You Say Tomato

When Slogans Don't Make Sense

2008-06-29T14:09:00.004-04:00

Tom Brokaw hosted Meet the Press today. It was a pretty boring show, filmed in Wyoming for reasons I didn't hear.

In the final segment, Brokaw explained that there wouldn't be an MTP next week because of NBC's coverage of the Wimbledon final. "But we'll see you back the following week. If it's Sunday, it's Meet the Press."

Um, except next Sunday, that is.

(Amost) Live-Blogging the Tonys

2008-06-15T22:51:00.007-04:00

If the term controversial can accurately be attached to an event most commonly commemorated by being ignored, adding musical numbers from shows other than those nominated for Best Musical or Best Musical Revival to the Tony ceremony was controversial. When the telecast kicks off with “The Circle of Life” from The Lion King, it seems smart in that the performance is spectacular and gripping and just the kind of thing to send 60 Minutes viewers who haven’t yet changed the channel to the appropriate ticket-selling monopoly, but I do worry that the rest of the numbers will pale by comparison.

The first closed captioning weirdness of the evening comes in “The Circle of Life” when the subtitles indicate “Singing in African dialect.” If they don’t teach it in high school, is it a “dialect” instead of a language?

Whoopi Goldberg’s first moments decidedly shaky—the crab costume schtick brings back painful flashbacks to her turn hosting the Oscars when most of her material seemed to consist of her putting on costumes (I still remember the QEI outfit), and when she returns, she doesn't seem to have had enough time to get her dress on properly. I like Whoopi Goldberg, and I’m already reaching for the Fast Forward button. The line about Thurgood Marshall being “the only African-American Supreme Court justice” seems like a goof rather than a political dig at Clarence Thomas.

Even before Rondi Reed is announced as the night’s first winner, it’s obvious (as if there were any doubt) that August: Osage County is going to need a new trophy case. Featured Actress is probably their weakest category, but the applause for Reed overwhelms the rest. Her dedicating the Tony—part of it anyway—to Tracy Letts’ dad, who played the father of the ferked-up family until he died of cancer earlier this year—was touching. “Happy Father’s Day” is a great thing to say just before you walk off stage with a statue.

Cry-Baby does a smart number. The license-plate song is fun and energetic—far more fun and energetic than the rest of the show.

The second bit of close-captioning subversion comes when Bart Sheer thanks “my designers” and the subtitlers render it as “my design whores.”

For totally irrational reasons, Lin-Manuel Miranda’s acceptance rap, which might well be the coolest acceptance speech ever, kind of bugs.

Laura Benanti goes into a superhigh register when she accepts the Tony for Best Featured Actress in a Musical. Shouldn’t actors—especially actors known for their singing—be able to control their voices?

The musical selection from Grease achieved the impossible and failed to meet even my ankle-high expectations. The reality-show-recruited leads, and the rest of the cast for that matter, seemed incapable of singing on key, and they chose horrific numbers. Whatever else it lacks, Grease has some incredibly catchy songs, none of which they chose to sing. Although I think the show is doing pretty well at the box office, it looked like they chose to play it cheap. Instead of doing songs that required a set (which requires the producers to drop a wad of cash to create another set of scenery and stage props just for the telecast), they stuck with doors and a kick-line. They did themselves no favors, but I suppose the fact that the show’s doing OK financially proves that quality is irrelevant to the success of this production.

Third piece of unintended subversion (or absolute genius subversion) came when the Chicago cast members appeared over a network promo for “Greatest American Dog.”

The selections from The Little Mermaid and A Catered Affair were pretty uninspiring—especially the Little Mermaid excerpt. The song had horrific lyrics, and Sierra Boggess had appalling breath control and a puny little head voice. We didn’t even get to see the cool skatey gliding except from a great distance.

After Anna D. Shapiro’s husband kissed her when she heard she’d won for Best Direction of a Play, he immediately resumed chewing. I wondered if she’d passed her gum to him during the smooch.

Mark Rylance’s speech made me feel uneducated. I’m sure truly erudite viewers immediately recognized its provenance, but I didn’t. (UPDATE: He revealed the source of the text in a post-award interview.)

Sunday in the Park With George was robbed in the Best Scenic Design category. I loved South Pacific, but the SPWG set was far better.

Shocking to see how early in the evening the Best Play winner was announced--and how early the music started playing on Tracy Letts.

Mandy Patinkin's beard was a little scary. Made me wonder if he is going to play the lead in The Harvey Fierstein Story.

Liza Minelli looked amazing, though she sounded like Sean Connery. Paulo Szot was shockingly excited about receiving his Tony from her. Thanking his dresser was the sweetest tribute of the evening.

Patti Lupone looked gorgeous in that beautiful dress. And if the conductor thought a mere orchestra could overpower her, he obviously hasn't seen Gypsy. Her "Thank you. Good night!" really should've been the end of the show.

Most shocking part of the evening? We got through an entire Tony Awards ceremony without a single overt display of homosexuality. What is Broadway coming to?

Street Fairs

2008-06-15T19:38:00.007-04:00

Street fairs and summer go together like 60 Minutes and the employed aged, but I'd never lived three doors from one until I moved to Park Slope. In D.C., I worked on the block that hosted Adams Morgan Day, and like everyone else who had to deal with the detritus the next day, I thought of it as Adams Morgan Trash-Generation Day and moaned about it. A lot.

It was Brooklyn Pride yesterday, and I had every intention of cheering for my peeps--all I had to do was step outside, walk about 50 yards to the street that it happens on, and yell a bit. Since it's a night parade, I wouldn't even have had to dig out a suitably gay T-shirt. But we had a monster thunderstorm (actually a series of thunderstorms that lasted for four or five hours), and despite having grown up in Manchester and having spent 15 years in Seattle, I really don't care for rain, so I, erm, stayed in and complained when I had to pause an ancient episode of Foyle's War because the brave and no-doubt completely drenched marchers were making a lot of noise as they passed by.

So, there was no way that I could skip "Seventh Heaven," the absurdly named street fare that happens on that same ever-so-close thoroughfare. Still, I figured I'd check out one block, grab some food, and scurry home. Ten minutes and it'd be done. In fact, R and I spent perhaps an hour checking out stalls, finding some bargains, and buying a few things we actually liked. Thanks to those thunderstorms (which returned this morning, much to the chagrin of our upstairs neighbor who was having a stoop sale), the humidity was tolerable.

The highlight, though, was the openness of the high-schoolers who were providing entertainment outside the church opposite T Thai. I heard them perform a pretty good version of "Fantasy" and a very spirited rendition of "The Time Warp," and it looked like they were there for the rest of the afternoon. I can't imagine a group of English high-schoolers standing in front of thousands of passers-by in that spirit--they'd be too afraid of looking uncool or of friends or enemies taking the piss, but I found it quite touching and very American.

2006 at the (New York) Theater

2007-01-01T10:55:00.000-05:00

I saw 71 shows in 2006—24 on Broadway, 36 other shows in New York, 10 shows in London, and one in Manchester, England. 59 were plays, 11 musicals, and one could probably best be described as a play with music (the wonderful Nights at the Circus, which I saw at the Lyric, Hammersmith). Looking back on the letter grade I assigned to the shows when I got home from seeing them (I’ve made only slight tweaks to the original grades on the list I posted), a lot of them seem off. Partly it’s a comparison thing—I said Bridge & Tunnel was better than Awake and Sing!?—and partly I notice that I’m stingier with ratings when I’m seeing a lot of shows in a short period; but theater being a fleeting medium, perhaps the shows and performances that linger are the “best.”

Rather than a Top 10 list, this is more of a list of the shows that I saw in the 2006 calendar year that stuck with me most. For the moment, I’ll stick to New York shows.

TWELFTH NIGHT (Chekhov International Theatre Festival at BAM, dir. Declan Donnellan). This Russian troupe gave a master class in acting technique.

THE BOGUS WOMAN (by Kay Adshead, seen at 59E59 in the Brits Off-Broadway series). Some critics found this play over-the-top and unbelievable; I found it all too credible. In a year of outstanding one-woman performances, Sarah Niles’ tour-de-force was shiver-inducing.

DRUID/SYNGE (Lincoln Center Festival). The marathon aspect didn’t bother me one bit; in fact, I’m sure I got a lot more out of the plays by seeing them in succession. The outstanding elements were Riders to the Sea and, especially, The Playboy of the Western World. (Yes, of course I'm seeing The Coast of Utopia in a marathon—I'm a Wagenerian!)

IN THE CONTINUUM (Danai Gurira & Nikkole Salter, seen at the Perry Street Theater, RIP). Beautifully subtle acting and writing from two young artists on a subject that tends to repel subtlety.

SATELLITES (by Diana Son at the Public Theater). Yes, this play took on a LOT of topics—gentrification, “mixed” marriages, the difficulty of finding a nanny (recently the subject of a smart story in the NYT), how children affect marriages and work dynamics, just to name a few—many more than it could satisfactorily resolve, but I regularly find myself thinking back to moments in the play. A ton of smart ideas and difficult dilemmas in a short work.

WELL (by Lisa Kron, seen at the Longacre). It depresses me no end that Broadway wasn’t the right spot for this play.

HISTORY BOYS (Alan Bennett, Broadhurst). I’d’ve trimmed a little at the top and the tail, but there were moments of such transcendence that I almost forgot my reservations.

THE DROWSY CHAPERONE (for simplicity's sake, let's say the folks behind Slings and Arrows, at the Marquis)—Obviously, I’m more drawn to plays than to musicals, but I loved this goofy story. Great music, clever script, talented cast … I found it wonderfully entertaining.

CHRISTINE JORGENSON REVEALS (performed by Bradford Louryk, seen at what was then Dodger Stages). Who knew lip-synching could be so entertaining and thought-provoking?

THE LIEUTENANT OF INISHMORE—I don’t think I want to see that much blood on a stage ever again, but shock value can be very refreshing. And, of course, it wasn’t just shock value. Up there with the blood and gore were some serious discussions of the often skimpy motivations for acts of hideous violence.

Special Mentions:

I can’t quite bring myself to put them on the main list, but I loved both KIKI & HERB ON BROADWAY and JAY JOHNSON: MY TWO AND ONLY. Kiki & Herb’s Broadway show would’ve been on my list, but then I went to their Christmas show at the Bowery Ballroom—one-fifth the price and nearly twice as long (which was kind of annoying, quite honestly; don’t folks who go to downtown clubs have jobs to go to the next mornings?), and suddenly those “This show doesn’t belong on Broadway” complaints took on a new light—it’s not that Broadway’s too good for them, it’s that seeing them there costs way too much. I think My Two and Only was the only Broadway show I saw this year that made me cry!

Outstanding Performances Not Mentioned Above:

Logan Marshall-Green in Dog Sees God and Pig Farm
Christine Ebersole in Grey Gardens (No, really, how do you sing so beautifully with tears and snot streaming down your face?)
Lee Pace in Guardians
Cate Blanchett in Hedda Gabler (she overpowered the other players, but …)
Megan Dodds in My Name Is Rachel Corrie
Ian McDiarmid in Faith Healer (Cherry Jones got a bum rap, but it’s hard to win plaudits for underplaying a character; McDiarmid chewed the scenery, but entertainingly)
Zoe Wanamaker in Awake and Sing!
Sandra Oh in Satellites
Liev Schreiber in Macbeth
The cast of High Fidelity once the closing notice was up—irrepressible high-energy enthusiasm. I liked the show!

Least Liked:
STUFF HAPPENS (I like David Hare, but I’d already seen that show on the news and in the newspapers, thanks)

FESTEN—Great reviews from the London version, so I don’t know what happened over the Atlantic, but the New York production was dreadful.

CAINE MUTINY COURT-MARTIAL—Inert and utterly lifeless even though the actors were apparently told to EMOTE!! at all times. I’ve seen better high-school shows.

BURLEIGH GRIME$ (more like Burleigh Grimezzzz)—When people talk about cynical shows, this should be the prime example.

LOSING LOUIE—Just after seeing this, I wrote somewhere that this mess “wasn’t as bad as people are saying.” That thought has changed with time. It was awful, and MTC was crazy to put it on their schedule.

THE TIMES THEY ARE A-CHANGIN’—A lot of critics gave Twyla Tharp all kinds of credit for being a “serious artist.” She undoubtedly is, but this show was misconceived and misplayed from start to finish. I rate it worse that the bad-in-almost-exactly-the-same-way Ring of Fire, because it attempted to tart things up with MEANING. Tharp’s biggest mistake was taking Dylan at his word.

Final Whine:
I’ve ranted before about how the appalling British accents in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie and Abigail’s Party ruined the shows for me. Well, I must add a couple of other horrors to dialect coach Stephen Gabis’ record: I realized that he was also responsible for Stuff Happens (where working-class Jack Straw sounded totally plummy and, for some inexplicable reason Scot Robin Cook sounded like an Ulsterman—and yes it does matter in a show that is trumpeting its verisimilitude) and Butley, where Nathan Lane’s normal accent was fine, but his impersonations of Northern Britons were laughable. (OK, not to harp on this too much, but … I know the role probably called for an imperfect impression, but when a Northern accent is written as “goin’ to’t’ dogs” you don’t pronounce it “going to T dogs.” It’s “goin tuht dogs.” I don’t know why the English actor in the cast didn’t say something about this.)

Glorious Television From 2006

2006-12-31T17:14:00.000-05:00

In my various anorak confessions yesterday, I didn’t mention what is undoubtedly my favorite medium: television. Yes, when I was planning our London vacation for February 2006, I spent quite a bit of time studying theatrical offerings, but the timing of the trip was determined by TV: I wanted to watch the BBC’s coverage of the Winter Olympics. (I also happened to find myself in Britain in August 2004 for the two weeks of the Athens Olympics!)

Once again, in no particular order, some of my favorite shows from 2006:

The Wire. I have a bit of a prejudice against the Sunday night offerings of the premium channels—for some reason, people who don’t normally watch television tune into HBO (and very occasionally Showtime) on the Christian sabbath, deem what they see worthy of their attention, and immediately declare the shows they choose to watch to be superior television—even though they don’t watch any other television, and thus have nothing against which to compare them. Me? I usually watch three hours of telly each weeknight, and probably a little more on weekends, so, believe me, I have something to compare these shows with, and The Wire is definitely superior television.

I don’t understand why The Wire isn’t more popular—its writing is superb, which should win over intellectuals; it’s about gritty situations, which should appeal to fans of “urban” culture (yes, I know, that’s a lazy euphemism, but it’s New Year’s Eve); and the acting is fantastic, which should appeal to, well, everyone. Whatever. I kind of resent the Johnny- and Junie-Come-Latelies who got into the show by watching previous seasons on DVD (we TV hard-core-ists are terrible snobs about folks who watch television on DVD), but that bit of personal nonsense aside, I recommend The Wire to everyone and anyone.

I’ll add just two things: 1) For a show that at least appears to be written entirely by straight white men, it does an amazing job of presenting credible, complicated, and attractive gay, black characters—Omar, Kima, and Snoop (and remember we also once saw Rawls in a gay bar—I wonder if that will be the center of the next series, which will focus on the Baltimore media; you heard it here first, folks). 2) A lot is made of HBO’s ability to use profanity giving its shows an unfair advantage, but Wire writer David Mills made a great point in this Slate dialogue: What’s different about HBO is that writers don’t have to chop their stories into seven pieces. As he put it, “The ability to tell a tale from start to finish without interruption allows for much denser, much more nuanced writing.” He also mentions multiplays—I do appreciate that cable shows rerun new episodes several times over the course of a week—but I was fascinated by HBO’s decision to make episodes of The Wire available on demand six days before the episode went out over the air. I don’t think I ever actually watched a show on Sunday night. I could’ve, but I didn’t want to wait that long for my Wire fix. (By contrast, Showtime’s weird scheduling of the second series of Sleeper Cell, one episode per night over the course of eight days, with all episodes available on demand the day after the premier, just made me think that Showtime didn’t believe that it was compelling enough to bring viewers back week after week.)

