Muskox53

...or at least a strong contender for that title.

It is witty and poignant, and has a lot of intelligent things to say about theatre. It was created and written by the two actors who play the business manager of the theatre (an almost complete idiot) and his executive assistant (an extraordinarily competent woman)--Susan Coyne and Mark McKinney, working along with Bob Martin. What a coup for them!

The setting is an Ontario repertory theatre (in a town called New Burbage) that specializes in Shakespeare--based lovingly but not too closely on Stratford, of course. The premise is that the artistic director, Oliver Welles, who has sold out utterly and hates himself for it, gets drunk on an opening night and is run over by a truck full of Canadian Hams, and must be replaced at the last minute. The only available substitute is Jeffrey Tennant, a once-promising actor who had a nervous breakdown on stage many years before; he accepts the job, but then realizes that he will be haunted persistently and irritatingly by Oliver's ghost, whom only he can see. Paul Gross (who plays Jeffrey) has never been better, and he is matched at every turn by the rest of the regular cast--especially Stephen Ouimette as Oliver, and Martha Burns (Paul Gross's wife) as Ellen Fanshaw, Jeffrey's ex, an actor who thinks that being late for every rehearsal adds a certain lustre to her position in the company.

They did three 6-episode seasons, each centered around a central Shakespeare play for the season: First Hamlet, for which the management in their wisdom hires an American action film star (played by Luke Kirby), who is terrified at the idea of doing live theatre, and by Shakespeare even more so. Then Macbeth, the bad-luck play, for which they hire a big-name star (played by Geraint Wyn Davies) who knows much better than the director how things should be done and must be somehow thwarted. And finally King Lear, for which Jeffrey hires an dying theatre star who wants to do the role one last time, if he can (played by the magnificent William Hutt, an institution at Stratford for 50 years, in one of his last roles before his own death).

Many of the supporting parts are played by well-known Canadian stage and film actors. Three standouts: the poor young woman hired to be Cordelia, who must then suffer through the tirades and tantrums of the really-dying Lear, is beautifully played by Sarah Polley (daughter of Michael Polley, also in the cast). The great Colm Feore played Sanjay, a completely demented marketing consultant (or is he?), hired by theatre management in the second season--a wonderful comic performance! Finally, among many others, Don McKellar played Darren Nichols, a wild-eyed Eurotrash director who wants to stage Romeo and Juliet with the characters encased in wire hoops (as living chess pieces) and never looking at one another (because what could go wrong with that?).

I cannot recommend this show highly enough. If the rating scale went up to 11, this would be an 11!

David Suchet is excellent as always in his career-defining role as Poirot. Otherwise, this TV-movie version of Agatha Christie's best book is strangely conceived and awkwardly filmed--with none of the elegance and effortless grace that distinguished the 1974 film (extraordinary casting, with the possible exception of Albert Finney, and a breathtakingly brilliant score by Richard Rodney Bennett). Perhaps the move toward the dark is a good thing. The filmmakers read the book as a story about getting away with murder: how someone who once did is now punished, and the punisher(s) have to deal with the guilt of having taken the law into their own hands. Poirot has his own share of guilt, emerging (at least in part) from an initial episode (not in Christie's original) where someone dies because of his actions; thus, he struggles MUCH more with his conscience than he does in Christie or Lumet. To motivate this struggle, the filmmakers have taken the liberty to emphasize his Roman Catholic background, and have even given him a rosary--which seems wildly at odds with Poirot as we know him from the books, and even from other Suchet films. But it is a valid point to emphasize, even if in the end not that interesting...or consequential; Poirot ends up giving in to Christie's ending, even if he yells a bit too much getting there. Curiously, the whole film reflects and exemplifies the struggle explored in the plot. The power goes out on the stranded train, so the final revelation scene is filmed in the cold and dark. (Unlike the Lumet film, where the characters all continue to be warm and well-fed, and impeccably coiffed!) The casting lacks the pedigree of the Lumet version, and one can only imagine the current actors' struggles with the predecessors looking over their shoulders. Stanley Weber and Elena Satine make little impression in the roles previously taken by Michael York and Jacqueline Bisset, and Brian J. Smith (filling Anthony Perkins's shoes) is almost invisible. Barbara Hershey is good, but I kept missing the extraordinary Lauren Bacall. Jessica Chastain (replacing Vanessa Redgrave) and Eileen Atkins (the new Wendy Hiller) come off best, because their roles have been the most changed. In this vein, I wondered why Samuel West was being wasted on the thankless role of the Greek doctor, but that role is very different indeed in this film--for no particularly good reason (other than allowing the filmmakers to cut one of the 12 suspects from the Christie/Lumet version). Inexplicably, a Marie-Josée Croze, a French-Canadian actor, is cast as Greta Ohlsson, the Swedish governess, and makes no attempt to replicate a Swedish accent. What the heck! an accent is an accent, right? at least as far as the producers seem to have been concerned. (Despite its failings, this film is vastly superior to the 2017 remake by Kenneth Branagh--which is a travesty in every sense of the word, with almost nothing to redeem it, despite what must have looked like a decent cast, at least on paper. Avoid at all cost!!)

