Directed by Quentin Tarantino
This movie is about a lot of things but not enough about the right ones to be truly interesting. It's 1969 in Los Angeles and a TV actor and his stuntman friend keep running into the Manson family. Academics and film nerds will appreciate the period production values (clothes, music, cars) and read too much into the director's usual kink for women's feet, dialogue that goes nowhere, and scenes that go on waaay too long. When the material is this thin and the running time this long (2.5 hrs+) your mind has time to wander and wonder why there isn't more of something, anything. Or worse: anything interesting.
The best scene in the whole movie has a few Manson girls just watching TV. It covers the 60s in a second: the laziness, the last innocent hippie summer, the clutter of a living room before everything went digital and ergonomic. But the movie is best summed up by a scene of the same girls scrounging through a dumpster for food. Somewhere in "Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood" is that awesome two minute trailer spread over a very dull, confused and very, very long movie.
Sunday, January 5, 2020
"Hustlers"
Directed by Lorene Scafaria
Jennifer Lopez isn't a character actor but she keeps playing the same character in her movies: a beautiful, proud, hardworking, single Mom kept in her place by The Man. This time Lopez isn't a maid or wedding planner but the impossibly hot leader of a pack of plucky strippers scheming to even things up with their rich customers. Problem is the movie's trailer doesn't have just the best parts of the movie in it, it's also got the all of energy the movie needs. The actual movie feels long, drawn-out, cheap and icky, kinda like a bad lapdance.
Lopez hasn't gotten any better as an actor over the years but she's starting to look a lot like Eva Mendes, who's a slightly better actor. She's still in good enough shape to manage some ridiculous fetish scenes (rolling around in money, teaching her shy coworker how to pole dance). She's still defensive about her image, defying the W.C. Fields rule of never acting with children. She probably signed on for a gritty script and then slowly softened it, thinking her characters need The Child, The Fat Friend, The Help that Jen's maid/wedding planner/stripper is kind to. They help soften and simplify an image that should be getting harder (and more interesting) with age.
Jennifer Lopez isn't a character actor but she keeps playing the same character in her movies: a beautiful, proud, hardworking, single Mom kept in her place by The Man. This time Lopez isn't a maid or wedding planner but the impossibly hot leader of a pack of plucky strippers scheming to even things up with their rich customers. Problem is the movie's trailer doesn't have just the best parts of the movie in it, it's also got the all of energy the movie needs. The actual movie feels long, drawn-out, cheap and icky, kinda like a bad lapdance.
Lopez hasn't gotten any better as an actor over the years but she's starting to look a lot like Eva Mendes, who's a slightly better actor. She's still in good enough shape to manage some ridiculous fetish scenes (rolling around in money, teaching her shy coworker how to pole dance). She's still defensive about her image, defying the W.C. Fields rule of never acting with children. She probably signed on for a gritty script and then slowly softened it, thinking her characters need The Child, The Fat Friend, The Help that Jen's maid/wedding planner/stripper is kind to. They help soften and simplify an image that should be getting harder (and more interesting) with age.
Saturday, December 12, 2015
"Fifteen Dogs"
By Andre Alexis
ISBN No. 978-1-55245-305-6
www.chbooks.com
How's this for a pitch? Two gods give 15 dogs staying overnight in a veterinary clinic "human consciousness" to see if they'll be as happy or miserable as their owners.
With its clever ground rules for a parallel reality of thinking, talking dogs (reminiscent of the rules of the afterlife in "The Lovely Bones") and the conundrum of mastery over "lesser" creatures (reminiscent of "A.I. Artificial Intelligence"), "Fifteen Dogs" is the latest in a very long line of stories about what happens when dogs whisper back.
The 1975 cult film "A Boy and his Dog" starred Don Johnson as a slacker Mad Max wandering through a dystopian desert with his talking dog. The 1989 movie "Baxter" was narrated by a French-speaking bull terrier. In the excellent book "The Dogs of Babel", a distraught husband tries to find out why his wife died in a freak accident by getting the only witness - a dog - to talk.
Like all of those aforementioned titles "Fifteen Dogs" is a compelling crossbreed of everything from the deepest philosophy about what constitutes a happy life to the most basic emotions around the death of a pet.
When the writing's good it's really good. A blind dog sleeping outside was "easily seen by all the creatures that walked, flew or crept past him on their way through the gardens." And when the writing's not so good (as it is in the first 44 pages) it's almost Disney-ish in its apostrophe-free depiction of plucky canine teamwork. Even worse, the gods make their bet over a few brewskis in a Toronto bar. (I know Toronto sees itself as the cultural and business centre of Canada, but now it's the mythological and philosophical centre of the whole universe??)