The Closer. TNT did something really brave with the first episodes of The Closer—they introduced the character of Brenda Leigh to viewers just as she would’ve appeared to the LA detectives she’d been brought from Atlanta to supervise: like a twitchy, unconvincingly polite, sugar-scoffing weirdo. As she won over the cops during course of the first season, she also won the confidence of viewers—that Southern charm wasn’t entirely fake, but it was a way of disarming people. The second season was even better. Every good long-running TV show follows a pattern, and if it’s well-written and directed, viewers don’t necessarily realize there’s a template. In The Closer, the who/howdunnit of the case she’s working on comes to Brenda when she’s doing something in her messed-up private life. I also loved the two-hour special that aired a month or so ago—well, the plot was a bit silly, and the two hours were out of balance (I guess they were cut up that way so they could be re-run as two separate episodes)—but I loved the beginning when the veterans of Brenda’s squad were so frustrated by Commander Taylor’s lazy, take-the-solution-that’s-available attitude. That had been their attitude before Brenda came along, but she’d changed the way they thought.

Pilot season is my favorite time of the year, but this year I was in a terrible funk about the misogynist, homophobic, and just not funny sitcoms that the networks rolled out. Then came 30 Rock, which has me laughing out loud and nodding in appreciation of the intelligence of the humor (there are often sight gags that you have to freeze the frame to even see). (I did a Slate "Spoiler Special" podcast with TV critic Troy Patterson about the show back in October.) Speaking of superior sitcoms, I’m loving the sophomore season of How I Met Your Mother, which improved by leaps and bounds from the first series. At first, the writers were too stuck on the gimmick of a dad telling his kids about … how he met their mother. They still lean on that crutch from time to time, but it’s now comfortable being a smart series about couples and singles, which is pretty much all of modern life, isn’t it?

When Ugly Betty first started, I was skeptical. Oh, it was fine—likable enough, but inessential somehow. Then I realized that not only was I pretty much always watching it the night it aired (something I do less than half the time), I was also quoting the show to friends who hadn’t seen it. It’s the TV equivalent of an earworm, in other words. Two moments from the show stand out—when camp assistant Marc asked Betty’s fashion- and musical-theater-loving cousin Justin if he got picked on at school, and the outraged tone in which Wilhemina (played by Vanessa Williams) asked Daniel if he'd been looking at her when he suggested a Kwanzaa-themed issue of Mode. Both would’ve been easy to overplay (and, let’s face it, the show might get bigger numbers if they laid things on with a trowel), but they kept things relatively light and subtle.

South of Nowhere. Kids today don’t know they’re born. When I was growing up, there were no homos on television—except that one Sunday when ITV played The Killing of Sister George and the papers were full of outrage. Today’s youth can tune into their own tween channel, the N, and live in a fantasy world where two haut young teens can have a lesbian relationship where the biggest problem is that now Spencer is out to her parents, they never really have time alone together. Their friends all treat their relationship with respect, they get to go to the prom together with nary a raised eyebrow, and when Spencer’s mother freaks out when she finds the girls making out, it’s clear that her response is irrational, ergo homophobia is irrational. (Honorable mention: Noah’s Arc, Logo’s soap opera about a tight-knit group of gay black men in Los Angeles. Also a fantasy, but also a lovely one.)

I avoided the reality-TV trend. Knowing that I’m basically powerless over television, I just didn’t watch them, and when I did catch an episode, hopelessly out of context, the shows always seemed, well, dumb. Then I started to watch Project Runway. I guess the appeal is that even the most hopeless contestants demonstrate vision and practical skills, and the best of them have moments of mind-blowing creativity. I know that the shows are edited for maximum drama, and that they’ll always keep a bitch, a crazy person, and a regular person in the final stages (even if the crazy person’s skillz aren’t that mad), but it’s GOOD! The challenges are usually smart, the catwalk is an awesome climax (much better than the always rather anticlimactic tasting on Top Chef, which I also like), the judges are likable even when they’re bitchy, and Tim Gunn rocks the show.

After the disappointing penultimate season of The Sopranos, I was down on HBO and had low expectations for Big Love, but it won me over. Although the show didn’t ignore the big questions of polygamy (fear of discovery, the rights of the “wives” whose marriages aren’t registered with the state, the abuse of young women bonded to old men, the driving off of the young men of the communities to keep the young women for the old bucks, etc.), its strength was in the psychological portrayal of the characters—especially Bill and the three sister wives—and the representation of faith.

I guess I should also find a place on this list for the shows that I watch every single week, even if I think they’re kind of dumb. Pride of place goes to ESPN’s The Sports Reporters—the guests are often cliché-spouting blowhards, some of whom are so sure that they’re right about everything that you fear for their health (cf John Feinstein’s red-faced rant about the ridiculousness of the World Cup being decided by penalty kicks)—but I stick around for Mitch Albom’s ears, the opportunity to count how many lines from his Sunday Daily News column Mike Lupica can recite on the show, and John Saunders’ Canadianity. Also in this category: On Stage and Theater Talk.

I’ll give the last slot to British detective shows—those short-run series that show up out of the blue on that unfathomable mystery that is the BBC America schedule or on the sickly beast known as PBS. The standout from the last year was, of course, the final Prime Suspect, but the Inspector Lynley Mysteries, Waking the Dead, The Night Detective, and even Rosemary and Thyme get rapt attention in our house. At least a couple of those shows are products of commercial television, but the BBC programs do have that advantage of uninterrupted narrative—that is, no false “now we go to commercial” climaxes to reach every 12 minutes—and rather more robust language than I can imagine hearing on U.S. network shows.

2006: The Favorite Books

2006-12-30T21:08:00.000-05:00

Let’s start this little trek down memory lane with a look at my favorite books of 2006. (And, to state the obvious, not all were published in 2006; that’s just when I read them.)

I start here because I had a wonderful year of reading. When I anally add a title to my list(s), I give it a simple A-C listing (I suppose I could go below C, but the chances of my finishing something that wasn’t even worth a C are slim). At the end of the year, I try to stick with the contemporaneous rating, even though I sometimes feel I’ve been rather harsh—or perhaps it’s that I get more generous as the memory fades. This year, of the 57 titles that I read, I only awarded one C—to Piers Morgan’s The Insider: The Private Diaries of a Scandalous Decade—and really, the failing grade was awarded to the odious Mr. Morgan; the diaries themselves, although clearly bogus in that they were written long after the events occurred, were hideously compelling. I also only gave five B- ratings, along with 29 B’s, 20 B+s, and two well-deserved A’s.

Not necessarily in order of preference, 10 (more or less) favorites from 2006:

Arguments With England: A Memoir, by Michael Blakemore.
I have to admit, I didn’t know who Michael Blakemore was when I first came across this book, but the copy that came to the office included the glowing review Simon Callow wrote for the Guardian, which convinced me to give it a whirl. What a fantastic book! Blakemore is a wonderfully evocative writer—about acting (both doing it and witnessing it), family, promiscuity, relationships, leaving home, England in the 1950s and ‘60s. Ach, he’s great about pretty much everything, actually. It’s one of those memoirs that feels honest (how can we ever really know?) because he doesn’t pretend that he didn’t fail at some things or that he wasn’t sometimes a bit silly or pompous, but he also avoids that annoying memoirist’s trick of pretending that everyone got along wonderfully and life was always peachy. The young Blakemore is often broke and feuding (most entertainingly with Peter Hall) and involved in messy love triangles (most entertainingly with Vanessa Redgrave and Peter Hall), but by the end of the book, he’s starting to have some success as a director. I hope he’s working on another volume right now, because after spending nearly 400 pages on his early stumblings, I want to know what happened as he became more sure-footed. (His novel Next Season is also very entertaining. Read it after you’ve read the memoir, so you recognize the real folks behind the fictional characters.)

Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic, by Alison Bechdel
If there’s a You Say Tomato books of the year list, there’s an Alison Bechdel title on it. After more than 20 years and at least 11 volumes of Dykes to Watch Out For, her intricately detailed (and very funny) social history that sparkled in relative obscurity, the wonderful Fun Home—a graphic memoir—got the plaudits and attention that Alison has always deserved. (Time magazine’s book of the year, Entertainment Weekly’s nonfiction book of the year, and a million Top 10 lists.) Still, I can’t help wondering if a) the word “dykes” hadn’t been in the titles; b) there’d been a man at the center of those earlier books, she might’ve avoided all those years of obscurity.

Obedience, Struggle and Revolt, by David Hare.
I know, it sounds like a report from the B&D committee of a Spartacist splinter group, and no one could accuse David Hare of being a comedian, but there’s some wonderful stuff in this collection of lectures. (Yes, lectures.) I could’ve done with a little less John Osborne worship (Sir David, baby, make your case and move on), but Hare is a clear thinker and (sometimes) a devastating case-maker.

Primo Time, by Antony Sher.
Obviously, a lot of this year’s reading was focused, in one way or another, on the theater. Of the “actorly” books that I took in, I particularly enjoyed Sher’s account of developing his one-man show Primo—fashioned from Primo Levi’s writings about his time in Auschwitz. It seems silly to complain about the author being self-absorbed—that’s kind of the point of the book—but if any of my friends were contemplating becoming involved with an actor, I’d get a copy of this book into their hands, stat! Years ago, I read Sher’s wonderful novel Middlepost. I’m not sure if it was in Primo Time or Year of the King that Sher talks openly about his frustration at the low effort-to-response ratio of fiction-writing and his hopes that his diaries might be a profitable side line (I’m being much more crass about it than he was). I hope they do—like Simon Callow (with whom he has a ton in common and with whom, I understand, he has quite a rivalry)—it’s astonishing that such a talented actor would be such an excellent writer.

Fifth Row Center: A Critic’s Year On and Off Broadway, by Benedict Nightingale, and The Season: A Candid Look at Broadway, by William Goldman.
Nightingale comes across as the nicer chap (or perhaps it’s my soft spot for writers who confess their flaws) and Goldman is the more astute phenomenon-namer, but both these books taught me a lot about commercial theater, New York, and the life of the theater critic.

Prince of the Marshes: And Other Occupational Hazards of a Year in Iraq, by Rory Stewart.
It was a bit of a year for memoirs for me. I also enjoyed Stewart’s The Places in Between, but this account of his time as vice-governor of the Iraqi province of Maysan is astonishing. The conflict in Iraq has brought us some great books (The Assassin’s Gate, Imperial Life in the Emerald City, to name but a couple), but Stewart wasn’t a journalist or an academic (like Larry Diamond, whose Squandered Victory is also about how bureaucracy and meddling politicians made a tough challenge impossible); he’s a traveler who wants to make a difference by listening to people and taking account of history and trying to do the right thing. He doesn’t have a career to make or points to score, and he has to admit defeat pretty early. (Read excerpts from the book at Slate.)

The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11, by Lawrence Wright. The chapters about the philosophical origins of al-Qaida and Osama Bin Laden’s path to infamy are fabulous. As interesting as the latter sections on flawed FBI agent John O’Neill are, that part of the book felt overpowered by the brilliance of the al-Qaida section. Still, as everyone says, it’s a total page-turner.

The Q Guide to Broadway, by Seth Rudetsky.
I bought this book to give to a musical-theater-loving British friend who’s coming to New York in the spring. In the end, I had to buy a new copy to give away, because I couldn’t bear to part with it. It’s a small, unpretentious book, and Rudetsky wears his expertise lightly. Not only does he have musical-theater trivia down flat, he really knows music and does a great job of explaining why some songs or musicals work while others don’t. It’s also laugh-out-loud-on-the-subway funny.

What Was She Thinking?: Notes on a Scandal, by Zoe Heller.
I picked up the novel, which I’d been wanting to read for a while, in anticipation of the movie. I inhaled the book—it’s smart, it’s beautifully observed, and it’s deliciously creepy—but having finally seen a trailer for the movie and read some reviews, I won’t be seeing it, as much as I love Dame Judi and Dame-to-be Cate. The book is a classic example of an unreliable narrator, which I guess you have to clarify when making a movie, but making a predatory friend into a predatory lesbian is not cool.

The Shadow of the Sun, by Ryszard Kapuscinski.
If the beginning of the year was all about theatrical tomes, the last month or two has been dominated by Africa. In January, I’m off to Nigeria, so I’ve been boning up by reading books with such cheery titles as The Open Sore of a Continent, This House Has Fallen, and Where Vultures Feast. Someone recommended Kapuscinski, and all I can say is, “Why haven’t I read him before?” I immediately ordered four other collections—and have loved Shah of Shahs, about Iran. Wonderful writing, and a great translation by Klara Glowczewska.

The Emperor’s Children, by Claire Messud.
It’s been a while since I read the big novel of the moment and truly enjoyed it. Hideous and yet irresistible characters, a relentless narrative, and lovely observation. I haven’t had a chance to listen to the Slate Audio Book Club discussion of the book yet, but I will, very soon.

The final rundown on my 2006 reading was: 57 books, of which 22 were works of fiction (including four young-adult novels), 28 were nonfiction (including two works of graphic nonfiction), and seven were plays.

Anorak, Thy Name Is Junio

2006-12-30T15:26:00.000-05:00

As I said about this time last year, I’m more than a little embarrassed by my habit of making compulsive lists of the movies and plays that I see and the books that I read. (Actually, I’ve only been keeping a list of the plays that I see for a couple of years now—I wish I had a better record of what I’d seen in London, Madrid, Seattle, and on my quick jaunts to New York when I still lived on the West Coast.)

Anyhoo, what’s the point of feeling self-conscious about my anorak tendencies, may as well just revel in them and reveal them. (And it’s not like I’m providing a pivot table or offering any complicated correlations.)

In 2006, I saw 71 plays (confession: this does count five constituent plays of Druid/Synge separately; second confession, yes, five, I left before the last one!); I saw 22 movies; and I read 57 books.

Movie-going has taken a huge hit since we moved to New York. I saw 106 movies in 2004, my last full year in Seattle; then 42 in 2005; then 22 in this first full year here. New York is a great movie city—but so is Seattle. There’s nothing like the magnificent SIFF on my New York cultural agenda, nor is there anything like the Warren Report —at least that I’m aware of. (The one time I went to a New York Observer Cinema Club screening, the line was ridiculous. We didn’t make it into the movie, despite arriving early—I decided right then that it wasn’t worth saving the price of admission.) But the biggest reason for the low movie count, of course, was that I spent more than 65 afternoons and evenings in the theater.

I don’t think I’ll do a series of Top 10 lists or anything quite so formal, but check back over the next couple of days for my thoughts on the most memorable—and sometimes disappointing—plays, books, movies, TV shows, and music of 2006.

A&E, Boo; MI-5 Marathon, Woo-Hoo

2006-10-22T18:49:00.000-04:00

Who knows why A&E—once a channel I tuned into regularly, now a repository for fifth-rate reality shows—“burned off” Season 4 of MI-5 (known as Spooks in its native land). The network showed the first couple of episodes at 11 p.m. on Friday night—a time slot that reeks of “we’re legally obliged to run this on a weekday, but we don’t need to make it easy for would-be viewers to see it.” After the first two eps, it disappeared altogether, without any word of explanation. Then it returned in an eight-hour marathon this Saturday —between the hours of 11 a.m. and 7 p.m. ET—so, yes, I guess there is a worse time slot than 11 p.m. Fridays. Having spent a good part of this weekend catching up with Harry and Adam and Fiona and Zaf and Ruth and the gang, I don’t mind the marathon format one bit, I just wish I knew what A&E was playing at.

Of course, the show isn’t what it was before the original leads—Tom, Zoe, and Danny—were disappeared or killed off; and U.S. viewers see an unsatisfactory filleted version after A&E trims 10 minutes or so for commercial breaks (and such fine ads on Saturday afternoon—lots and lots of Bowflex).

Nevertheless, it’s the last good spy show. I like 24, but it's almost ironic, and MI-5 is far more willing to show the inevitable underside of an agency that spends billions on deception.

I wonder if A&E dumped the show because of its increasing anti-Americanism. There has always been tension between 5 and the CIA (sexual tension in the case of Tom and the CIA officer played by Rachel Corrie’s Megan Dodds), but in Episode 9 of Series 4 it reaches a new level—as the official BBC synopsis puts it, “Harry finally gets fed-up of turning a blind-eye to the CIA acting as though they run the country.” He interrupts the Yanks while they’re in the process of rendering a British subject off to Guantanamo—and as it turns out, his actions prevent the CIA from enacting a dastardly plot to draw the West into a war with Iran.