So bad that it takes your breath away.

Appallingly awful; it actually led me to revisit the David Suchet version made for British television, and upgrade my previously poor opinion of that strangely conceived version of Agatha Christie's best book.

Of course, neither is a match for the extraordinary 1974 Sidney Lumet film, with its extraordinary cast and transcendent Richard Rodney Bennett score--despite the eccentric (but ultimately quite serviceable) performance of Alfred Finney as Poirot. But the Suchet version is better than this monstrosity.

The less said about Branagh the actor's crazy rendition of the detective the better...other than to wonder how Branagh the director let him get away with it (or those mustaches!).

Poor KB has not been himself since the break with Emma Thompson. Almost all of his excellent films were made before that divorce. Since then he has become progressively more self-indulgent and commercialized. If not his muse (or perhaps even a co-creator), she certainly seemed to supply some kind of governor, which is now sorely missed. Her career has moved on from strength to strength; his seems to be going down the crapper.

**Added in 2022** His career is not completely gone to the dogs--see All Is True, and Belfast. I am happy to be proven wrong about that. But this sad sad film is still bloody awful!

Astonishingly complex and clever puzzle, which seems to be about a bunch of Hollywood slightly-has-beens partying on a yacht in the Mediterranean, with puzzles planned for every evening. Or is it about revenge for the hit-and-run death of the yacht-owner's wife a year before-revenge that claims a new and surprising victim half way through the film? Or is it about something else altogether? Written by puzzle-enthusiasts Stephen Sondheim and Anthony Perkins, who both know something about the world of celebrity and casual wealth, this film is absolutely fair, in the who-dun-it tradition. If you watch and think carefully, you will see clues that will enable you to figure out what's happening...but the story is so rich that few will keep up the first time through. (I certainly didn't.) Tangible clues to hang onto: what Richard Benjamin does after he reads his card, how everyone breaks up ice in the bucket after the first day, and which character has a serious drinking problem. Somewhat subtler but even more telling points are who solves the first puzzle, and the obsessiveness of how the group photo on the wharf is staged... Herbert Ross's direction is efficient and attractive. The acting is adequate, in a story that doesn't require much of its actors beyond hitting their marks and reading their lines. James Mason is perhaps the standout, managing to be both corrupt and sympathetic at the same time. Raquel Welch is the weakest link; the DVD commentary reveals that the actress never could follow the complexities of the story, and, frankly, it shows. My only complaint is some disappointment that we don't get to see the other four puzzles that Coburn planned for the group. But the multi-level puzzle that Sondheim and Perkins created for us is a great consolation for that disappointment.

Yes, some changes are made in the stage version (surprise! that's what always happens when stage musicals are filmed), and some of those changes work better than others. And the music is wonderful—perhaps not quite Sondheim at his very best, but still creative, inventive, and memorable. The one issue that seriously detracts from the film is the mismatching of voices. The Brits (James Corden, Emily Blunt) sing like well-trained Lieder singers, with a smooth vocal quality that is well supported throughout the vocal range and an even vibrato. Some of the Americans (Anna Kendrick and especially Lilla Crawford) are Broadway belters, complete with flat vowels and intrusive vibrato—voices trained to be sung into mikes—always at the same high level of intensity and no tenderness whatsoever. It's not just a US vs. English thing, since some of the other Americans, notably Meryl Streep and Chris Pine, manage their voices quite well. But the four survivors of the story leave us with a vocal quartet that is wildly uneven. The two males, the Baker and Jack, have smooth well-modulated British voices; the two females, Cinderella and Red Riding Hood, in ensembles with them, are almost unlistenable. Did Marshall plan it like this? He must have, but it's hard to see why.

Excellent episode, with several nice plot twists, ending up in a very different place from any that we might have suspected as things were getting started. Good police work by Goren and Eames, but the real kudos go to O"Keefe as a priest who is willing to make real sacrifices for those he loves—sacrifices that include serious violations of several commandments. Both Goren and he are put in a position where they have to break rules for the good of others; both do so without trying to weasel out of their guilt. Great writing, fine acting, excellent direction. This fourth episode really gets things going for the series!

