television Series and Best Actor (Alec Baldwin).  Tina Fey won for Best Actress. She gave a very funny speech.  And  I really liked her dress although this picture doesn't really show it off well.
• Kate Winslett had a spectacular night. She won Best Supporting Actress in a Motion Picture for The Reader and then won Best Actress in a Motion Picture (Drama) for Revolutionary Road.  I haven't seen either of those films but I've always liked Kate Winslett. She gave a lovely acceptance speech for the first award and then managed to pull herself together after the shock of the second award to give a  heartfelt speech.   And her dress was fabulous.   Yves St. Laurent.  Yum.  Sally Hawkings, who I've never heard of, won Best Actress in a Motion Picture (Comedy) for a film I had never heard of and gave an endless, boring, tear filled acceptance speech.  Kate Winslett cried but still managed to be articulate.  This other actress could have used a few lessons from her.
• Colin Farrell won Best Actor in a Motion Picture (Comedy) for In Bruges.  I'm not a big Colin Farrell fan but I really enjoyed him in that (very odd) film.   It must be hard to act a role that veers from comedy to drama to suspense to tragedy all in one film. After seeing the film I wasn't sure how to classify it but obviously the Foreign Press thought it was a comedy.  It is a nice, but odd, little film with good acting.  And you can't beat the location - Bruges. I'd recommend it if you are looking for something to watch on a cold evening.
• It was hard to pick the worst gown of the evenin but Renee Zellwegger was certainly in competition for it. 
• Steven Spielberg received the Cecil B. DeMille award and the retrospective of clips from his films was fun to watch.  Especially watching the young Drew Barrymore scream at ET.

There were other awards but I don't remember them.

On to the Oscars.