Who knows if we’ll get to see Season 5, which is currently showing in Britain, over here. If not, I’ll miss seeing the Gherkin (the cinematographers seemed to find a way to get it into every episode), hearing those dire American accents, and finding out if Ruth and Harry ever get together. And as much as I hated losing Tom, Zoe, and Danny, I did like—if not enjoy—the tension that came from knowing the show was willing to kill off any character, no matter how essential they seemed to be. Sure, characters dropped like flies in the last season of 24, but I never suspect that Jack Bauer is going to die a resurrection-free death. In MI-5 anyone is fair game—and that adds a visceral thrill to the show.

I Blame Scott Elliott

2006-10-21T22:58:00.001-04:00

Who should I trust: trophy cabinets or my own lying eyes and ears? Since I moved to New York 18 months ago, I’ve seen two shows directed by Jerry Zaks—a man with a good reputation and four Tonys—and both were dreadful. The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial and Losing Louie were inert, old-fashioned, and badly cast. So, it’s hard for me to have a terribly high opinion of Mr. Zaks.

Similarly, Scott Elliott seems to be a downtown hero, the artistic director of the New Group and Mike Leigh’s anointed American interpreter (though their relationship was stealthily undermined in a New York Observer profile). And yet, the two plays of his that I’ve seen—Abigail’s Party and The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie—have been extremely disappointing.

John Doyle isn’t the only director who has a “thing.” In his negative review of Brodie, the Times’ Ben Brantley called Elliott “a director known for eliciting (or forcing) the perversity in chestnuts as conventional as Present Laughter and The Women.”

His productions of Abigail and Brodie have even more in common—both are period pieces with a well-regarded indie actress cast in a huge part around which the entire play constellates. And in both cases, there’s an easily available, much-loved video version of the work—the magnificent original 1977 TV version of Abigail’s Party with Leigh’s ex-partner Alison Steadman as Beverly, and Maggie Smith’s Oscar-winning turn in the movie version of The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (though my own favorite version is the late-‘70s TV series with Geraldine McEwan as MJB). They’re also both full of lines that devotees love to quote—“Like Feliciano, Ange? Yeah, he’s good, isn’t he? Sexy!” or “My gerrils are the crème de la crème,” etc.

Elliott seems to be good at physical direction—Jennifer Jason Leigh, who played Beverly in his Abigail’s Party, had the look and the movements down just right—the pantherian swagger, the lust for cigarettes and drinks, her utter exasperation with her stupid yet snobbish, uptight, estate-agent husband, Laurence. If Jennifer Jason Leigh had kept her trap shut and just smoked and danced and tortured the guests, the show would’ve been wonderful—but instead she opened her mouth and out came that unbearable braying. The braying gave no indication that Leigh understood Beverly. Why Beverly took such pleasure in taunting her husband and her neighbors. Why she wanted to humiliate Susan, the upper-middle-class remnant of the sort of people who used to live in the neighborhood before oiks like Laurence and Beverly moved in. Leigh gave no clue why Beverly was so desperate to act like Lady Bountiful in front of Angie and her inarticulate but sexy former-footballer husband. Why was she hee-hawing like a donkey? Alison Steadman brayed to express the pain and rage and shattering disappointment inside the character. Jennifer Jason Leigh brayed because Alison Steadman had brayed. And that’s Scott Elliott’s fault.

When it comes to The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, Cynthia Nixon looks right for the part—graceful and glamorous enough to shine like a spot of brilliant color in a gray Northern world. Her passion for the south, for beauty and adventure is alluring. But then she opens her mouth.

The play itself is a bit of a clunker—the flashback structure (essentially the action of the play is the recollection of an aging nun who was once part of the Brodie set) is heavy-handed and clumsy, and it has the most discomfiting nude scene I’ve ever seen. But Miss Jean Brodie, a woman in her prime, an educator, a leader of young women—and a crazy, romantic (in the worst sense), manipulative bitch—is a great character that even the most cack-handed director and the most uncomfortable actress can’t totally fuck up. They came pretty close, though.

Stephen Gabis is credited as the dialect coach (for both shows), and if I were Mr. Gabis, I’d leave the business, because the accents were absolutely, totally, and utterly preposterous. Bourgeois Edinburgh is probably the easiest Scottish accent to assume, and yet the female cast members (the one male actor who had to adopt a brogue did so quite convincingly) were all New Zealand vowels, pinched faces, and strangled sounds. At the intermission, the older couple behind me complained that they couldn’t hear the dialogue. I could barely restrain myself from turning around and yelling, “You lucky bastards!”

So, instead of embodying the characters, the actresses seemed to expend all their efforts on delivering their lines in “the accent.” Consequently, not a single one of them was remotely convincing. Consequently, Miss Brodie was neither charismatic nor demonic; the headmistress of Marcia Blane School for Girls was neither sincere nor scheming, and the girls were likable but very far from the crème de la crème. And, for my money, that’s Scott Elliott’s fault.

Update, Oct. 22: I must quote a lovely line from Maud Newton's take on this Brodie: "Nixon is slight rather than imposing, flirtatious rather than steely, and, were it not for the cast of Brigadoon, she might very well take the award for most ridiculous Scottish accent ever to be affected in the theater district."

Update, Jan. 1, 2007: Thanks to Mark for pointing out an error (now removed) in the original version of this post. Scott Elliott didn't direct Avenue Q, he was a co-producer of the show.

New Podcast—The Second Annual TV Theme Tune Scramble

2006-10-07T16:52:00.000-04:00

This time last year, I offered a podcast that was also a contest, The Great 2005 Name That TV Theme Tune Contest. I'm happy to report that five of the 10 shows are still on the air (if you count Rome, which isn't currently on the air but will be returning to HBO).

It's that happy time of year once again, so here's the 2006 version. An added bonus for those YST readers who take the long view: Guess how many of these 12 shows will still be on the air in 2007. Closest wins a prize. (My guess? Seven, though only a couple will be considered hits.)

The 12 shows are:
a) Ugly Betty
b) 'Til Death
c) The Class
d) Men in Trees
e) Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip
f) Justice
g) Vanished
h) Heroes
i) Dexter
j) Happy Hour
k) Help Me Help You
l) Jericho

Now, listen to the podcast and tell me which show goes with which theme tune. So, if you think No. 1 is Ugly Betty, your answer would be 1-a). You can send your answers to yousaytomato[at]gmail.com OR if you're a trusting sort, just put them in the comments below.

2006 Pilot Season: Comedies, Part 2, 'Til Death and Happy Hour

2006-09-17T00:14:00.000-04:00

TV networks schedule their hottest shows for Thursday nights because that’s when movie studios want to advertise the weekend’s new movies and when stores want to advertise the weekend’s special offers. In the 8-9 p.m. slot this fall, Fox has lined up two new comedies—‘Til Death, a vehicle for Brad Garrett, late of the most inexplicably popular show in TV history, Everybody Loves Raymond, and Happy Hour. This means that the time slot that once featured the women’s-empowerment classic Living Single is now misogyny central.

Happy Hour won’t last long—it’s the latest in a weird sequence of short-term Fox sitcoms featuring young men new to Chicago, dealing with work and apartment quandaries (I liked last year’s The Loop much better). It begins when Henry, who recently left his sweet job managing John Deere inventory in Missouri to live with his girlfriend in Chicago and work in her family’s business, finds himself dumped and therefore homeless, jobless, and loveless. He goes to another apartment in the building where Larry needs a new roommate to replace Brad, who has just moved in with his fiancee, Tina, who has totally—and absolutely humorlessly—castrated and infantilized her man. Larry takes pity on Henry—and even sends him off to a job interview with his old, old friend Amanda, a likable slut with no control over her mouth (the words that come out of it or the deep-dish pizza that goes into it).

Once again, there were zero jokes in the entire show, and although Amanda is somewhat sympathetic (with the emphasis on pathetic), the basic thrust—make that the overt story line—is that women are out to destroy men: Henry’s ex-girlfriend ruins his life, Tina ruins Brad. The only laugh lines—and you have to use an extraordinarily broad definition to find anything that qualifies—are, when Larry sees Tina in the apartment building, “The lesbian lip-waxing meeting is down the hall” (man, homophobic woman-hating is funny!), and, when Amanda is interviewing the shorts-wearing Henry for a job (his ex won’t let him into the apartment to get his clothes): “I can see your balls. … There’s nothing about them I can’t see.” Start engraving the Emmy!

The title of the show refers to Larry’s daily 4 p.m. martini appointment. Happy hour, he believes, is the time between “something bad (work) and something good (dinner). Enjoy it!” Fox’s conceptual problem with these shows about young men in between something easy (living with your parents) and something hard (paying your own way) is that, in real life, happy hour is only fun about one time in five. Usually, you end up feeling worried about something you said, in trouble about something you did, or in really deep trouble about something you didn’t do because you had a wicked hangover the next day.

Happy Hour’s lead-in is even more cynical and misogynistic, if that’s possible, though we do at least see that the women aren’t the ball-busting, fun-killing dragons men say they are. But, boy, do they say it a lot. Brad Garrett and Joely Fisher are Eddie and Joy Stark—a high-school history teacher and a travel agent married for more than 20 years—Eddie Kaye Thomas and Kat Foster are their next-door neighbors, newlyweds Jeff and Steph. Since Jeff is the new vice principal at Eddie’s school, they carpool together, providing Eddie with much time to lecture Jeff on wives and their soul-crushing ways.

When you see the title ‘Til Death, you can’t help thinking of Til Death Us Do Part, the British show that spawned All in the Family. Yes, Alf Garnett was a wife-berating bigot—but as a million high-school essays have concluded, his intolerance was in the service of counseling tolerance. I couldn’t possibly tell you what ‘Til Death is in the service of—other than paying Brad Garrett’s utilities bill.

Take the time when Jeff believes that he’s going to get a pool table for his new home. No chance, says Eddie, “A pool table is for fun. Men want to have fun. Wives want to walk that fun deep into the woods and shoot it dead. Marriage isn’t about fun. Marriage is more about having someone to drive you to the hospital for your operations.” Or here’s Eddie on what women want: “Even if women don’t actually host dinner parties, they want to believe that they host dinner parties. That’s why you just registered for thousands of dollars’ worth of china. … There’s a reason china rhymes with vagina.” (So why does prick rhyme with dick?)

The vagina monologue is typical of the show’s down-there fixation—Eddie can’t stop pointing out that the kids will have no end of fun with Jeff’s last name—Woodcock—and way too much time is wasted riffing on that, especially when Jeff starts a Web site called mywoodcock.com—oh, hold on, can’t type, stitch! In fact, a lot of the content seems very racy for an 8 p.m. time slot—especially the scene where Jeff, describing how, in a moment of post-coital weakness, Steph agreed to agree to let him get a pool table, does a wife-rogering pelvic-thrust dance around the teachers lounge, while he yells to Eddie, “How about this weekend you can just listen to the sound of me making love to my wife on my brand new pool table.” It’s just gross, and not even vaguely funny. Like the rest of the show.

2006 Pilot Season: Comedies, Part 1, The Class

2006-09-16T22:12:00.000-04:00

In TV pilot season, I do something I don’t do during the rest of the year: watch sitcoms. (That’s an exaggeration, but only slightly. I watch How I Met Your Mother, Reno 911!, and Weeds—but it’s debatable if the last two shows really qualify as sitcoms.)

The crop of new comedies I’ve seen so far will certainly not affect my long-term viewing habits—they’re all misogynist, derivative, and utterly unfunny.

The worst of the lot was The Class—whose Platonic ideal is Friends. Instead of six pals (including one set of siblings), we have eight pals (including one set of siblings)—young and single and weird in their own special, theoretically endearing ways.

The premise is that Ethan—played by John Ritter’s son Jason—is engaged to a woman he met in third grade. To celebrate the 20th anniversary of the day they met, he invites their third-grade classmates to a party. Naturally—because in these shows women are always bitches (unless they’re idiots)—she breaks up with him because he’s way too nice to her, all in the hearing of the reunited class. Cut to a very awkward party. (Awkward is the new funny—except when it’s not.)

The problem with the show—like lots of similar shows these days—is that it’s just not funny. OK, I know it’s not stand-up, so we can’t expect jokes, but shouldn’t there be at least one vaguely comedic situation?

Instead, all the laughs were based on pain. Let’s do a roll-call, or perhaps that should be role-call: Lina hangs up on Ethan’s party invitation call so she can return to reacting to finding her boyfriend in bed with another woman. She’s the kind of person who always wears the wrong thing and says the wrong thing. Lina’s twin sister Kat is a selfish, rude, and apparently pathologically incapable of basic empathy. Duncan is a sweet but immature doofus who lives with—and struggles not to be controlled by—his interfering mother. Nicole, Duncan’s high-school sweetheart is married to a former football star who is much older than she is; they don’t have much in common, and he’s sometimes mean to her. Kyle is gay and apparently in a semi-loving if shallow relationship, but his role is totally undeveloped. Holly is a TV newswoman who’s still mad at Kyle for ditching her for a guy on prom night—the hilarious payoff her is that her husband is very effeminate. (Laugh? I thought my pants would never dry.) Finally, there’s Richie, who was about to swallow a bottle of pills when Ethan called; he and Lina discover an intense connection and see the glimmer of a bright future in their dark, depressing lives. Then, in the final scene of the pilot, he drives his car into her and knocks her down. Hey, even if he just winged her, car accidents are wicked funny, eh?

Other than a life-improving re-connection between Duncan and Nicole, it’s hard to see anything other than misery, depression, and darkness in store for any of the other characters. Toward the end of the pilot, Ethan says something along the lines of: “There were 28 in our class. How many are already stuck in lousy jobs and bad marriages? How many of us have already made that one big, dumb choice we’ll never recover from?” Yay, that’s the attitude! I don’t think watching a comedy is supposed to make you feel even more suicidal than the actors.

PS: The actress playing Lina has a very distinctive, oddly pitched, husky voice. I couldn’t place it, but I knew I’d seen her before. Turns out she’s Heather Goldenhersh, who played Sister James in Doubt. I’m guessing she’ll be free for further theatrical engagements very soon.

It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year!

2006-09-13T20:59:00.000-04:00

There’s a line I never tire of trying to pass off as something I just came up with: “The three best words in the English language? All new episode.” And there’s another phrase that’s even more tingle-inducing: “pilot season.” And I’m not talking plane drivers.

At this time of year, I always open up TiVo with antici—pation!

Everything I read about ABC’s new Anne Heche vehicle Men in Trees (crappy title—for one thing it serves up a too-tempting lob for TV Guide’s Matt Roush, who declares the network is “up a tree” and predicts it’ll “get the chop”) made me think that I liked the show better when it was called Northern Exposure. Like that show, which had a surprisingly short life in syndication, it’s a fish-out-of-water tale of a caustic, know-it-all New Yorker who finds herself in the beautiful wilds of Alaska and sets out on a laughter-and-tear-filled journey through the five stages of adjustment. If I had to make a rash prediction after 44 minutes of viewing, I’d say those stages were going to be: arrogance, anger, awe at the rough-hewn beauty of nature, appropriate shoe buying, and acceptance that even guys with bad haircuts can be haut and that, therefore, she can live in a place where you have to stand in the street to get cell-phone reception.

The thing is, since they didn’t even bother to disguise the debt to Northern Exposure, I almost believed it was an hommage rather than a rip-off. Instead of a goofy young man with a movie fetish and a sexy philosophical guy with a radio show, there’s a goofy young man with a radio show and a sexy, resistant-to-the-lead’s-charms fish and wildlife guy. Instead of a March-December couple running the local bar, there’s a chunky guy and his spunky lady running the local bar. Instead of a white female bush pilot there’s a black male bush pilot. Instead of a crusty old lady running the grocery store, there’s an attractive ho with a heart of gold (actually, that character is pretty original—an undeluded woman who’d like to get out of the “hospitality industry” but hasn’t found an alternative way of supporting her family—yet). But this show is fresh, see, because it features a lame crutch that’s only come into fashion in the last couple of years: the knowing, philosophical voice-over. (Actually, there’s also an echo of an even better show—Canada’s North of 60—in the form of the slide-guitar soundtrack and the presence of North of 60 regular Tim Webber. So, the show is filmed in Vancouver, eh?)