What an amazing time for lovers of the Holmes mythology! The BBC Sherlock is, of course, almost perfect. This American manifestation isn't quite as good, but then how could it be? It's a very different task they have set themselves: more than twenty 45-minute shows a season, with the usual crunch of time affecting production values, not to mention the writing (far more inconsistent than by the Brits)--instead of three 90-minute episodes, pretty much full- length films, each season, with as long as two years between seasons. Much more time to think out the plots, the show's long-range trajectory, and to be selective among the many ideas that occur to the writers. The CBS show doesn't have that kind of luxury, and nonetheless they do amazingly well. The US creators have just as deep a love and knowledge for the original Conan Doyle stories, and keep finding clever ways of working references, shallow and deep, into their writing. Miller seems to have worked out a reading of Holmes that is wholly complementary of the reading by his friend Cumberbatch. Both shows have given Watson MUCH more to do than in the original stories, but in very different ways. The two manifestations of Mrs. Hudson could hardly be more different; Mycroft even more so. My only substantial complaint about Elementary is that the NYC police seem so clueless and helpless without Holmes. The London police in Sherlock are much more on the ball. Otherwise, the complementing is interesting and thought-provoking...

Hopkins is excellent, though he does run the risk of recycling the part into cliché. Moore is very good, with an impossible job—standing in for Foster. Giannini is wonderful, as always. Everyone else is okay...though when the bad guys are stupid, they are astonishingly stupid!

The problem is the horrible, nonsensical rewrite they foisted on the end of the book. The plot systematically removes all of the people who support and care for Starling, so that the only relationship she is left with is Leckter. She saves him, gets shot, he saves her...and then...nothing comes of it, at least in the movie. (Probably the producers or the studio assumed that the audience would hate an ending in which they ran off together...so they gave us idiocy instead. Or rather just bad writing.) If you think about it, what other possible outcome of their relationship can there be? And what happens to the careful preparation for this ending that the rest of the book/film provides? Nonsense!!

It has been revealed that David Mamet wrote an early draft of the screenplay, but it was rejected. Can we speculate that perhaps he preserved the book's ending? (I have no idea one way or the other...)

But up to that terrible ending (Leckter chops his own hand off—seriously!!?), it's a decent film. Simplifies the plot too much (I really miss Verger's sister, but guess she had to go...), but A- for the first 90%. Then, I simply have to turn it off!

I love Leverage the series, and have now watched all 5 seasons in quick succession many times. Their plots are usually solid and the cons are persuasive and tricky. Which is why this episode is so disappointing in many ways. They simply didn't do their musical homework:

1. Sheherazade is not "the most difficult violin solo ever", but an orchestral piece with some extensive solos for the concertmaster (first violinist in the orchestra). And these concertmaster solos are certainly not the hardest in the standard literature--nothing like as hard as, say, the solos in Ein Heldenleben by Richard Strauss.

2. It is not the case that the piece leads up to a super-solo at the end. Concertmaster solos are spread throughout the piece, at least one in each of its four movements. The one that is in many ways the hardest is right at the beginning of the first.

3. The idea that Nate could accurately project the timing of a piece as Romantic and fluid as this is silly. That the conductor would suddenly adopt a new unanticipated tempo that would take a minute off the remaining timing is absurd; tempos don't fluctuate THAT much. And the place where the tempo change is announced isn't one! (It's actually an edit between two passages with pretty much the same tempo!)

4. It's an attractive notion that Hardison's teenager skills on the violin could be recalled by hypnotism, and perhaps his confidence could be boosted this way. But the limberness of the fingers and the precision of the bow arm--these would take months, if not years, of exercise and practice to regain, to be able to play at the level that he is supposed to be operating at.

Aldis Hodge does a decent job of faking; he obviously does play the violin, and isn't just waving his hands around near an instrument, finger-syncing to a sound-track. That's not the problem. I just wish the writers could have come up with a plot that didn't embarrass all the professional musicians in the audience...

It might have been more prudent for the filmmakers to have eschewed Narnia altogether, since these stories don't lend themselves to this medium terribly well. Still, this may be the best of the three so far...but that's not saying much. The story outlines are there, and all the main episodes of the book survive, but reordered and refocused, to mixed effect. Whereas the book is a picaresque series of loosely connected adventures in which the principal conflicts are all matters of morality and character, the film opts for a central villain and sword-fights--with themes and images borrowed from other more successful fantasy films.

Harry Potter had Voldemort, so they move Lewis's Dark Isle of Dreams to the climax and transform it into the base of a wholly new, dementor-like green mist that envelops people, as well as showing up whenever one of the heroes is contemplating less-than-honorable behaviour. Its principal threat to the heroes, however, is not nightmares, but instead a Sea Serpent, which is to be thwarted somehow by gathering the seven silver swords of the missing Narnian lords (something like Rings of Power...).