Yet "Fifteen Dogs" is still a very clever and rewarding read. At only 171 pages, the spareness of the writing (considering the complexities of the plot) is a miracle of sorts. When a storyteller is this assured and confident he encourages us to trust him as well. Besides, it's nice to think that our lives are determined as much by choice and circumstance as they are by imperfect gods of fate making it all up between games of Foosball.
"The first [god] spins the thread of a life," Alexis explains. "The second draws out the length of thread each being will have. The third cuts the thread and ends that being's time on earth." Whew... And when the gods toy with the fates of the dogs and their owners ("Atrapos cut two of the three lives that were wound together, then added years to the one that was left by way of balance.") make sure you have some tissues nearby.
ISBN No. 978-1-55245-305-6
www.chbooks.com
How's this for a pitch? Two gods give 15 dogs staying overnight in a veterinary clinic "human consciousness" to see if they'll be as happy or miserable as their owners.
With its clever ground rules for a parallel reality of thinking, talking dogs (reminiscent of the rules of the afterlife in "The Lovely Bones") and the conundrum of mastery over "lesser" creatures (reminiscent of "A.I. Artificial Intelligence"), "Fifteen Dogs" is the latest in a very long line of stories about what happens when dogs whisper back.
The 1975 cult film "A Boy and his Dog" starred Don Johnson as a slacker Mad Max wandering through a dystopian desert with his talking dog. The 1989 movie "Baxter" was narrated by a French-speaking bull terrier. In the excellent book "The Dogs of Babel", a distraught husband tries to find out why his wife died in a freak accident by getting the only witness - a dog - to talk.
Like all of those aforementioned titles "Fifteen Dogs" is a compelling crossbreed of everything from the deepest philosophy about what constitutes a happy life to the most basic emotions around the death of a pet.
When the writing's good it's really good. A blind dog sleeping outside was "easily seen by all the creatures that walked, flew or crept past him on their way through the gardens." And when the writing's not so good (as it is in the first 44 pages) it's almost Disney-ish in its apostrophe-free depiction of plucky canine teamwork. Even worse, the gods make their bet over a few brewskis in a Toronto bar. (I know Toronto sees itself as the cultural and business centre of Canada, but now it's the mythological and philosophical centre of the whole universe??)
Yet "Fifteen Dogs" is still a very clever and rewarding read. At only 171 pages, the spareness of the writing (considering the complexities of the plot) is a miracle of sorts. When a storyteller is this assured and confident he encourages us to trust him as well. Besides, it's nice to think that our lives are determined as much by choice and circumstance as they are by imperfect gods of fate making it all up between games of Foosball.
"The first [god] spins the thread of a life," Alexis explains. "The second draws out the length of thread each being will have. The third cuts the thread and ends that being's time on earth." Whew... And when the gods toy with the fates of the dogs and their owners ("Atrapos cut two of the three lives that were wound together, then added years to the one that was left by way of balance.") make sure you have some tissues nearby.
Thursday, April 16, 2015
"Song for a Summer Night"
By Robert Heidbreder &
Qin Leng
ISBN No. 978-1-55498-493-0
www.groundwood.com
"Day's left the stage. Night's in the wings. The summer air sings what a summer night brings." In an age of books like "Go the F*** to Sleep" suggesting that already sleep-deprived parents let their children stay up waaaay past their curfews must be fighting words. But they are such lovely words. Those opening lines from this charming, beautifully illustrated lullaby of a book announce a contrarian kind of bedtime story about the promise, not of a new morning, but of the start of a day's end. When the children in this story break curfew to party with the cute creatures of the night (shy skunks, sparkling fireflies) they're appreciating the magic of a moonlit summer night many decades before they'll go gently into another, more sombre, good night. It's touching stuff.
ISBN No. 978-1-55498-493-0
www.groundwood.com
"Day's left the stage. Night's in the wings. The summer air sings what a summer night brings." In an age of books like "Go the F*** to Sleep" suggesting that already sleep-deprived parents let their children stay up waaaay past their curfews must be fighting words. But they are such lovely words. Those opening lines from this charming, beautifully illustrated lullaby of a book announce a contrarian kind of bedtime story about the promise, not of a new morning, but of the start of a day's end. When the children in this story break curfew to party with the cute creatures of the night (shy skunks, sparkling fireflies) they're appreciating the magic of a moonlit summer night many decades before they'll go gently into another, more sombre, good night. It's touching stuff.