Well, there are a couple of original elements: In the pilot episode, Anne Heche was naked once, “dressed” only in a towel once, and down to skivvies what felt like a couple of times. An Alaska-based drama with more skin than an Australian soap! Now that’s an achievement. (Heche’s arms are like matchsticks, by the way, I sure hope she gets some good organic meat on those too-prominent bones in the coming episodes.) Oh, and there’s a recurring raccoon—I haven’t seen an animal character that lame since the talking cat in Sabrina the Teenage Witch.

The writing is pretty good—speaking of the local men, who outnumber women 10-to-1, the female bartender tells Heche, “The odds are good, but the goods are odd”—and the hook-up potential gives it a sexy edge. (Heche is a relationship coach who realizes that she knows nothing about men, but thinks she can figure them out in this testosterone territory.) I wonder, though, if there are enough women characters for the show to succeed on Friday night, where it’s up against Ghost Whisperer and Nanny 911. Men in Trees is better—smarter, funnier, and less treacly—than either of those shows, but that, unfortunately, often counts for little when it comes to the ratings.

Oscar Rule Change

2006-07-05T13:21:00.000-04:00

Glad to see at least one of the dumb rules in the foreign-language Oscar category has been addressed. The Academy has dropped its requirement that foreign-language nominees must be in an official language of the submitting country—now they can feature any language, as long as it’s not English. Although this story underplays the significance of the change (it affects at least one—often more—nominations each year), the rule change is a step in the right direction. Now if only we could get rid of the one-movie-per-nation rule and take the national academies out of the picture (Pedro Almódovar resigned from the Spanish academy over, among other reasons, its refusal to nominate his movies for the foreign-film award). I wrote about the silly rules in this Oscar category years ago in Slate.

Celebrity Sightings, Shakepeare in the Park Edition

2006-06-26T00:10:00.000-04:00

At Sunday night's almost-rained-out-but-saved-by-the-wind performance of Maccers, Famke Janssen, who gets extra points for lending the hippy couple in the row ahead her Lulu Guinness umbrella (she and her companion wore Public Theater rain ponchos), and Mr. Big/Logan himself, Chris Noth. (They were not together, I hasten to add.)

She Likes It ...

2006-06-15T09:51:00.000-04:00

I’ve read quite a bit about the Channel 4 reality show The Play’s the Thing—but here’s a review from a theater person I trust. Webloge’s take on the show makes me want to fly to Britain to watch!

(Mark Shenton wrote about the commercial challenges for the theater that’s hosting the winning play.)

Tony Blogging Lite

2006-06-11T20:52:00.000-04:00

Erm, is it just me, or was Harry Connick Jr. totally off-key in the initial “Tonight” section of his medley. Or as Randy would say “Pitchy, dawg.”

Hey, they just showed us a photo! Sure, it’s of the gathering of more than 100 previous Tony winners, but we can’t actually see it!

When accepting the Tony for Best Score (for Drowsy Chaperone), Greg Morrison’s speech, in which he thanked his parents for buying him a piano, was the first verkempt-making moment of the night. (Of course, if they’re back home in PEI, they won’t be able to watch, except via Webcast.)

Receiving the Tony for Best Direction of a Musical, John Doyle gives the first homo shoutout of the night--wishing his partner, Rob, a happy anniversary (and getting a round of applause for it). We had two last year (Edward Albee dedicating his award to his late partner and Cherry Jones snogging her girlfriend when her name was read). Will we beat that total tonight? Ooh, another gay moment: Harvey Fierstein say, "A gay man's work is never done" when releasing Audra McDonald's train.

I know that reviews always mention Hal Holbrooke's amazing memory (he apparently has massive quantities of Twain memorized and trots out different bits each night depending on the audience or his mood), but I was really worried he was going to lose his train of thought in his rambling preamble. I guess CBS wasn't too worried, though, he got the best guest cutaway guest shots of the night--Les Moonves, Julie Chen, and Brian Stokes Mitchell. Also, a very cool co-presenter, Veronica Mars herself, Kirsten Bell.

Hmm, so Clifford Odets now joins the pantheon of great American playwrights because he has a Tony?

Beth Leavel's speech was lovely, but even nicer were the closeups of Drowsy Chaperone director, Casey Nicholaw, shedding a tear at her joy.

So far, most of the musical numbers have seemed pretty lame--Jersey Boys, especially.

Could the excerpts from the best play nominees have been any shorter? Answer: NO!

Oh, the first political joke--from a puppet, no less! (Not that I'm calling the miraculous Christine Ebersole a puppet.) I suppose a gay puppet counts as a homo moment.

Wow, seeing Christian Hoff I wonder why I sometimes find goofy, emotional speeches irresistible and sometimes find them embarrassing. This was the latter.

LOVE the human tableaux in the Hal Prince lifetime achievement award. A new high in camp (which is saying something at the Tonys).

Hey, another homo moment thanks to Cynthia Nixon! And we're only two-thirds through the telecast. But she didn't thank her girlfriend!

LOVED seeing Julia Roberts get yanked out of camera shot by the award-guardian.

OK, the speeches have been longish, but the musical interruption of Richard Griffiths' speech was inexcusable. As The Playgoer has said, what exactly do they have in mind for the next hour?

In the zippy catch-up on the technical awards, it was heart-breaking to see the winners holding speeches (of which we heard approximately 3 seconds each from just some of them) but not being able to hear them. Bob Crowley's "I should've won it for the other one" was particularly interesting.

Alfre Woodard's dress made it a little difficult for me to focus on James Earl Jones' and Cynthia Nixon's Wilson and Wasserstein excerpts.

Nice writing from whomever came up with this description of the folks in the "in memoriam" section (too bad it was kind of hard to see the photos): "talented partners whose collaboration shall be missed."

Say what you like about Oprah, but she sure can make a speech, and the number from The Color Purple was the best of tonight's live musical presentations.

I have so little interest in Jersey Boys, I can barely bring myself to type out its full title, but I must admit producer Michael David's speech was appreciative and respectful. (And if he's ever short a few bucks for one of his productions, I have an idea for a way he could make some money in December.)

So, the final count was: History Boys - 6, Drowsy Chaperone - 5, Jersey Boys - 4 (but good ones, Best Musical the two actor awards, and the biggest one of all, lighting), Awake and Sing! - 2, Pajama Game - 2, Sweeney Todd - 2, and one each for Color Purple, Faith Healer, and Rabbit Hole. Oh, I almost forgot the special award for Bridge & Tunnel.

¿Qué Coño?

2006-06-11T18:14:00.000-04:00

Back in March, PBS screened a Martin Scorsese-produced documentary, The Blues: Godfathers and Sons, which contained blues musicians using the words “sh_t” and “f_ck.” As a result, the Federal Communications Commission levied a fine of $15,000 against station KCSM-TV, which aired the doc. It’s part of an FCC crackdown against “indecency” on television.

So, how come I keep hearing the word “coño” on television? Yesterday I was watching an old episode of CSI: Miami, and a Latino hustler told his victim, “Watch me, coño.” Also this season, Fox’s Prison Break showed Lincoln’s cellmate, Sucre (played by Amaury Nolasco), feeling really frustrated by a phone call, slamming down the receiver, and yelling, “Coño!”

For anyone who doesn’t speak Spanish, “coño” translates to the English C-word, the one that rhymes with punt. In Spain it’s not a terribly taboo word—I’ve heard people use it to summon a waiter (when I last lived in Spain, in the early '90s, the “worst” word was hostia, which means “communion wafer”!)—but that’s not really the point. I’m sure it’s pretty offensive in most Spanish-speaking countries.

I’m not sure why this double standard bothers me so much. (And I’m maintaining it myself—I avoid English-language profanity, so as not to set off Net nanny software, but I’m not terribly worried about bad foreign language shutting me out.) If Tía Nelida isn’t complaining, what’s it to me?

Still, it seems wrong. Can’t shows do what the BBC did in the 1970s for Porridge, a sitcom set in a prison, and invent a curse word that expresses the strength of the speaker’s feelings but avoids actual offense?

Machado and Nicola Sitting on a Stage ...

2006-06-10T20:31:00.000-04:00

In the light of the speech by Eduardo Machado that was the talk of the theaterblogosphere this week, I got a weird frisson when I watched this weekend’s repeat of a 2005 American Theater Wing seminar about “Off-Broadway,” and discovered that two of the panelists were Eduardo Machado, representing INTAR, and James C. Nicola, representing the New York Theatre Workshop. (The others were Tisa Chang of the Pan Asian Repertory Company, Loretta Greco of Women’s Project and Productions, Virginia Louloudes of ART-NY, and Neil Pepe of Atlantic Theater Co.)

It started off well: The various artistic directors all seemed willing, keen even, to talk about money (I was particularly fascinated by Greco’s mention of the theater community’s unquenchable thirst for comps damaging companies' ability to plan), but that talk never really went anywhere. Instead, there were a lot of generalizations about passion and theater being about people getting together in the dark—and I have to say I blame Nicola for the move toward speechifying.

I’d never seen Nicola before, and I must preface the coming judgmental statements with the obvious proviso that I know I shouldn’t judge people from a 90-minute taped seminar. Yeah, right. He freaked me out! It seemed to me that either consciously or unconsciously he ignored any “real” conversation about money or the challenges of working with other professionals and instead launched into a series of odd set-piece statements that came across as anodyne up-with-people manifesto pledges. Worse almost, despite all the histrionic body language, he was depressingly inarticulate (and one thing you can usually say for artistic directors, especially ones who’ve held onto their jobs for a number of years, is that they’re indisputably articulate).

Take, for example, his speech after the moderator asked for panelists’ views on nontraditional casting (I urge you to check this out on tape, it starts around the 1:00:43 mark). He said:

Well, I think … I think [clears throat, shuffles in seat as though his piles are acting up] ... It’s interesting, in our process [another throat-clear] of casting in my time doing this, erm, what has emerged, is that every, almost every, with the exceptions you [Tisa Chang, who’d just spoken] talk about, where there are specific things [massive hand gestures] things to be achieved in a script … but in general we start with “any actors can play these roles,” and we bring in actors of all different … [pauses for so long, looking for the safe word, that the moderator takes pity and offers “backgrounds?”] yep, and erm, that has happened, and there’s often a lot of discussion around that, and I think this is an interesting reflection of contemporary life, that this is where we are and that we do find with our audiences that we are learning a new etiquette that will become unconscious, about when we’re supposed to notice the race of the person or not. Erm [clears throat] and it’s been very interesting to work with directors from other countries who have different ethnic and cultural situations and their perception of American culture, and for the most part, even the most enlightened and progressive people are very retrograde about this issue. [Swings head, triumphantly slaps thighs.]

Now, if you can tell me what the hell he was talking about there—except perhaps, “We’re really right on and a lot of foreigners aren’t”—good work!

In fairness, I should also add that later in the show, Machado made an unprompted tribute to the NYTW in which he praised the warm and respectful way they have treated him and other playwrights.

Celebrity Sightings, Omnibus Edition

2006-03-04T22:32:00.000-05:00

Actor Chiwetel Ejiofor, unmolested, on our flight to London in mid-February.

Actor Dean Gafney (Robbie from Eastenders), kissing goodbye to his girlfriend as she went into a fancy hair salon in Marylebone.

Director Stephen Frears at the Royal Court reading of Hanif Kureishi’s 1981 play Borderline.

NY1 anchor and On Stage theater critic Roma Torre at (the craptacular) Resurrection Blues at the Old Vic. (There were a ton of actors at that performance, but none that I arbitrarily decide are worthy of a celeb sighting.) I also saw Robert Altman in the lobby after the show.

Rosie O’Donnell (and Kelli) and Paul Rudnick at Friday’s performance of Grey Gardens at Playwrights Horizons.

Things That Make You Go, "Oh, Crap, That's Me"

2006-01-24T22:40:00.000-05:00

Last week I read David Hare's amazing collection of lectures (that's right, lectures), Obedience, Struggle & Revolt.

I'm not usually the kind of person to copy things out of books, but this collection had me reaching for pen and paper every few pages.

I definitely, and unfortunately, recognized myself in this:

To an extent the theater will always be a magnet for hobbyists, people who are drawn like trainspotters or matchbox fans to compare different performances of Hamlet. They form, if you like, a core audience, who survive over the years. Their overriding interest is in the maintenance and improvement of their collections, and so they will direct their attention not so much at what is said, as to the skills which are being used to say it.

I Can't Stand the Rain

2006-01-15T12:01:00.000-05:00

When I was a teenager, I was obsessed with women’s tennis. I use the word “obsessed” advisedly. I barely thought of anything else, and I did quite a lot of thinking back then. In 1979 and 1980, I went to about 10 tournaments per year (including three-quarters of the Grand Slam in ’80)—and I would go for the duration of the tournaments, not a cameo for the finals. (Those weren’t my only years of tournament-hopping, just my heyday.)

By 1980, I’d gotten to know several players—very superficially, I hasten to add—and even played soccer with a bunch of obscure players (and a rather more well-known striver whom I’ll call Martina N.) at the pre-pre-Wimbledon warm-up in Chichester (the game was taken up again a week later in Eastbourne, but I stayed off the pitch that time).

There were many occasions where I was the only person watching “my” players (I tended to like the smart ones, regardless of their skills/success), and then at Wimbledon, one of them was on the verge of a major doubles upset, and I couldn’t get anywhere near the court. Wimbledon’s always hideously and randomly crowded, but usually you could figure out some sneaky way through the bottleneck. Not this time—every trick I attempted failed, so I missed my pal’s big triumph.

I mention all this because today I was trying to figure out if I should try to finagle tickets to Three Days of Rain, Julia Roberts’ big Broadway adventure. (Tickets are on sale, but only to AmEx card holders; though they’re also showing up on eBay and on ticket brokers’ sites.)

Now, there’s no comparison between my youthful obsession with women’s tennis and my affection for the theater—I am an enthusiastic playgoer, but there’s a lot I don’t know and frankly don’t care about. I don’t feel a need to see everything, nor can I afford to. I have no interest in seeing a lot of the Broadway productions, so I don’t mind that shows like Spamalot or The Odd Couple are out of bounds. But Three Days of Rain is off-Broadway. It’s by Richard Greenberg, whose plays I almost always see (and mostly like). Even though it’s irrational, I feel swizzed that I’m probably not going to be able to go to the Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre to gaze upon a Hollywood star, a former Friends second-stringer, and a guy whose TV sitcom was canceled by Fox after only a few episodes.

Eh, I’ll either figure it out or get over it. I did buy tickets for Borderline at the Royal Court.

Update, Dec. 30, 2006: Of course, the Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre is a Broadway house. Just ignore that bit!

In the Continuum

2006-01-14T18:44:00.000-05:00

Years ago, when I worked at a feminist magazine in D.C.—and later in the same circumstances in London—I was often entreated to attend feminist theater performances. I can’t remember seeing anything bad, but I also don’t remember being knocked out; in fact, I don’t really remember anything about any of the productions. The only concrete thing I remember about all those trips to the theater is embarrassing myself by asking for a kir royale at the bar of a London theater when the publicist offered me a drink and then having to admit that I didn’t really know what it was when the bar worker wasn’t sure how to make one.

(I should say that I was reluctant to review the pieces because the magazines I worked at were aimed at a national audience, so most of our readers wouldn’t care how good the local production of Franca Rama’s latest was. The publicists never really took that for an answer, though, and it was easier to say you’d go. This situation seems much more attractive in retrospect than it was at the time.)

It was always so tricky to write about the plays. You knew the producers weren’t inviting you to their shows for your artistic edification; they wanted reviews to generate ticket sales and to excerpt in their ads or, more likely, grant applications. If you appreciated their underpaid, underappreciated efforts, as I did, you didn’t want to pee on their parade—and I really would’ve preferred potential theater-goers to see a feminist play rather than a “mainstream” show, so I wanted to help encourage that. But now I feel like the manager who doesn’t confront an underperforming report and thus does nothing to get the worker to self-actualize. (As someone who had to be jolted into making an effort at the age of 35, let me tell you, it’s a good thing, but the boss has to take a chance on someone in whom they see potential and then has to be willing to be a bitch to get that person to really try.) Most of the time, I either didn’t write a review (I hope I wrote about that London play after I made them open a bottle of champagne for me), or I was kind.