This is all a bit silly, and turns a spiritual tale into something like Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, with the lesson that difficulties are best resolved by slugging things out. Struggles with conscience don't seem to have much of a role to play in between battles. Thus, the principal character development in the book, the transformation of Eustace from an insufferable prig into a decent guy, is delayed considerably, and the film's attention to this part of the story wanes and waxes disconcertingly. It may have been a good idea, cinematically, to allow him to remain as a dragon to help battle the Sea Serpent and even to help find the seventh sword...but the quietness of his transformation in the book is much more effective.

The acting is generally acceptable, if not brilliant or even particularly memorable. Georgie Henley has grown up nicely, and is starting to look like a young Drew Barrymore. (Lucy's fear of being plainer than her sister Susan does seem ludicrous, however, given her maturing beauty and the fact that the latter looks a thoroughly conventional débutante.) Skandar Keynes, as Edmund Pevensie, is also fine, though out-shown regularly by Will Poulter, as Eustace. Liam Neeson and Simon Pegg do creditable voice-over work for their important CG characters.

The script, not surprisingly, is wildly uneven. All the best lines are Lewis's. Expositions and rewrites designed to facilitate the narrative changes are uniformly dull and flat. Many small changes seem ill-considered--for example, why would anyone bring a minotaur (cattle on boats?!) on an ocean voyage? What's the point of having a second girl stowaway on board? And so on. I wish they'd found a way to leave more of Lewis in, and not meddle so much with the story...and leave out at least half of the battle scenes!

I haven't seen (and have no intention of seeing) the 3D version, but can't imagine that it adds much.

Taylor is likable as McGee, but neither imposing (he's 5' 11", not a 6' 4" ex-defensive-linebacker) nor gentle enough. Bikel never displays Meyer's formidable intelligence, nor his astonishing personal magnetism; he's just a sidekick, who also looks wrong (Meyer is described in the books as having the pelt of a black bear). The Flush is...well, a houseboat, nothing special. Miss Agnes probably is, but we never get a really good look at her. The Alabama Tigress...a great excuse for Jane Russell to come out of retirement, for a few seconds on the screen. Kendall is beautiful, but not right at all for Vangie, who was Hawaiian and a hard-as-nails totally self-absorbed hooker from a pretty grim background. The music score is also distracting and inappropriate—a mix of badly done late-cool jazz and TV-movie clichés.

The plot is closer to the book than Hollywood usually allowed its writers to adhere. But a couple of significant changes are senseless. The bad guys trace clues to a friend of McGee's and kill him, to no point whatsoever. (They're smart enough to get that far, but too stupid to keep the guy alive so they can get further...) McGee goes back to the fishing hole and dives to pull up...a barbell. (Replacing the novel's cinder-block, why? Would a bodybuilder ever be so stupid? Or did he just have an extra lying around that he wanted to throw out?)

Most annoying was the rewrite on McGee's relationship with Vangie, I guess so that he could look as much as possible like Bond (i.e. have sex with every woman who wanders through the script). Given who McGee is (and how well readers of the book know his principles and his habits of self-reflection) and what he thinks of Vangie, any devotee of the books will look at this strange Taylor-inhabited character, and wonder who it really is. Certainly not the Travis McGee that we wanted to see in a decent film.

Perhaps even sillier than this kind of film usually is. A fat little Texan inherits a hotel in Heidelberg, but discovers to his dismay that it has been run as a brothel for years. He keeps finding himself in situations where his pants get torn off. Of course, the story makes no sense at all (why is everyone speaking the same language? whether it was German in the original or English in the dubbed version I saw...and where does that helicopter come from?), and is replete with pointless fights and chases and gaping plot holes. But there are lots of opportunities for nudity and simulated sex—mostly attractive young women, and a lot of the nudity is full-frontal. Apparently the film-makers also relished the opportunity to present some Americans as foolish and puritanical. But then the Germans aren't exactly portrayed as mental giants either.

This could have been a great movie--taking, as it does, a delightfully farcical approach to Defoe's novel. Moll is an innocent and relatively virtuous young woman, who finds herself in sexual jeopardy again and again--as she bounces from one depraved environment to another. Lots of self-conscious references to Tom Jones, which had been an unqualified success just a few years before. Sadly, where Tom Jones was anchored by Albert Finney, an actor of impeccable skill and astonishing range, Kim Novak is simply not up to the task. She is wholly out of her depth here; her only ability is looking pretty and being a good sport about being placed in various kinds of dishevelment. Still, despite her inability to project any complexities of character (a good woman struggling to maintain some kind of honour, and whose greatest temptation is to marry money rather than the con-man she really cares for), the movie's not bad. Lansbury, Sanders, DeSica, Palmer, Parker, Griffith, and (especially) Leo McKern are wonderful--so good the movie is still at B or B+ level, despite the relative emptiness at the top. BTW It's not surprising that Johnson and Novak didn't stay married for long. He was so far superior to her in acting ability, there must have been a slew of professional tension there...