Wednesday, April 1, 2015
"The World Without Us"
By Robin Stevenson
ISBN No. 978-1-4598-0680-1
www.orcabook.com
It takes a certain kind of courage to publish a youth novel about suicide when even the mainstream media is still trying to figure out how to report on it without nudging depressed millennials in that direction. It takes even more courage (balls? gall?) to give your book the same title as another one about what the world would look if the virus of humanity were suddenly gone for good. Stevenson's book is all those things (ballsy, galling, torn from the headlines) - just not to everyone at the same time. Yes, the titling of an end chapter "The Point of it All" suggests a certain resolution to a tragic phenomenon. It isn't. Instead, its characters are the human beings behind the headlines. They never feel like stock characters or ciphers and their motivations - ultimately - are always about doing the right thing and making the world a better place for themselves and their loved ones, now and long after they're gone. That's a heady ambition in contemporary adult fiction. That Stevenson achieves it in youth fiction is a miracle. It's a smart, daring read.
ISBN No. 978-1-4598-0680-1
www.orcabook.com
It takes a certain kind of courage to publish a youth novel about suicide when even the mainstream media is still trying to figure out how to report on it without nudging depressed millennials in that direction. It takes even more courage (balls? gall?) to give your book the same title as another one about what the world would look if the virus of humanity were suddenly gone for good. Stevenson's book is all those things (ballsy, galling, torn from the headlines) - just not to everyone at the same time. Yes, the titling of an end chapter "The Point of it All" suggests a certain resolution to a tragic phenomenon. It isn't. Instead, its characters are the human beings behind the headlines. They never feel like stock characters or ciphers and their motivations - ultimately - are always about doing the right thing and making the world a better place for themselves and their loved ones, now and long after they're gone. That's a heady ambition in contemporary adult fiction. That Stevenson achieves it in youth fiction is a miracle. It's a smart, daring read.
Wednesday, October 1, 2014
"Unnatural Selections"
by Wallace Edwards
ISBN No. 978-1-4598-0555-2
www.orcabook.com
We're warned right upfront: "Readers of this book, behold! Beasts from an imagined age." Those beasts come from the imagination of Professor I.B. Doodling, a "traveling artist who visits schoolchildren and takes their suggestions...to create fantastical hybrid animals." The results are elegant illustrations and nonsensical poems about everything from the "Whalephant" ("Everyone who gets to see him, secretly would like to be him") to the "Leofroat" (a mashup of leopard, frog and goat).
The book encourages children to spot and identify the different animals in the pictures, but it's also an unwitting introduction to the environmental ills of our rapidly (de?)evolving planet. Being "a fantastical collection of unnatural selections!" also means the book might be an empowering or emasculating read for children with emerging gender issues. Whew... Thats a LOT of forehead crunching for a children's book. This isn't a bad thing if it gets parents and children talking about stuff like "natural" selection, the implications of GMO agriculture or - considering how fast kids grow up these days - the unnatural selections in books like Margaret Atwood's dystopian "Oryx and Crake" trilogy, where glowing rabbits - a failed experiment in bioluminescence - run freely in the countryside.
Tuesday, March 18, 2014
“Bike Thief”
by Rita Feutl
ISBN No. 978-1-4598-0569-9
www.orcabook.com
In 1948 it was a movie called “The Bicycle Thief”, which is memorable for being both an affecting neo-realist examination of Italy’s working class and - according to Mia Farrow - the only movie that ever made Woody Allen cry. This year it’s a book simply called “Bike Thief” and it updates, westernizes, and youthenizes the concept of bike theft for the internet, foster home, and fixed-gear bicycle age. When stalwart Nick visits the local pawn shop to replace the TV his sister broke (hopefully before their foster parents find out) he’s coerced by the store owner to steal bikes to pay for the TV. What happens next is the moral quandary of every tween trying to do the right thing – but with some surprisingly evocative, millennial and grown-up touches. When the pawn shop owner asks after Nick’s younger sister his how-is-she “smells of sex – or drugs.” Bike chains in a chop shop “spill from an old box like a mess of snakes trying to escape.” When Nick doubles a girl he likes home on his bike he thinks: “Good thing she’s facing forward. She can’t see the grin on my face.” Eventually the clever touches – which both adults and kids can appreciate – elevate “Bike Thief” above the genre of youth lit.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)