Now I feel bad, because those “kind” critiques undermine the credibility of the many fine reviews of In the Continuum (and probably explain all those reviewers’ preambles about how appalling political theater usually is). Yes, it’s a play with a purpose—to make audiences think about the effect of HIV/AIDS on women around the world—but it’s good; really good, not “gosh, I really wish you’d go see this instead of the more mainstream, well-funded piece of entertainment a few blocks uptown” good.

The play, written and performed by Danai Gurira and Nikkole Salter consists of two parallel stories—Gurira tells the story of Abigail, an upper-middle-class Zimbabwean who has a catch of a husband (handsome, well-bred, and employed), a son, and a job as a newsreader on ZBC; while Salter focuses on Nia, a creative Los Angeles teenager who lives in a shelter, works at Nordstrom, and has a high-school basketball star for a boyfriend. Within 90 minutes they both learn that they’ve been deceived, realize that they’ve deceived themselves, and try to stand up and change things. The parallel structure is very tight—the whole thing is incredibly mature for two such young artists.

What’s most impressive is the subtlety of both the writing and the performances—Gurira does a great job of establishing the class signifiers that are so important to Abigail, and Salter is amazing at conjuring Nia’s circle—a social worker, her cold mother, a cousin, her boyfriend’s mother—with the slightest changes of “look” (essentially the refolding of a bandana) and a change of attitude/accent. Now, I’m looking forward to seeing Bridge & Tunnel, but judging from the Web, Sarah Jones makes use of quite a few costume props—and it’s relatively easy to distinguish between a Pakistani cab driver and a Jewish grandmother—signaling to the audience that she’s no longer the teenager, but her mother (or her cousin, or whatever) is much more of a challenge. And I was never confused.

What the FFJ?

2006-01-05T09:32:00.000-05:00

I’m sure other people have written about this, but what’s with the dueling Florence Foster Jenkins plays? Souvenir, by Stephen Temperley, is on Broadway, and Glorious, starring the divine Maureen Lipman, is at London’s Duchess Theatre. Now, I yield to no one in my admiration of Maureen Lipman, but unlike Judy Kaye, the star of Souvenir, as far as I know, she has no particular gift for singing. Well, neither did FFJ, true, but having seen Judy Kaye on Theater Talk, I now think you have to be able to sing well in order to sing badly.

My love of Lipman will no doubt take me to the Duchess when we’re in London next month, so now I can’t decide whether I should see Souvenir before it closes this weekend to provide a comparison. We’re going to the theater on Saturday (following Webloge’s advice and seeing Christine Jorgensen Reveals), so chances are laziness will overcome curiosity and Maureen Lipman will be my one and only Florence Foster Jenkins. But I think one is probably enough for me.

Edward Albee’s Seascape

2006-01-04T13:38:00.000-05:00

On New Year’s Day R and I went to see Edward Albee’s Seascape (I wonder which is nicer, the Pulitzers, the Tonys, or having your name before the play title on the Playbill) at the Booth Theater.

My motivations for seeing the play were a bit iffy—a process-of-elimination (I’ve seen that, I won’t be able to get into that; I can’t be bothered to go down there, and this one’s run ends next Sunday). So (join in with me please …) my expectations were pretty low, and thus I had a wonderful time.

This is the play where a seventysomething couple, Nancy and George (played in this production by Frances “Bunny” Sternhagen and George Grizzard), are on a beach, lovingly bickering about their future, when two huge lizards, Sarah and Leslie (Elizabeth Marvel and Frederick Weller, who, I learned from the program has achieved the Law & Order trifecta—in so many ways, it’s great that Trial by Jury’s run was so short, since it makes the four-peat a real achievement) crawl over the dunes.

I think I may only have seen The Zoo Story and Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf from Albee’s big bag of plays, but even with those two in my head, I shouldn’t have been surprised by the wit of the dialogue. Sternhagen was great, but Grizzard stood out because he was the nay-sayer—it’s easy for Nancy to seem interesting, she’s adventurous and creative; George is a former depressive who just wants to sit in the sun doing crosswords, but the actor made it work. George wasn’t a bore or a whiner, he was a tired realist. And once the lizards appeared, George reckoned the liver-paste sandwiches had done them in, and anyone who blames the liver paste is by definition sympathetic. Casting actors who are themselves in their 70s really made a difference—I am way too nervous about actors and sets generally (especially when large and not terribly mobile opera singers are scrambling on steeply banked sets), but I really worried for their hips every time someone got a foot tangled on the unruly corner of the beach blanket.

And talking lizards? Amazingly un-gimmicky. The focus was on their reactions to the newness of what the humans had to tell them about the world, not on the fact that they were talking lizards.

In these days when evolution is embattled (in schools and textbooks at least), the final images of Nancy and George imploring Sarah and Leslie not to give into to their instinctual desire to return to the sea was especially moving.

These Are a Few of My Favorite Books of 2005

2006-01-02T19:15:00.000-05:00

My favorite books of 2005, in no particular order:

Rumpole and the Penge Bungalow Murders, by John Mortimer
I’ve been reading Rumpole since I was skiving off school more than 30 years ago. In the early—it now seems glory—days of British daytime television, they mostly ran old films, nostalgic TV shows that might appeal to old folks (Sam, World at War, that kind of thing) and mysteries—including the fabulous Crown Court and Rumpole of the Bailey. Even though Leo McKern has left the Bailey, when I’m reading these books, I still see his crumpled old one-eyed face in Rumpole’s, the second Hilda, and the haughty Patricia Hodge as Phyllida Erskine-Brown, “the Portia of our chambers.” What’s the sports cliché—we shouldn’t have gotten this far, so the rest is just gravy. But such tasty gravy! (On another note—I was shocked to learn recently that Emily Mortimer, one of my favorite actresses, is John Mortimer’s daughter. And that he had a son with Wendy Craig of Butterflies fame!)

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night, by Mark Haddon
Yeah, so I was the last person to read this book, and yes, it’s a kids’ book, but it’s awfully well-done.

The Strange Death of Tory England, by Geoffrey Wheatcroft
The very beginning is rather hard going, but once he’s established his theme, it’s terribly readable and extremely interesting. Wheatcroft sure has a way with a sentence. I still can’t really tell where his sympathies lie—which is a good thing, I suppose.

Stagestruck: Theater, AIDS, and the Marketing of Gay America, by Sarah Schulman
This book had been sitting on my shelves for years, and as the movie version of Rent neared, I thought I’d better read it for research purposes. What an amazing exposé of homophobia in culture and commerce. Utterly convincing and utterly devastating.

Popco, by Scarlett Thomas
Popco started off wonderfully—full of ideas about the way girls play and learn, codes, parenting, work, etc.—and buckled under the weight of too many ideas/plot strands about halfway through. That first half was really exciting, though!

Incendiary, by Chris Cleave
Incendiary got a bad rap (but a lot of attention) because of timing—it’s a book about terrorism (a woman who has lost her husband and son in a terrorist attack writes a letter to Osama Bin Laden), and its pub date was July 7, the day of the London subway and bus bombings. The publicity campaign (complete with posters in the Underground) got canceled, the New York Times called the book “a case of simple tastelessness,” but I really enjoyed it. At first I was suspicious—it’s a book by a man (and my guess is a middle-class man) in the voice of a working-class woman. I’m not sure that American readers will get the cultural references—OK, the class references—but the book’s publisher told the Guardian that more than half of the 25,000 copies sold have been to the export market, which “perhaps confirms that distance has enabled people to read this brilliant debut novel on its own terms."

Invasion of the Dykes to Watch Out For, by Alison Bechdel
Another series that has become part of my life. This is the 11th installment in a series that I hope will go on forever. Mo, c’est moi, even if we have less and less in common, at least politically. (Don’t worry, I’m not going to go Log Cabin, but my views on the Iraq war have little in common with Mo’s.) I love all the little details and jokes in the drawings—you have to read each panel at least five times to experience the five stages of DTWOF appreciation.

99 Ways To Tell a Story: Exercises in Style, by Matt Madden
A simple concept—like the title says, the same story told in 99 different ways. I think I’ve now read it 99 times.

The Night Watch, by Sarah Waters
Shockingly, perhaps, this is the first Sarah Waters novel I’ve read. It’s a story about World War II, more or less, and it’s told backward, in three sections set in 1947, 1944, and 1942, respectively. Waters is clearly a fantastic writer, and she was able to make me think about a well-trod subject, the war, in new ways. My only frustration is that about three-quarters of the way through, you realize that you’re never going to know how the various characters resolved their lives—you’ll be able to explain their behavior in 1947, but not how they’re going to move on. It’s funny how much messing with the traditional conflict/resolution arc frustrates a reader (this one, anyway).

The Assassins' Gate: America in Iraq, by George Packer
The first draft of history, only this one’s almost perfect. Packer is tremendously thoughtful, a remarkable reporter, and a beautiful writer. A fantastic portrait of what the administration did in Iraq after the war “ended.”

"I Didn't Do It for You": How the World Betrayed a Small African Nation, by Michela Wrong
I hate the title of this book—it doesn’t even mention Eritrea, the small nation under discussion, but I loved the content. After you read this book, it’s tempting to look at every news event and wonder how exactly Eritrea is going to be dragged into it—because history suggests it eventually will.

And one I didn’t like at all:

A Necessary Spectacle: Billie Jean King, Bobby Riggs, and the Tennis Match That Leveled the Game, by Selena Roberts
It’s really too bad Roberts used the word “necessary” in the title, because that’s the last thing this book is. Its publication is inexplicable to me—there’s no anniversary, there’s no new insight into the match, into women’s tennis, and certainly not into Billie Jean King. If there’s one person I’d like to read a good biography of—one that really explains her personality and motivations, it’s BJK, but this book provides absolutely nothing that we haven’t known for decades.

The complete list. Breakdown: Fiction 11; Nonfiction 13; Comic 2; Play 1; Hybrid (the utterly misbegotten Hotel Babylon) 1.

2005 Theater That I Didn't Care For

2006-01-02T18:10:00.000-05:00

Before I move on to my best-of other media, a few words about one play/performance that I did not enjoy:

Abigail’s Party was a great disappointment—as it was almost certainly destined to be; I spent a good deal of the sixth form “doing” the dialogue with my classmates, one of whom was named Ange (though she was nothing like either Mousy Ange or Take-Charge Ange—I believe she lives with a formerly drug-addicted Britpop star these days), so there was a lot of “Like Feliciano, Ange? Good, inne? Sexy!” Jennifer Jason Leigh was physically perfect for the role of Beverly (it’s no doubt telling that I originally typed “Alison” there), but her voice was just awful. What accent was that supposed to be? Either way, it was all wrong in terms of class and social signifiers—the only thing it had in common with Alison Steadman’s perfect pitch was that it was hard on the ears. Jennifer, sweetie, there’s more to it than just sounding obnoxious. Without any social/class context, the play meant absolutely nothing. Still, it was just extended for the second time.

I gave a C to the preview version of Sarah Schulman’s Manic Flight Reaction, which now feels rather unfair—it was a preview after all (when I saw it for real a few weeks later, it was clear to me that the lead actress hadn’t really known her lines in that second performance of the run!). I really admire Sarah, and I like her work very much indeed, but some parts of the play seemed just too broad—there was nothing to redeem the “character” of the tabloid journalist, and I didn’t care for the flashback with the main character, Marge’s, mother—but I loved the intention of the play, I really enjoyed the relationship between the mother and daughter at the center of the work, and I loved the scene in which Marge reconnects with Cookie, the woman who “opened [her] up sexually” (as Annie Hall might’ve put it), now the Republican-cliché-spouting wife of a Republican presidential nominee. There were an enormous number of things that I liked about the play (and to a lesser extent about the production), but there were also a lot of elements that I didn’t like at all. There were about 10 times more ideas in Manic Flight Reaction as there are in most American plays—but it would probably have been a better work with only four times as many as the norm.

My Favorite Theater/Opera of 2005

2006-01-01T21:46:00.000-05:00

Since I left the ratings that I gave to the plays/operas I saw in 2005 on the list I posted, in theory this is the easiest group from which to extract my favorites. Of the 29 productions I saw last year, the following received a B+ or higher. They’re in the order I saw them.

The Pillowman, by Martin McDonagh, seen on Broadway
An amazing piece of work—but is it really a play? Despite fantastic staging and great acting, including some fine performances from actors more known for their work on the big screen (Billy Crudup and Jeff Goldblum), this struck me as more of a staged horror story than a play. For distressingly common reasons (specifically, a deaf audience member sitting on the front row of the balcony getting into a loud argument with the folks sitting next to him—I mention his deafness because it meant he was unwittingly loud in his remonstrations; so loud I was afraid the actors might stop the performance, as they did when I saw Copenhagen in London), a layer of the “real world” prevented me from fully engaging with the play, especially in the first act, but given the grotesqueries, perhaps I should’ve been glad for the unwanted distance. I always get the sense that even more than for most actors, Jeff Goldblum’s acting style is determined by his height—his physical presence seems to drive all his choices, from the way he controls his voice to the way he sits, the way he walks. In this play, his default state was a great fit for his role—he had to be a man who conveyed a sense of barely restrained power, both physical and bureaucratic, that the poor sap on the receiving end had to be very careful not to set off.

Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, by David Yazbek/Jeffrey Lane, seen on Broadway
Ah, the joy of low expectations. I’d never been very fond of musicals—I can probably count how many I’ve seen before moving to New York on the fingers of both hands, and the ones I’ve been impressed by on one—and we got tickets for Dirty Rotten Scoundrels for the sake of an out-of-town visitor. What fun! A cool set, genuinely funny lines, good acting (we went to the pre-Tony show, and you could really tell that everyone was pleasantly nervous, especially Norbert Leo Butz, who was heavily favored to win—and did), and singing that amazed me (I just couldn’t believe the quality of Sherie Rene Scott’s voice).

Hecuba, by Euripides, adapted by Tony Harrison, seen at BAM
There was just one reason I got these tickets—Vanessa Redgrave. I’ve seen her in comedies, dramas, and tragedies, and she’s never let me down. The most striking thing about this production was technique—it really is what separates British actors, especially in the classical repertoire. The performance was unamplified, and even thought it was staged in the BAM Opera House, it was a little difficult to catch some of the dialogue, or should I say declamations. I stupidly bought tickets in the cheap seats, and BAM management annoyingly allowed people to enter up to 45 minutes into the performance, which meant the spell kept getting broken, but even with the heavy-handed Iraq symbolism, I enjoyed it immensely.

Border/Clash: A Litany of Desires, by Staceyann Chin, seen off-Broadway
The biggest problem with one-person shows is what the actor does with him- or herself while they’re speaking—even an actor of Antony Sher’s caliber didn’t quite succeed in overcoming dangling-arm syndrome (in this sense it helps to if your character’s an alcoholic so you can keep a glass in your hand at all times). Staceyann Chin’s performance in her autobiographical show was particularly impressive for what she did with her body—tremendous energy used in the service of her words (it didn’t hurt that she stripped down to bra and panties a couple of times, either). And as moronic as it makes me seem to say this, the fact that I only realized toward the end of the show that she was reciting poetry rather than performing a script seemed like a good thing.

Das Rheingold, Die Walkure, Siegfried, and Gotterdammerung, by Richard Wagner, seen at Seattle Opera
My third complete Ring cycle (all at Seattle), and I can’t imagine a more amazing live "show." The special effects of the movies (swimming Rheinmaidens, fire-belching dragons, sometimes flying horses), the compelling story of a really high-quality elemental soap opera, amazing music, wonderful singers, and the required immersion of a "properly" mounted cycle—four operas performed over the space of six nights—there’s absolutely nothing to compare. Alan Woodrow as Seigfried couldn’t act for toffee, but his voice was just right, and Jane Eaglen was magnificent (I can’t believe I was worried after Walkure, when she’d seemed to be holding back to a worrying degree—she’s done this before and knew what she needed to do to keep the voice going for the later operas that she needed to carry). Greer Grimsley, who I’d seen several times before and thought so-so on was the best Wotan I’ve seen—clearly he’s found his perfect role.