Marc Norman is credited as a co-author of this screenplay, but it feels like Tom Stoppard's work—i.e. it's rich, astonishingly rich, with at least four different interacting levels all going on at the same time.

#1: Most ostensibly, it's a romanticized biography of the early turning point in Shakespeare's career—the writing of his first indisputably great play (Romeo and Juliet), the passing of the theatrical torch from Christopher Marlowe to him, and his joining of the Chamberlain's Men, which cost him 50 pounds (an enormous figure in those days). Lots of known facts are changed, much is invented, but the overall sense is pretty reasonable—and about as accurate as the typical film biography.

#2: It's a delightful fiction about a romance between Will Shakespeare and the wealthy Viola de Lessups, who is engaged to be married to the haughty but impoverished Lord Wessex—a romance that inspires him to write Romeo and Juliet, largely because it plays out as a kind of mirror of that very play. Or a pre-mirror, since it isn't written yet. The ball, the balcony, the duel, the suitor, the nurse, the three appearances of the Prince of Verona (i.e. Judi Dench as Queen Elizabeth)...it's all there. One of the joys for the audience who knows the play is recognizing all the anticipations embedded in the film—plus a few from other plays (like Banquo's ghost) for good measure.

#3: The film delivers in the most persuasive possible way a strong critical reading of the play Romeo and Juliet. It has been observed by many critics that this play begins as a traditional comedy, with all the stock figures and stereotypes, but halfway through (exactly halfway!) with the deaths of Mercutio and Tybalt, it turns into a tragedy, and then systematically reinterprets all the comedic scenes and characters of the first half in this newly tragic light. Stoppard's story of the writing of the play begins with Will, ecstatic with love, finally getting started on the comedy he's been promising his producer...but as the love affair with Viola darkens, his ability to sustain the comic mood disappears. At exactly the halfway point of the film, he wakes next to Viola and announces that "I found something in my sleep. It's not a comedy I'm writing any more, it's a tragedy!"

#4: Finally, this is a tribute to the joys of the theatre—to acting, to writing, to producing, to simply hanging around getting enchanted by it all. A central character here is Mr. Fennyman (Tom Wilkinson), who begins as a heartless money-man who looks to the theatre as a possibly lucrative investment, and ends up transformed; to his own surprise, perhaps, he now cares more about something other than about profit. Many of the most delightful parts of the film are part of this fun: the verbal anachronisms (playing the Palace, the show must...go on), and especially the sexual role-reversals (at rehearsals, Juliet is played by a boy dressed as a girl, and Romeo by a girl dressed as a boy). Several central scenes involve quick cuts back and forth between rehearsals and Will and Viola making love...using the same lines, even though Will most of the time says Juliet's and Viola Romeo's.

Are there any flaws? Perhaps Paltrow's readings as Romeo are not as compelling as they could have been...and she never really persuades us that she's British, though as Viola she is radiant and passionate. Ben Affleck is also an odd choice for Ned, and he performs "a plague on both your houses" rather badly...though he does project great authority and confidence. Joseph Fiennes, who single-handedly energizes the film and is brilliant in a long demanding role, is the real star...and he, Geoffrey Rush, and Colin Firth are all magnificent. What a disgrace that Fiennes wasn't even nominated for a Best Actor Oscar!

When a film is marketed with the title of one of the greatest novels in English literature, especially if its story resembles the story of the novel, it is inviting comparisons...not only to the novel, but to David Lean's definitive 1946 film. Cuáron's film holds up fairly well; it is beautifully shot, in heat-soaked colours (having been relocated to south Florida), a far remove from Lean's cold, naturalistic black and white with forced-perspective sets. The new film is also energized by some vivid acting in secondary roles, especially Anne Bancroft and Robert DeNiro.

What cripples it, unfortunately, is a 90s mentality that sacrifices the most interesting parts of Dickens's narrative, for the sake of a myopic fixation on the love story between Finn (Pip) and Estella. The novel is about many things (including its astonishing array of vivid secondary characters, many of them unforgettable), but it is laid out within a trajectory of a warm- hearted young boy growing up in poverty aggravated by the self-centeredness of most of those around him, his rise to prosperity aided by a mysterious benefactor, during which he himself is corrupted, and his collapse when he discovers how mistaken he has been about many things (especially about the identity of that benefactor). In the aftermath, he discovers some genuine humanity in himself, as he is impelled to make real sacrifices to rescue his benefactor, and is himself rescued by the one truly decent character in the book.