Doubt: A Parable, by John Patrick Shanley, seen on Broadway
Cherry Jones is such a goddess—an unparalleled actress and an out lesbian (LOVE the smooch at the Tonys), I wanted so much to like it that I was afraid I’d be disappointed. No worries. A beautifully spare throwback to the days of well-made plays and yet with themes that are absolutely contemporary. I must say I’m a little shock that Eileen Atkins, that is, Dame Eileen Atkins, is taking over next week when Cherry Jones moves on—she seems shockingly overqualified to be a replacement, but I guess it’s a testament to the appeal of the role.

Sweeney Todd, by Stephen Sondheim/Hugh Wheeler, seen in preview on Broadway
This had so many strikes against it—a musical (and Sondheim to boot, I remember years ago accompanying a Sondheim queen to a performance of Sunday in the Park With George on the West End and his being absolutely exasperated that I wasn’t transported by its genius), a novelty staging (I’d just seen Rent—strictly for research purposes—the week before and was exasperated by all the faffing around with the set), a high concept, and all that buzz about Patti LuPone (who I mostly know as a minor player on Oz) and her tuba. I thought it magnificent—the conceit really worked for me, I couldn’t believe how well the cast performed musically (playing sans score, of course), the songs were great. I loved it. In the couple of months before I’d seen several shows that I really liked but that were critically panned (for example, A Naked Girl on the Appian Way), but I had absolutely no doubt that this would be a hit.

4:48 Psychose, by Sarah Kane, performed in French at BAM
Talk about forebodings of doom—a month or so after I bought tickets for this, a letter came from BAM basically warning the audience-to-be that this was going to be a difficult play, performed by Isabelle Huppert in French with very limited subtitles. Maybe I did what the director, Claude Régy (I don’t know for sure that the letter was his doing, but I strongly suspect it) intended and came to the play prepared. I bought the script in advance, I read up on Sarah Kane’s life and work; I can’t say that I did anything about my very rusty French, but I at least thought about it. When we arrived at the theater, it was, as one of the ushers put it, “under heavy manners”—constant warnings that there’d be no late seating, forceful reminders that there’d be no re-entry if audience-members left, even rather motherly inquiries from the ushers if we’d been to the bathroom. All theaters should do this (save, perhaps, for the toilet police)—before the play began, there was a palpable sense that something mysterious and amazing was about to happen. I’ll never forget the look of “what the hell’s going on” on the faces of the ushers when, even before the lights went down, the audience went into a profound anticipatory silence as if by consensus. Régy’s direction and Huppert’s performance were peculiar to say the least—she effectively stood absolutely immobile (other than very occasional random-seeming hand spasms) speaking and shouting her lines amid long pauses. I was absolutely haunted by it—for days after I thought about the play, I re-read it, I attended the “chat” with Régy a couple of days later. Unfortunately, it seems that toward the end of the run they relaxed the heavy manners and completely lost the magic. A colleague who went on the last day told me that they were allowing late entries more than halfway into the performance, which made it impossible to connect with the work. If it hadn’t been for the Ring, this would be my favorite theatrical experience of 2005.

Keeping Track of 2005

2005-12-31T22:38:00.000-05:00

I’ve always been a bit embarrassed by my compulsion to keep track of the movies I see and the books I read. My dad, who has always had food issues (if I’d never left England, no doubt that last clause would’ve read “who’s a fat bastard” or possibly, if I were feeling kinder, “who’s a greedy bugger”) has this thing about writing down everything he eats, so my own semi-compulsive list-keeping has always struck me as a bit dysfunctional or maybe just embarrassing. Nevertheless, I do it, as do many other fully functional humans, so rather than hide and deny, I should just be cop to it—and at least get some blog posts out of it to help with the New Year resolutions.

In 2005, distractions at the beginning of the year (you know, the whole packing up and moving 3,000 miles from Seattle to New York thing), missing SIFF, having a later-ending workday, and the endless alternative options here meant that I saw fewer than half as many movies in 2005 as I did in 2004—42 as compared to 106. (I don’t care how good televisions get, I only consider myself to have “seen” a movie when I watch it in a movie theater—if you can pause or do a so doku while you’re watching, it’s just not the same.) Books were comparable—28 in 2005 versus 30 in 2004—but once again I only counted books that I finished; I often read almost all of a book, usually for work purposes, but if I don’t read every last word, it doesn’t make the list. This is a shockingly pathetic total, but I suppose that’s the price of podcasting and hour upon hour of television every night. New in 2005, I attended 29 theatrical productions—mostly what Variety would call “Legit” theater, but I cheated slightly and included the four operas that I saw this year—Seattle Opera’s magnificent Ring cycle.

Tomorrow (or soon thereafter), I’ll offer my bests and worsts of the year, but for now enjoy the list of movies, books, and theatrical/operatic works I experienced in 2005. Later I'll get to the media that I'm not so compulsive, though no less enthusiastic, about: television and music.

Celebrity Sightings, Part 4

2005-12-31T19:45:00.000-05:00

Phew! To hear my fellow Park Slope-dwellers tell it, it’s almost impossible NOT to run into Jennifer Connelly and/or Paul Bettany in our neighborhood. Obviously, I was doing something wrong until this afternoon, when, in a bit of a post-haircut fuzz, I popped into Loom on Seventh Avenue (there’s something irresistible about a shop that fills its window with $500 bags and its shelves with $5 stationery). I’m in some kind of ungainly crouch when I hear an English accent—no matter how hard I try not to, I always have to look up and check out their dentition. The guy is having a playful argument with his partner (and manfully driving the stroller); as they squeeze by me to leave, I realize the faux-bickering family consists of an Oscar winner, a London Critics Circle Film Awards winner, and their no-doubt gorgeous offspring. His hair was unnaturally blond—is that one of the clues in the Da Vinci Code?

Now I'm just missing Heath and Michelle for my Park Slope Celeb-Spotting badge.

Earlier: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3.

Celebrity Sightings, Part 3

2005-12-26T10:41:00.000-05:00

We had a traditional New York Christmas Day, complete with Chinese food and a movie on the Upper West Side. At the movie (Mrs. Henderson Presents), we shared air with Michael McKean (it seemed weird his watching a movie starring his longtime collaborator Christopher Guest at the same time as the regular peeps), as well as Frank Rich and Alex Witchel of the New York Times. A three-fer!

Earlier: Part 1; Part 2.

Whither Junio?

2005-12-15T15:27:00.000-05:00

I wouldn't want you to think I've been sitting at home eating bon-bons. Well, much of the time that's exactly what I've been doing. If I'm not at the movies, the theater, or recording a podcast, chances are I'm watching TV and eating some variation on the bon.

But some of that TV watching paid off last week with a Slate piece about TV's high-school homos, that kids on shows set in high-school who are gay or questioning. (And boy is the questioning on South of Nowhere watchable.)

Another You Say Tomato Podcast

2005-11-17T23:14:00.000-05:00

This time something a little different. After Jonathan Epstein (check out his Oddcasts) mentioned that the accordion usually made his ears bleed, I put together a KILLA set (so yoof-ful, eh?) of songs featuring the accordion, bandoneon, and trikitixa. Musicians featured include Motion Trio, Boris Kovac, Kepa Junkera, Alboka, and some obscure ones too. Yes, it really is appalling that the only adjectives that I can think of on the spare of the moment seem to be "awesome" and "cool," but that's what happens when you watch a minimum of three hours' of television per night. Vocabulary's always the first thing to go, innit?

(To subscribe to You Say Tomato podcasts, add http://del.icio.us/rss/tag/system:filetype:mp3+juniocast to your favorite podcasting software. If you use iTunes, for example, in the Advanced menu, select Subscribe to Podcast, and paste in that URL.)

Why Haven't I Been Blogging?

2005-11-14T19:56:00.000-05:00

Partly, though only partly, I must admit, because of this new project.

Subscribe, why doncha?

Audio Podcast Contest No. 2: Name That Location

2005-10-16T18:18:00.000-04:00

This week, in honor of The Squid and the Whale opening wide, here’s another audio contest.

The Squid and the Whale is set in the Brooklyn of the 1980s. That means that the feature you can hear in today’s audio podcast quiz didn’t exist then. Still, listen to this three-and-a-quarter minute clip and see if you can tell me where in Brooklyn it was recorded. I love the percussive quality of the place.

Leave your answer in the comments, or if you’re shy, send an e-mail to yousaytomatoblog@gmail.com.

(To subscribe to You Say Tomato podcasts, add http://del.icio.us/rss/tag/system:filetype:mp3+juniocast to your favorite podcasting software. If you use iTunes, for example, in the Advanced menu, select Subscribe to Podcast, and paste in that URL.)

The Great 2005 Name That TV Theme Tune Contest

2005-10-08T18:28:00.000-04:00

It’s a podcast … and it’s a contest!

For my second podcast (my first consisted of Emmy predictions, and was posted mere minutes before the start of the Emmy telecast, which a) presumes a greater interest in the Emmys than hard evidence supports; b) wasn’t the best timing), I bring you the Great 2005 Name That TV Theme Tune Contest.

Here’s how it works.

First—and this bit really isn’t skippable—you have to listen to the podcast.

On it I provide a list of 10 shows:

A: Threshold
B: Rome
C: How I Met Your Mother
D: Everybody Hates Chris (yes, I got the emotion wrong on the podcast)
E: Bones
F: Starved
G: Killer Instinct
H: Inconceivable
I: Ghost Whisperer
J: E-Ring

Then I play 10 TV theme tunes. I recorded them off my TV, so the sound quality’s not stellar (Andy, my podcast guru, would be appalled for many, many reasons), but it’s good enough, ya whiners.

What you have to do is match the theme tunes with the shows—so, for example, if you think Theme Tune 1 is Threshold, you would write 1-A, and so on down the list. Each tune is only used once (there’s no trickery involved, in other words), and the music you hear at the beginning and end of the podcasts is just for your entertainment—it’s not part of the contest.

When you have your list, enter the answers in the Comments for this blog entry (if you don’t want the world cribbing your answers, just send them in an e-mail to yousaytomatoblog[AT]gmail[DOT]com). From the no doubt numerous correct answers I receive, I’ll randomly pick one winner.

What’s the prize? Well, you get to choose. You can have a) a slightly used gay-themed T-shirt—not everyone’s idea of sartorial bliss, including me these days, I must admit; b) one of my mix CDs (your best bet); or c) a new hardback book (I’ll choose one for you—I’m as good at matching people with books as the winner will be at matching TV shows with theme tunes).

OK, let’s play Name That TV Theme Tune …

(To subscribe to You Say Tomato podcasts, add http://del.icio.us/rss/tag/system:filetype:mp3+juniocast to your favorite podcasting software. If you use iTunes, for example, in the Advanced menu, select Subscribe to Podcast, and paste in that URL.)

Show the Person Standing Next to Me the Money

2005-10-05T22:59:00.000-04:00

My grandma had the most fantastic gift for finding money. Perhaps because a broken wrist relatively late in life had made her quite nervous about getting about, she always kept her eyes on the ground—and she often found coins. Usually it was pennies, but occasionally she found a 10p piece (this is before they were tiny).

Apparently, it’s genetic, because I’ve got some weird once-removed money karma thing going on myself this week.

It began on Sunday, when R and I were shopping at the Union Market. As we were paying, a man nudged R, said, “I think you’ve dropped something,” and handed her a dollar bill that was on the ground. It was a little awkward, because the chances were that it wasn’t R’s—I was the one paying, so she hadn’t had her hand in the pocket where she keeps her cash (or perhaps she’s one of those people who keeps her dosh in her wallet—isn’t it terrible that I don’t know?)—but it didn’t seem to be anyone else’s, and it was just a dollar, and their prices are a bit of a larf, so with some reluctance she pocketed it.

This evening, I was heading home from the subway when the woman walking alongside of me sort of crouched as we were crossing Sterling Place. When I looked to see what she’d picked up, it was a $10 bill. She was almost in shock. Perhaps she expected me to demand my share of the loot, but I’d never have spotted it on my own, and she looked so happy to have 10 extra bucks, I had no desire to pee on her parade.

Besides, there’s clearly something afoot. I was thinking that I should buy a lottery ticket tomorrow, but clearly, given the luck people standing next to me have had recently, what I really need to do is persuade a friend to buy one and then split the profits with me when they hit the big one.

Hanif Kureishi

2005-10-03T14:02:00.000-04:00

Sammy and Rosie Got Laid--the movie, the script, the Granta story about the making off--is one of my favorite works of art; it's funny, it's hot, and it uses non-realistic acting, speech, and events to present the most evocative portrayal of the middle-to-late days of Thatcher that I'm aware of. I used to be a massive fan of Hanif Kureishi's--and I still am of that early work, but the later stuff (post-Intimacy, really) didn't grab me in the same way.

I'm thinking I should give his work another chance after reading about the postcard from Kureishi that the proprietor of Bookish found in a used copy of one of his books.

I had a similar experience this summer. After I wrote about his short story/movie My Son the Fanatic, I got a very sweet note from the man himself.

Celebrity Sightings, Part 2

2005-10-01T22:12:00.000-04:00

Actor Jeff Goldblum; Saturday, Oct. 1, watching a matinee performance of Orson's Shadow at the Barrow Street Theater (as were R, an out-of-town guest, and I).

Earlier: Part 1.

Charming Complete New Yorker Goofs

2005-09-27T23:50:00.000-04:00

I'm staying up way past my bedtime because I can't stop perusing the Complete New Yorker, which arrived this morning. Right now I'm pretty much in browsing mode--other than a couple of brief Talks, I haven't really read anything, I've just been wowed by all the amazing stuff I could stop and read--but I have noticed some odd little quirks.

For instance, I was just flipping through Janet Malcolm's fabulous piece about Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes in the Aug. 23 & 30, 1993, issue, when I noticed some scribbles on Page 87--alongside a cartoon showing a woman taking an odd phone call while her lumpish husband sits next to the phone (she says, "I'd love to, Barbara, but I'll have to check with the Bundesbank"), someone has scribbled the words, "Invitations," "Husbands," and "Bundesbank. Then on Page 88, underneath a cartoon of a bunch of seals on a rock (one says to his neighbor, "In a former life, I used to go to Palm Beach"), the words "Reincarnation," "Palm Beach," "Seals," and "Walruses" in the same hand. It carries on throughout. No prizes for guessing that it's the indexers' work--but it doesn't strike me as annoyance, more of a charming feature of the collection.

TiVo-Blogging the Emmys, Part 4

2005-09-19T00:27:00.000-04:00

Wow, William Shatner and Frederica von Stade performing the Star Trek theme was really something, eh? I can’t believe I blew my vote on Kristin Bell (though really I was voting for Veronica Mars, which was cruelly underappreciated). Flicka did look disturbingly like a tribble, however, and is it just me, or did she miss her cue after Bill’s big oration?

Best miniseries was won by another show that went completely under my radar—I didn’t even know if the show was The Last Prince or The Lost Prince (turns out it’s the latter), but I liked the woman who accepted the award because she looked like a friend of mine. (Hi, Moira.)

What did Alan Alda have on his lapel? It looked like the iron cross.

Although I fundamentally disagree with the notion of Desperate Housewives being a comedy, I was glad Felicity Huffman was the winner of the Best Actress award—she really has skills, but her speech was a little spiky. It was almost as if she’d be in her children’s ADD medicine. Patricia Arquette was very appealing, and I loved that her words about the hurricane devastation and the soldiers in Iraq seemed very heart-felt and moving.

I do watch Monk (though I’m not sure I’d admit that if the show didn’t win awards), but it’s a very peculiar show—a throwback to the mystery movies of the 1970s. The lieutenant is straight out of (if you’ll forgive the term) Macmillan and Wife, and Monk is Columbo with actual psychoses. Like Columbo, the show is padded with a lot of business for the lead actor, but in both cases, without the business it’d be a short and not terribly fascinating mystery.

James Spader’s victory came as a big surprise to me, since that felt like a strong category, but it must be extra-sweet since the end of Boston Legal’s season was essentially shelved in favor of non-winning Grey’s Anatomy. Spader has a very peculiar affect—as I said last year he’s creepily similar to Arthur in Six Feet Under—but he gave a sweet speech.

The boy from Everybody Hates Chris and his “new friend” were adorable. Charles, from New Orleans, was apparently being directed not to smile, but you could tell that he just couldn’t help myself, and Tyler James Williams came across as a very mature and warm young man.

Ellen glitched at the end, ironically forgetting to introduce her comrades-in-presenting, Hugh Jackman and Whoopi Goldberg. It was definitely an awkward moment, but Ellen had been so chronically underused all night, it’s hardly surprising. (And although she wasn’t given much to do, she does have an understated charm that works very well, and I was very glad that, unlike last year when Garry Shandling chewed up precious speech time with very bad material, she kept things moving. The telecast finished right on time, which is pretty amazing.)

Lost seemed like a good choice for Best Drama—it’s obviously had a big effect on this season’s lineup with lots of puzzle shows on the schedule—but I was shocked by the comedy choice where Everybody Loves Raymond beat Desperate Housewives. For all its flaws and for all the mysteries of its nomination categories, Desperate Housewives is a solid show with some fine actors, and I don’t know anyone who can even stand Raymond. Ah, well, at least its long, befuddling reign is now OVAH!

And so now are the Emmys! (For a full list of winners, click here.)

TiVo-Blogging the Emmys, Part 3

2005-09-18T23:20:00.000-04:00

Oh, man, we’re in the bit where there aren’t many surprises and you’re sitting there waiting for Ellen to walk in on someone in the women’s room. Jon Stewart’s tribute to David Letterman was sweet if rather unconvincingly delivered; Macy Gray seemed to be fighting with Gary Durdain over whether he could hold her hand rather than enjoying his grip; and why so many cuts to Naveen Andrews? (Is it possible they don’t know he isn’t really Iraqi?)

I was SO relieved that Quentin Tarantino didn’t win for his direction of last season’s CSI finale—I know some people whose judgment I respect enjoyed it, but I’m of the belief that you cannot, well, should not change all the characters and motivations in the last episode of the season. Plus I just don’t like him. I was not happy that The Wire didn't win the Drama Series Writing category—I don’t understand why that show doesn’t get respect. It’s by far the smartest, best-written show on television and has been every year it’s been on.

Oy, then we got to the miniseries or movie categories. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again—TOO MANY AWARDS! How is it fair that you can run up a whole slew of statue-ettes for something that lasts two hours when many of the best shows on television are consistently overlooked (to name just three: The Wire, Veronica Mars, and CSI). Geoffrey Rush’s words about his wife were lovely, but the movie just wasn’t that good—for it to take three consecutive awards shows how lame that whole category of categories is.

But I’ll relax my disdain for the category thanks to the loveliness and charm of S. Epatha Merkerson’s acceptance speech for Lackawanna Blues (though I miss her dreads). That was one of those classic nervous but sincerely moved victory reactions that you just can’t get enough of. (And I’m so glad that in the age of breast-less supermodels, an actress who’s big and bomb was the one to lose her acceptance speech in her cleavage.)

For the second year in a row, Arrested Development’s Mitchell Hurwitz came across as one of the smartest, wittiest guys in the crowd, and his observation that “the Academy has twice rewarded us for something that you people won’t watch” pretty much says it all for that show. (Let’s face it, the TV sitcom is dead.)

TiVo-Blogging the Emmys, Part 2

2005-09-18T22:29:00.000-04:00

The Blue Man Group did a very cool presentation of the Best Reality Show category—and doubtless drummed up some business for their Vegas show—but I don’t really like presentations by men-machines or animals or puppets or cartoons—it doesn’t feel truly live. What’s more, I couldn’t really tell what other shows The Amazing Race had bested.

I like Blythe Danner as an actress, but having tried to watch Huff and having given up in depressed disgust, I can’t get behind that choice. And did she mean to embarrass Keifer Sutherland by telling the world (or the bit of it that’s watching the Emmy-cast, anyway) that he used to baby-sit Gwyneth (but not her lesser-known son?). Ah, but she provides the first bit of political speechifying of the night, paying tribute to "our kids in Iraq. Let’s get the heck out of there." But she had the smarts to do something I’ve tried on conference calls—if you’ve been a bit abrasive, you end by saying, "Love you all." She might play the therapist’s mom, but she knows a thing or two about psychology.

I don’t think Blythe name-checked Apple, but she started a run of publicly proud grannies. The next award went to Jane Alexander for her role in Warm Springs (which either ran while I was out of the country or few right under my radar—and I would say that "what’s on TV" is one of my areas of greatest erudition), who gave a shout-out to her “six grandkids,” and then two awards later came Doris Roberts who loves her two grandsons so much she brought them up on stage.

I cannot believe the Olympic Games Opening Ceremonies won an award—Katie and Bob’s inane commentary alone should’ve made that impossible (I don’t leave the country during Olympiads for nothing), and Jon Stewart’s going to have to come up with a new line—he only slightly reworked last year’s acceptance when he said that when they started the show people said you couldn’t have a late-night comedy show with a staff that was only 80-percent Ivy League-educated Jewish men. Oh, and I’m pretty sure I’m not a prude, but Da Ali G Show went too far in the tape that accompanied their writing-award-nomination.

I was surprised by the massive hand for David Letterman, who came across as a mean, Sean Pennishly humorless mouth-mangler in his buildup to the Johnny Carson video tribute. I’m guessing a lot of the applause was really intended for Johnny. The tribute itself was fantastic—moving and hilarious. I don’t remember ever really watching the show (it was before my American TV days), but now I wish I had.

TiVo-Blogging the Emmys, Part 1

2005-09-18T21:32:00.000-04:00

I have to blog the Emmys “live,” because the standards are so much lower that way. Just as award-show producers get graded on the "live/" curve rather than on "in the can" standards, if you blog while the show’s still running, you don’t have to worry about big themes and grand arcs.

The opening tapes—John Travolta reminding us of his once-famous love for older women (less palatable as he gets older himself, I guess); Candice Bergen re-living the Murphy Brown/Dan Quayle flap; Charles S. Dutton outing himself as a convict, and Billy Crystal conjuring his 700 award telecasts—were a little strange, the sentiment slightly misjudged for the opening moments, but the Earth Wind and Fire/Black Eyed Peas musical number was energetic and fun. (It would’ve been even more fun if I could’ve made out more of the words; I hate to sound like an old fart, but I could’ve used subtitles.) Going out and dancing in the aisles seems like a better way of establishing that the "stars" are good sports than mocking them in the Billy Crystal Oscar-cast fashion. I must admit my negative attitude to Doris Roberts was softened by watching her get down with a Pea; and Marg Helgenberger strutted the stuff that makes it so easy to believe that her CSI character is a former exotic dancer.

Ellen’s opening monologue was a little iffy, but as she said, "It’s an icebreaker, don’t judge me yet." Getting all five Housewives (yes, they included Nicolette Sheridan) to announce the first award set a good tone, though I do tend to think that it’s time for the DH folks to wean joke-writers off the feuding cast meme (though the Eva Longoria bit after the first commercial break was nicely pitched). And as much as I groaned when Brad Garrett got his last Everybody Loves Raymond Emmy, I have to give him credit for getting a topical joke (Britney’s baby) and an impromptu joke (riffing off Charles S. Dutton’s tape) in a short speech.

William Shatner’s win for Best Supporting Actor in a Drama didn’t displease me—though Alan Alda’s apparently embittered expression as he ripped up his acceptance speech was rather too convincing for comfort.

The Donald Trump/"Karen Walker" duet on the theme from Green Acres was mind-blowing—and given Megan Mullally’s chops as a cabaret queen, it was a little odd that the Don was the musical anchor of the number. Was it supposed to be so short?

Hugh Jackman’s win in the Variety or Music Program category was very odd—his performance in the Tony Award telecast beat the televised version of Whoopi Goldberg’s Broadway show, Tracey Ullman Live & Exposed, Jon Stewart for the Daily Show, and Jay Leno’s Tonight Show turn. I imagine more people watch any single episode of the Tonight Show than have seen every Tony telecast in the history of televization. I never thought I’d see Jon Stewart not win an award (and for him not to win for last year’s election coverage!). I guess people really like the Boy From Oz, and television people really feel guilty about upstaging Broadway actors.

I Got Your Podcasts, Right Here

2005-09-18T20:17:00.000-04:00

Thanks to the Diva's fantastic instructions, I now have a podcast feed URL [http://del.icio.us/rss/tag/system:filetype:mp3+juniocast]. Now I have no excuse not to provide more podcasts!

Emmy Prediction Podcast

2005-09-18T19:10:00.000-04:00

This afternoon, I realized that time was running out to blog my Emmy predictions, so I podcasted them instead.

The Grapple in the Apple

2005-09-14T22:05:00.000-04:00

Astonishingly, I just spent two hours (two and a half hours if you count the time spent trying to get on an available stream) watching a grainy Webcast—in prime all-new-episodes TV premier season—of the Christopher Hitchens v. George Galloway debate.

It was riveting stuff, although I’m afraid it wasn’t a good idea for Galloway to share his views with America—the more Americans hear notions like "our two countries are the biggest two rogue states in the world today" or praise for the Islamist insurgents nihilistically murdering in Iraq or hear that American support for Israel drew the planes into the World Trade Center, the less likely they are to jump onto the Galloway-palooza barnstorming tour.

Galloway got off some good lines—personal insults that were well-delivered—but saying that Hitch represents the first ever metamorphosis from a butterfly into a slug isn’t really an answer to Hitch pointing out that if Gorgeous George is opposed to imperialism, he should at least acknowledge that the side he is on is in itself imperialist since it is determined to bring about the return of the caliphate and with it a society that has no room for drinking, music, women’s right, homos, or just about anything I hold dear.

Pulling the Lever

2005-09-13T12:32:00.000-04:00

I voted for the first time in New York this morning. Actually, it was my first American in-person voting, because in Washington I always took the preferred Northwest route and voted absentee.
I much prefer the quiet contemplation of absentee voting—sitting on the sofa while the television provides some background entertainment, carefully making choices about the political future (i.e., slavishly copying out the Stranger’s voting recommendations), and then making sure the envelope gets into the mail stream in time.

The polling station was a bit of a zoo. A mere block from our house, the school was surrounded by glad-handers and literature distributors. I was handed no less than 12 leaflets (in the space of approximately two seconds), nine of which were glossy print jobs. I also shook the hand of a candidate’s wife (I voted for her husband) and met a candidate’s niece (I voted for her uncle).

Inside, it was very un-zooy. It was 8 o'clock, so the place wasn’t very crowded, even though there was only one booth for my "district." (I’m not quite sure what that equates to, but I’d guess it’s just a block or two.) Since I had never gone behind curtains to do my democratic duty before, I asked for a primer from the skeletal guy who was taking the signatures and so on, but the machine was so otherworldly, I reckon I’d still have needed a helping hand even if I was a Chicagoan who had been voting since my fifth birthday.

It was more like a Rube Goldberg device than a reliable-seeming voting mechanism. After I’d made my choices (and I still feel a bit ashamed about voting for both the candidates whose relatives had looked me in the eye and asked for my vote—it seems so retail), I shifted the giant lever, and pulled back the curtains, but I confess I felt rather unsure. I needed the reassurance of a piece of paper to go put in a box or something—now I know why the anti-voting-machine people are positively Nicholson Baker-ish in the paper fetishism.

"Will my vote really count?" I asked the gaunt guy, and he assured me it would. You'd think I'd've learned that lesson from last year's Washington gubernatorial race.

Celebrity Sightings

2005-08-29T15:52:00.000-04:00

Since people always ask me about such things.

Actor Brian F. O’Byrne; Sunday Aug. 28, 2005; Penn Station; 6:30 p.m.-ish.

Pride in the Dark

2005-06-12T00:26:00.000-04:00

Brooklyn Pride was a sweet shambles of an event. (Actually, though, we only saw the parade; it was waaaay too hot to schlep down to the stalls/performances/carb fest.)

It was my first ever night parade, and I must say I don’t quite get it (the fact that it was the first pride I’d attended where I could buy the next day’s paper on my way home didn’t quite justify it).

The best part was watching all the drama. The march was supposed to set off at 8, but by 9 there were no signs of anything (other than traffic disruption) about 10 blocks past the stepping-off point. Then the dykes on bikes showed up (the usual no-helmet rule seemed even more perilous in the dark), followed by some mounted police who may or may not have been gay (if they were gay, surely there’d’ve been more women—and they were in uniform, unlike the [chubby-looking] PBA group that marched). After that came an old drag queen (my dear, the only one of the night—a record, but who wants to be strutting their fabulousness when no one can see you?) with a dog in a pram—as a lesbian mother standing next to me remarked, "Now we know why men don’t have babies," after all, he kept walking off and abandoning the poor pooch in its carriage. Then came three guys holding up a Brooklyn Pride banner. They marched by us, and then they had to stand around for a while waiting, then waiting a little more, then getting aggravated with each other. After a few minutes they were just full-on fighting, arguing over what had gone wrong with the parade, the right way to hold a five-feet-tall banner, and, from the looks of things, why the guy on the left was cruising the crowd (though quite what he could cruise was hard to see—true to Park Slope’s reputation, it was mostly women lining the street). By the time they actually started moving (and it was an inexplicable age), they were barely speaking, and the queen on the right was passively-aggressively holding the banner so that "Brooklyn Pride" was folded over and illegible from the front.

There were no marching bands or twirlers or even any floats from local gay bars (just one dyke bar, geared to the older set, judging from the folks on the float), but naturally there were a brace of campaigning politicians—Anthony Weiner and Gifford Miller, who are both running for mayor. There was also a lovely lesson in how to be a pol: Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz was very well-amplified (very important), had his chants down pat ("LGBT Spells Brooklyn"), and was reciting the names of candidates who were sharing his well-lit float.

The parade finally passed our street (just a few blocks from the break-up point—and I bet there were some tonight) around 10 p.m. I’m sure it’s no coincidence that pretty much every other city has its pride parade during the day!

Tony, Toni, Toné

2005-06-06T10:06:00.000-04:00

Being a New Yorker certainly makes watching the Tonys more interesting, since for once I’d seen several of the nominated works and have the chance of seeing more whenever I can snag tickets.

I think the ceremony set a new high for same-sex kisses and shout-outs, which makes me feel even better about the world of theater. Jerry Mitchell, who won the Best Choreography award (for La Cage aux Folles; he was also nominated for Dirty Rotten Scoundrels) had a big smooch with his boyfriend before he went up for his statuette, and he thanked him by name (as bland as that sounds, it’s hard to imagine a winner using his partner’s name on national TV until very recently—even if the Tony ceremony isn’t exactly the Oscar telecast); Edward Albee dedicated his lifetime achievement award to his "life partner," who died last month; and the magnificent Cherry Jones snogged her girlfriend (who she also name-checked in her acceptance speech) when she heard she’d won Best Actress.

It’s funny how worked up we can get strictly on the basis of hype. Since I’d seen just a handful of the nominated productions, it was a little absurd for me to have strong feelings about the winners—but even having only seen The Pillowman among the works in which the five Best Actor in a Play nominees appear, I still had a sharp intake of breath when they announced Bill Irwin over Brian F. O’Byrne. And while I haven’t seen—and have no plans to see—Spamalot, the craptacular number they performed during the Tony telecast confirmed every snobbish preconceived notion I had about the show. I was really hoping for an upset by Dirty Rotten Scoundrels (which I saw and enjoyed much more than I expected to) or The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, and I was actually disappointed when Spamalot’s name was called—even though it would’ve been a major upset for anything else to take the trophy. (And talk about a dreadful speech—even the fawning audience at Radio City couldn’t feign amusement at that appalling display; leave the jokes to the professionals, money man.)

Britain's Brigadoon Elections

2005-05-09T21:15:00.000-04:00

So, I was in Britain, for an all-too-brief two weeks, writing about the elections for Slate.

Check out my pieces on: Oona King and George Galloway in Bethnal Green & Bow; the Lib Dems; Mark Oaten and George Hollingbery in Winchester; five myths of British politics (picked up in the Guardian); Yasmin Qureshi and Brent East; and the TV coverage and big wrapup.

More later, when this whole jet lag thing is sorted.

Live Blogging the Oscars, Part 4

2005-02-28T02:31:00.000-05:00

Who knew that Prince could be so understated—I’ve never seen him in concert, but everyone I know who has talks about how dynamic he is. Not tonight—he was lower-energy than a refrigerator light bulb, and he had way more trouble with the Spanish and French names/words than he should’ve. (Every heard of rehearsal, P?). Jorge Dexler serenading the academy with a snatch of his award-winning song, followed by a simple, “Thanks. Gracias” was nice—although the severe stoopage caused by the mike setting for Prince was a little awkward.