The heart of this trajectory is gone in the film. Finn is lifted up to success by a benefactor, but never confronts any demons in himself as a result of this generosity; his friend and roommate in the novel, Herbert Pocket, who shares his degradation, is left out of the film altogether. Finn never needs rescuing, and the character of Joe (one of Dickens's great creations) is much diminished; the talented Chris Cooper is given little to do, and comes across as someone to be pitied and tolerated rather than admired. Finn just goes from success to success as an artist; he never makes any sacrifices for anyone. Estella (in some ways, only a minor character in the book) is in almost every scene of the middle of the film...because those seem to be the only ones the filmmakers care about.

Perhaps this film is best viewed without any reference to Dickens at all? Its love story is certainly passionate and sensual; Paltrow is beautiful (and not just in her nude modeling scene), but unfortunately Hawke is, as usual, flat and bland. That flatness is actually appropriate for a film of the novel (John Mills, a similarly bland actor, is effective in Lean's film, because Pip is to some extent a blank slate written on by those around him), but it's disastrous for a love story; what does Estella see in him? One is left at the end with the suspicion that she ultimately grabs hold of Finn the successful artist because he's successful and can support her and her daughter, now that her other lovers have left her.

To be honest, the conclusion is the worst part of the novel, too. Dickens had originally written an ending where a more mature Pip meets a miserable, cynical Estella years later, and is able to observe her dispassionately, from some distance; given that she had been trained by a master (Miss Havisham) to hate and exploit men, this was probably the only conceivable ending for their story. But then he listened to "advice" from his friend Bulwer-Lytton, and replaced that plausible and moving ending for a Hollywood-anticipating reconciliation and fade-out (which is indeed adopted by both films). The revision made readers happier, but you didn't want to think too carefully about what kind of life Pip and Estella were going to have together...

A trailer park in artistic limbo contains all the characters cut from plays, books, films, and the like. Romlet (Hamlet's brother), Lucy (cut from Pride and Prejudice), Joan (cut from All About Eve), and a few others share one trailer, where they are joined by Jason, just cut from a disaster movie about a tsunami that destroys L.A. He is shocked to discover that his own existence is solely as an imaginary character in someone else's mind, but eventually falls for Lucy. It looks like all will end happily for Jason and Lucy when he is suddenly written back into his movie and disappears...but not before convincing the others that they need to write their own story. They do, the story is turned into a movie (directed by Daniel Bernstein AKA Barnz), and the result is what we're watching. Other characters in other trailers fail to get their own stories down on paper, which is why (presumably) we find out nothing about them. This short film is clever and well-written (except for the perhaps intentionally ungrammatical postscripts), and evokes some of the same kind of ironic self- referential paradoxes we know from The Thirteenth Floor--familiar but still intriguing. It runs often on IFC, as part of one of their Shorts Programs. Recommended.

It's hard to understand why so many reputable critics have vilified this film, which is in Altman's Nashville mode—and indeed includes many of the elements that made that earlier film such a critical success. Both address the hypocrisy and viciousness of a big money-making industry, by interweaving a number of loosely connected stories acted by a large celebrity cast. Some of these stories work better than others, in both films; as a previous reviewer noted, in Pret-à-Porter, they all hinge on the central theme of betrayal, with a cumulative effect that is saddening as well as amusing.

The principal difference between the two films lies in the way they end. Nashville is closed off (to my mind, unconvincingly) by an assassination at a political rally. Ready to Wear ends with a breathtakingly beautiful, even erotic acting-out of the story of the Emperor's New Clothes, where almost none of the fashion-industry types realize that the bankrupt designer has clothed all of her models in...nothing. The only one who does get the joke is the clueless and incompetent reporter (Kim Basinger, from Texas, doing a fine retake on Geraldine Chaplin's annoying role in Nashville), who stalks off in a huff.

Apparently lots of critics stalked off in a huff, too. That's too bad, since the film has lots of good qualities. But you miss the point if you don't realize that it's all leading up to that big shaggy-dog-story punchline.

Many critics and viewers have sung this film's praises, as relevant and groundbreaking-a musical for someone who doesn't like musicals. It won many Oscars, including Best Picture and Best Director, but it's hard to see why. The film is awkward, unimaginative, and flat; it preserves many of the defects of the musical it adapts, with many new shortcomings of its own devising.

The 1957 musical was an updating of Romeo and Juliet to the 50s of gangs and zip-guns. Unfortunately, this kind of "updating" soon seems hopelessly dated; the film attempts a further updating to the early 60s, with the same result. That's the amazing thing about Shakespeare's original; as Baz Luhrmann showed, it doesn't need updating, but transcends its time. West Side Story, however, is a period piece.



The musical changes the original story, in an attempt to make it socially relevant-but instead leeches out the power and poignancy. The Montague/ Capulet feud, over some trivial personal slight, long forgotten, is transformed into a racial conflict, a battle between established and recent immigrants; One of Shakespeare's points is that such a personal feud might possibly be healed by guilt over some needless deaths. But a racial conflict isn't going to go away just because Maria accuses both gangs of recklessness. Unfortunately, the play pretends that this kind of simplistic reconciliation can happen.and this passes for realism or relevance? Would anyone find the ending realistic if it were set in Northern Ireland, or in Palestine? Come off it!

Another revealing change: both Romeo and Juliet die, suicides in despair at the thought of life without transcendent love. Maria does not kill herself, but survives to call both Jets and Sharks to reconciliation at the end. In Shakespeare, this call comes from the civil and religious authorities, and the reconciliation comes about only when the feuding leaders finally submit to these authorities. In West Side Story, there are no authorities that anybody could submit to; the parents are nonexistent, the police are figures to be mocked, and Friar Laurence has been transformed into Doc, a cranky old shopkeeper who has no counsel to offer other than "When are you kids going to grow up!" Most of the "updated" dialogue is of this sort-replacing timeless poetry with slangy inanities.

There are many such flaws in the musical (including Bernstein's stylistic indecision; he vacillated between writing sharp-edged jazz and slurpy romantic ballads, but at least most of the music is fairly interesting), but the film outdoes them all in its quest to be cinematic and realistic. So we are treated to a dozen or so well-groomed dancers leaping and prancing through Hollywood-realistic city-street sets. Realism? how long would these guys last if they tried dancing like this through the real West Side? They don't look realistic at all, just silly.

The most effective scenes are those that are most like a filmed stage-play, with a fairly static camera and the dancers confined to a well-defined set. "America" is done on a rooftop, "Officer Krupke" is set on a single front stoop, and the Dance at the Gym [aka the Capulet's Ball] is genuinely exciting. Presumably both of these were directly inspired by the original choreography; at any rate they are the least cinematic, and the most successful.

The much-touted cinematic effects look cheap and desperately unimaginative. No one could think of anything more interesting to do during the Overture than cycle the stylized graphic of Manhattan through various primary colours, changing every minute or so, for no apparent reason? The opening music accompanies overhead shots of many different locations in New York (including Yankee Stadium, and the UN building); why? Tony sings "Something's Coming" in front of a shoddy back-projection of streets, unmotivated by anything in the song, and looks like he's riding through a Tunnel of Love. The haloing of Tony and Maria when they first meet at the dance might have been a novel effect in the 1930s, but in 1961 it looks like something out of a student effort.

Of course, any time Tony or Maria are on the screen a discerning viewer wants to run and hide anyway. Neither Richard Beymer nor Natalie Wood has the slightest degree of charisma, neither can sing (their songs had to be dubbed, with no attempt made to match the vocal timbres, or even to make it look like they were really singing), neither can dance (ensembles dance around them, while they hardly move), Wood's attempt to affect a Puerto Rican accent is embarrassing to say the least. So this timeless love story has a great big zero at its heart: two central characters about whom no one really gives a hoot, and who lack any ability to grab your attention. (The second leads are much better, esp. George Chakiris, not a Latino by the way, as Bernardo, aka Tybalt, the leader of the Puerto Ricans.)

What were the producers and casting people thinking? Probably they started believing their own hype, that this was inevitably going to be a great timeless film, and they opted for names rather than talent. Even if they thought the world really needed a film version of this so-so musical, they would have been better off just filming a stage production, with real singers and actors, and dancers dancing where they belonged, on a stage.

This isn't a great film, and it certainly isn't a great film musical. If you want to see one of those, try Singing in the Rain, or Top Hat, or The Band Wagon, or A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, or Moulin Rouge.

[WARNING: CONTAINS SPOILER]

An excellent mystery, beautifully filmed and very well acted. It corresponds closely to Agatha Christie's book, one her cleverest...until the embarrassing and deeply regretable ending.

Ten people are invited to an island, and then killed off one at a time, by a self- appointed executioner-as a punishment for the crimes they have gotten away with in their outside lives. The interest in the story comes from watching the victims grow more and more suspicious of each other; the irony is that their mistrust is what makes it possible for the murderer to get them alone and kill them. By the end, all ten are dead, no one at all is left on the island, and the authorities are rightly stumped as to who could have been doing the killing.

Finally, through the awkward plot-device of a discovered letter, we find out that the murderers was actually one of the islanders (an apparent victim), and a devious misdirection is revealed. The overall story is clever and plausible, and develops out of character rather than from the mechanics of deception. It is written in Christie's typically efficient and uncluttered prose, and is one of her best-a classic of the so-called golden age of mysteries.

The film pursues this story up effectively (even brilliantly) until the very end. Unfortunately the producers must have decided (perhaps at the last minute?) that the public wasn't ready for a film in which everyone dies. So at the eleventh hour, we are presented with a bizarre and abrupt about-face; two of the guests (the most attractive male and female actors, naturally) turn out to be, after all, not guilty of any past crimes. (This transformation is especially implausible, since these two are among the MOST guilty, and therefore most interesting, characters in the book....and the story's careful establishment of their guilt is simply dropped, without explanation.) For some bizarre reason, they decide to trust one another (in a film that is all about mistrust!), and conspire to outsmart the murderer-who despite his earlier extraordinary intricate strategizing, seems to have suddenly taken stupid pills, since he is now deceived by the simplest trick in the hack-writer's book. Surprise! the two survivors walk away hand-in-hand under the fade-out, presumably into happily-ever-after land.

I'd imagine that Christie was not pleased to have the rug pulled out from under her story like this, but what was she supposed to do? If there was ever a classic mystery that did NOT lend itself to the happily-ever-after treatment, this is it.

Until the final minutes, this film is well on its way toward being an excellent and atmospheric mystery. The end is jaw-droppingly stupid. Go figure...

Vincent Price plays Edward Lionheart, the world's hammiest Shakespearean actor--a role that allows Price the actor to have great fun overacting (which may or may not have involved much acting on his part). Having been rightly denied the London theatre critics' award for what he considered his greatest season of Shakespeare productions (each starring himself, of course), he proceeds to kill off the critics one by one, in an order that replicates that season, each critic in a scene lifted from the appropriate play--certainly a unique take on the notion of "serial killer". The London police are baffled (surprise!) and at a loss as to how to stop Lionheart, who moves freely among them in spite of some really awful disguises. (It never seems to occur to them to search his old theatre.) Lionheart saves the principal critic (Ian Hendry), his particular nemesis, for last--and the film ends with a one-on-one confrontation, catastrophe, fire, and all the conventions of the horror genre.

The film suffers from severe incongruities of tone, since it assumes an air of genteel good fun, with irresistibly witty dialogue (including lots of in-jokes, like the name of police inspector) and a charmingly understated musical score. Unfortunately, the murders themselves are astonishingly gory, displaying a grim delight in pain and suffering more appropriate to one of the films of Anthony Hickox (director Douglas Hickox's son, who made such gruesome gems as Warlock 2). One critic is surgically decapitated (a la The Winter's Tale), another is electrocuted in a beauty-salon chair (Joan of Arc, from Henry IV), another has his heart removed (a rewrite of The Merchant of Venice) and mailed to Hendry. Was all this blood and explicit violence really necessary in a movie that elsewhere aspires to such civilised gentility?

Except for Price, the cast consists entirely of distinguished British actors, almost all with fine Shakespearean performances in their resumés--and who seem to be having great fun mocking their profession. So it's amusing to have Price be almost the only one who gets to declaim lines from the Bard--or at least it is for a while, but Price's acting really is pretty tiresome. Diana Rigg is beautiful and affecting in her thankless role as Lionheart's daughter--thankless because she's supposed to be the mystery figure (is she helping him or not?), but then she's an open participant in a murder well before the climax of the film, so there goes the suspense!

Despite these problems, Theatre of Blood is a unique and irresistible film, cleverly developed from a basic premise that is hard to beat. And it might even encourage the viewer to reread (or even read) some of the plays on which it is based.

A first-rate suspense premise: Gregory Peck realizes that he has apparently been suffering from amnesia for two years, and various sinister figures conspire to keep him from remembering...what? something crucial, but he has no idea what it is. Unfortunately, after an hour of great build-up, the film fails to deliver on this premise, and the ending is (perhaps inevitably) a disappointment, which leaves at least one huge plot-issue unresolved. Perhaps this failure is because the scriptwriter makes the mistake that Hitchcock never made; he tries to explain the MacGuffin and make it significant and central to the plot--which just doesn't work at all. In fact, the ending is ludicrous, though the absurdity doesn't detract very much from the great stuff that came before it. It might be best to stop watching about 20 minutes before the end--after Peck's second visit to the doctor...

The film takes a refreshingly cynical view of modern American culture, especially politics and business--full of thugs in suits who speak eloquently about peace and progress, but are really interested only in profit. It is also sometimes jarringly brutal--perhaps to make its point. The black and white photography is lovely, and manages to make New York City, its parks, streets, sidewalks, and office buildings, into a striking character in its own right.

Walter Matthau steals the film as a sympathetic detective (on his first case) who helps Peck. Everyone else Peck meets is either in on the secret or just not interested.