Sean Penn’s defense of Jude Law proved that he may be a good actor (an amazing actor as it happens), but conceding that you have a “compromised sense of humor,” doesn’t make your humorlessness any more acceptable. (I know, I know, I was complaining that Chris Rock had been too hard on Law, but Penn just came across as a humorless grouch.)

Hilary Swank is to acting what Christian Laetner is to basketball—lucky, lucky, lucky. I can’t resist someone who calls herself a “girl from a trailer park” … well, except in Hilary Swank’s case. Two Best Actress statues at 31, and I challenge you to mention a non-Oscar-winning movie she’s played in (I’ll spot you The Affair of the Necklace, since even if you’ve heard of it, I’ll bet you haven’t seen it).

Ah! Finally, an award I’m excited about. Mar Adentro/The Sea Inside was my favorite movie of the year, and Alejandro Amenábar (now if he’d gone onstage immediately after Prince, there’d’ve been no problems with the mike height) gave a great speech. It was gracious to give one-third of the credit to Ramon Sampedro, one-third to Javier Bardem, and one-third to the producer and crew—especially when Amenábar gave such a one-man-band effort, writing, directing, producing, editing, even writing the (astonishingly effective) music.

How weird was it that Charlie Kaufman had his own second tier of award recipients, with Michel Gondry (the director for chrissakes) and Pierre Bismuth hugging their statues but keeping a distance from the man himself and not even attempting to approach the microphone?

I wasn’t altogether convinced that Jamie Foxx hadn’t practiced that speech, complete with the catch in the voice and fighting the emotion, since it was such a beautifully structured complete thought, but who cares? It was touching and sweet, and he took his little daughter to the Oscars, and how cool is that? Plus, his imitation of Sidney Poitier (conjured for the second time of the night) suggests the subject of his next biopic might be a certain dinner guest …

Julia Roberts (what’s with the happy birthday shout-out—you couldn’t even get away with that on local talk radio) and the couple of old Fokkers seemed out of place (and you forgot your glasses, Barbra, when the whole point of your being there was to read out a name?), but Clint Eastwood is a man of great talent, and he does come across very well when he’s accepting statues, and his mother is 96 years old and at the Oscars, so no complaints.

And perhaps it all just means that Martin Scorsese will carry on making great movies …

(I know this last bit wasn't live, but someone called R right as the Best Foreign-Language Film was going to be announced, so we had to pause, then we had to figure out some moving logistics, but it's not a competition, is it?)

Live Blogging the Oscars, Part 3

2005-02-28T00:10:00.000-05:00

The first bit of shtick in the next section was painful—not Ben Stiller-Owen Wilson as Starsky and Hutch painful, because it was at least schlocky and winking—but Chris Rock should’ve had more comeback than mere eye-rolling to Adam Sandler’s “you’re so sexy, Cat Zeta Jones” chat; and Rock’s reading of “When I was a little girl growing up in Wales” hardly compares with Celine Dion singing “When I was a little nappy-headed boy” in her Las Vegas show …

I hadn’t realized until Alexander Payne thanked his wife that he was married to Sandra Oh. It seems especially odd since, when he spoke after the preview screening of Sideways that R and I attended, he talked about the importance of credible casting—that, for example, Virginia Madsen is all the more believable in that role because she actually looks like a woman waitressing her way through graduate school (unlike, say, Halle Berry in Monster’s Ball).

Beyonce and Andrew Lloyd Webber performing their nominated song from Phantom of the Opera? More like Beauty and the Beast.

The winner for Best Cinematography seemed high, but dedicating his award to the nurses and doctors tending to his mother, in hospital for the last 45 days, was very sweet, so I’ll give him some slack.

Chris Rock’s introduction of Penelope Cruz and Salma Hayak—“You won’t be able to take your eyes off these next four presenters”—was a little tacky, but, I must admit, true. Salma certainly deserves the award for rack of the evening. (I don’t know why you’re looking at me like that. It’s Chris Rock’s influence.)

Salma’s commitment to the “Al Otro Lado del Rio,” the nominated song from The Motorcycle Diaries was a little hard to understand (and for a moment I thought she was wrong in claiming it was the first Spanish-language nominee, because I remember Lila Downs singing a song from her movie Frida in the 2003 telecast—but that was “Burn it Blue,” and the lyrics were in English). I have to give Antonio “El Cigala” Banderas credit for playing the part, but joder, the cock-rock posing from Carlos Santana and Antonio’s Argentine-accented quasi-flamenco vocal stylings were hard to take—especially for those poor souls who lack the TiVo fast-forward button.

Credit to Chris Rock for taking on the second-class award-giving in his nice riff about drive-through awards in the parking lot (“an Oscar and a McFlurry”), but it’s too bad he had to wait so long—I guess he had to wait until he came on after a winner who went on too long, in which regard the gay couple who won the Documentary Short category were happy to oblige.

Poor Jan. A.P. Kaczmarek, composer of the Best Original Score, he thought he was the first person to thank Harvey Weinstein. Actually, in the first section of the show, one of the winners of Best Art Direction thanked ‘Arvey, it’s just that his Italian accent was so strong, it was hard to make it out.

When will folks in the audience learn not to applaud the folks pictured in the In Memoriam section? It leads to uncomfortable displays of relative affection—OK, so Ossie Davis got more applause than Ronald Reagan, but so did Jerry Orbach. And the live music? Love him, but next year I think we should have less YoYo and more ByeBye.

Live Blogging the Oscars, Part 2

2005-02-27T21:56:00.000-05:00

The segment from Costumes to Counting Crows was a bit dull, no? Except for the inspired trip to the Magic Johnson Theater to talk to African-American movie-goers. It wasn’t scientific to ask folks who obviously see a lot of films and who cited movies like Alien vs. Predator, Chronicles of Riddick (a Dame Judi Dench fan?), and White Chicks as their recent favorites if they’d seen the nominated movies (I notice he didn’t ask about Ray, for example), but it was definitely interesting. It was also one of the most incisive swipes at the relevance of the cinematic MSM that I can recall, especially at the Oscars.

Scarlett Johansson, who I really admire as an actress, seemed incredibly awkward both in the weirdly deserted box (later filled with statue-clutching geeks) and in the 10-second film clips from the scientific and technical award ceremony.

Pierce Brosnan did well with Edna Mole (even though she outshone him by several lumens), but his coughing over the nomination tape was distracting. I realize he wants the exposure, but perhaps he really should’ve called in sick.

I loved Chris Rock’s line about Tim Robbins “boring us to death with his politics” when he’s not knocking us out with his acting—good juxtaposition of compliment and burn.

Cate Blanchett was fantabulous, though the line about hoping her son will marry Martin Scorsese’s daughter was a little odd (not to mention heterosexist).

In the weird “let’s try something different each time” method of handing out the “minor” awards (which is exactly why I don’t like it—we all know there are six Oscars that really matter, two or three more that matter quite a bit, and then a whole bunch that we all forget about right after the telecast, but it feels rude to acknowledge it), my favorite so far was the editing award. When announcing the nominees, they didn’t show the people in their seats, but rather in photographs (the first time all night that I’ve really felt like I knew for sure what the nominees looked like), but then the winner got to take the walk of fame and make a speech from the stage. The winner was Scorsese’s longtime editor, who also won for Raging Bull, and he seemed genuinely moved by her dedication to him.

Counting Crows’ version of the second Best Song nominee confirms my view that the acoustics of the Kodak Theater must be bad. I don’t care for the group (though I did once go to the theater with the lead singer—we didn’t go together, you understand, but we both went to the same performance of Assassins at Studio 54), but, like Beyonce, the guy is a talented and creative singer, and he sounded suspiciously off-key.

Live-Blogging the Oscars, Part 1

2005-02-27T21:45:00.000-05:00

Oscar night? Is there a more exciting evening in the entire year? This time last year we were in Amsterdam, and thanks to the joys of jetlag, watching the telecast in the wee small hours (I think they ended around 5:30 or 6 a.m.—just about when I’d’ve been getting up if I hadn’t been on vacation), and, boy, does the memory make me grateful to be in the US of A. Not only do the so-far-infrequent ad breaks provide an opportunity for live-ish blogging; they also serve to remind me how awful Jonathan Ross and his crew of overdressed nobodies were last year. (The BBC showed the U.S. telecast, but when ABC cut away to ads, the Beeb cut away to inane—and how!—chatter; it should be compulsory viewing for anyone who assumes that all British television is better than the American equivalent.)

Chris Rock? So far, so fabulous. He seems not to give a crap about offending people, which actually gives the jokes a bit of naughty heft. (When the host really is buddies with the folks he’s poking fun at, or aspires to be in their circle, the punches get pulled and the laughs are pretty superficial.) Still, some of the digs seemed a bit unfair. I loved the “If you want X, don’t settle for Y, wait for X” riff—especially Chris Rock’s offering up of himself as a poor substitute for Denzel Washington—but it seemed too hard on Jude Law. Sure, he was in too many movies this year, but he also happens to be a far better actor than Tom Cruise—the guy producers were supposed to wait for when they were tempted to hire Jude—which made the joke seem undeservedly cruel. (And was it just me, or was the laughter canned at that point—I don’t think actors would laugh at full-on digs at their comrades. Some of the actors who were getting close-ups while Rock was speaking—Kate Winslet, for example—are good pals of JL’s; I’m sure it wasn’t coincidence that there were no audience cut-aways while CR was working that vein of material.)

I loved Rock’s riff about how “there’s no acting at the Oscars,” but the dig about Nicole Kidman’s reaction to Halle Berry’s win seemed too hard. Am I just being too Seattle—I like digs, but only if they’re at people that I don’t like? Perhaps. I certainly had no qualms about the swipe at Michael Moore wishing he’d directed Supersize Me—after all, he’d done the research.

The presenters have all been good so far—though Halle Berry looked like she was trying out for a role as a Catalino Sandino Moreno lookalike, and Renee Zellwegger look way too skinny—that corset seemed to haved pulled her eyebrows up on an unfortunate angle like someone who’s had too many facelifts. She did her job well, but I hated Cate Blanchett being up in the cheap seats while announcing the makeup nominees—apart from anything else, it was just way to hard to know who the actual nominees were because they were sitting with their dates, and it just feels rude to have them give their speeches up away from everyone. I don’t care how long the telecast lasts; I want the winners to give their speeches on the stage.

Morgan Freeman was brief and very gracious. I loved The Aviator’s art director’s pronunciation of “Arvey Westeen.” Robin Williams needs help for his Attention Craving Disorder—when he suddenly interrupted his lame ramblings (gay cartoon character jokes; how original) to ask, “What are we talking about?” I’m sure I wasn’t the only person who had no idea.

Chris Rock is doing a lot of “black” material, but as was NOT the case when Whoopi Goldberg last hosted, it’s absolutely appropriate. His riff about the black version of The Incredibles—The Aiights—and his story of Cate Blanchett giving such a convincing portrayal of Kate Hepburn that Sidney Poitier went to her house for dinner last night were right on. He made a dig at Halle Berry for Catwoman 2; I hope he’ll poke at Beyonce for that rather off-key version of the very lame Best Song nominee from Les Choristes. (If ever a category needed to be retired for lack of decent nominations, surely Best Song is it.)

OK, back to the action …

iTunes Meme

2005-02-11T23:12:00.000-05:00

How better to get one’s blogging mojo going than to tackle a meme?

How many total songs?
3,667; total time 11.6 days

(Compulsory excuse: A lot of my CDs aren’t on the computer; a bunch of CDs on the computer aren’t in iTunes.)

Sort by song title—first and last.
“ ’Ave That”—Radioactive Man
“Zvielicht”—Modern Jazz From Eastern Germany

Sort by time—first and last.
“This Is an Ashanti Proverb”—Fela Kuti (Red Hot & Riot) (0:09)
Mum Wants a Bungalow Tour—Peter Kay (research, honest) (1:15:07)

Sort by album—first and last.
#1—Fischerspooner
You Gotta Pay the Band—Abbey Lincoln & Stan Getz

Top 5 played songs?
(I don’t really play songs in iTunes—I just use it to shift them to my iPod.)

Find “sex”—how many songs show up?
“Everybody Deserves To Be F*cked”—Sex in Dallas
“Sex Education, Ghetto Style”—Gil Scott Heron
“Iest Sexy”—Shantel vs. Mahala Rai Band
“Anarchy in the UK”—Sex Pistols

Find “death”—how many songs show up?
“Ode on the Death Of François II”—Aileen Carr and Brian Miller
“A Little Warm Death”—Cassandra Wilson
“Death Letter”—Cassandra Wilson

Find “love”—how many songs show up?
106. The first is “(What’s So Funny ‘Bout) Peace, Love, and Understanding,” by Elvis Costello; the last is “You Must Believe in Spring & Love,” by Abbey Lincoln (who seems to have a lot of songs that begin with the word “You”).

Get Me Tickets, Stat!

2005-02-10T23:19:00.000-05:00

While on my way to a dental appointment downtown yesterday, the bus passed The Paramount. On the giant marquee, it looked like Feb. 13 would see a performance of “EAT HER LIKE A LADY.” I guess it was that perspective thingy that hid the first two letters. (Looking at the Paramount’s Web site, it appears to be a straight, religious version of an E. Lynn Harris novel.)

He's Back ...

2005-01-04T18:37:00.000-05:00

... and using the phrase "deserves the Nobel Prize for Twatistry." I knew I was right not to take him out of my blogroll. If Swish Cottage comes back, 2005 will be fabulous!

My Favorite Books of 2004

2005-01-04T01:32:00.000-05:00

I read 30 books in 2004, which seems like a rather pathetic total. My excuse, if I need one, is that I often get pulled away from what I’m reading when a work-related book interrupts, and then I lose track of my pleasure reading and don’t finish it up. (Also, sometimes I have to skip through a book and glean the substance without dwelling on the prose styling—if I consume a book that way, I don’t count it.) I’m close to admitting that I just might one of those people who loves the idea of reading more than I actually like reading; to be sure, there’s no retail temple I worship more than the bookstore. Sometimes I am physically unable to leave the store until I buy a book (or two or more), but when I get home, they often sit untouched. Or maybe it’s just that, having spent my work day reading, the most relaxing home-entertainment option is television. (R, who also reads and writes for a living has a different response. She’s one of those people who feels unsettled if she’s not reading; she goes through a book a day almost.)

The category breakdown was: 15 nonfiction titles, 11 works of fiction, and four graphic novels/comic books. You can read the full list here. I’m glad to say that none of them really embarrasses me (E. Lynn Harris’ books are my guilty reading pleasure, and everyone needs at least one of those).

One stat that jumps out at me: Only seven of the 30 books were even partially written by women. When I worked in feminist publishing (which, combining magazines and books, accounts for about 13 years of my working life) it was all women all the time. Perhaps I’m still making up for those years?

My favorites were:

1. The Untouchable, by John Banville. Six years old it may be, but this was my favorite book of 2004. Based on the life of Anthony Blunt, it’s beautifully controlled and deeply fascinating—a combination of beautiful writing and convincing psychological insight.

2. Dykes & Sundry Other Carbon-Based Life Forms to Watch Out For, by Alison Bechdel. I have no words to describe how much I admire Alison’s work. For more than 20 years she’s been creating a detailed social history of urban dyke culture—and I see myself right in the middle of it. (Of course, I am Mo, you know.)

3. Emergency Sex & Other Desperate Measures: A True Story of Hell on Earth, by Kenneth Cain, Heidi Postlewait, and Andrew Thomson. In a year when propaganda went mainstream, this very matter-of-fact account of the lives of U.N. employees in the field (a doctor, a lawyer, and a social worker turned administrator) was one of the most devastating things I’ve read in a while. After reading it, you see the effects of the Black Hawk Down incident in the response to every international crisis.

4. Murder in the 4th Estate, by Peter Deeley & Christopher Walker. The story of Britain’s first kidnapping. It made me wonder if Robert Maxwell dunnit.

5 (tied) The Line of Beauty, by Alan Hollinghurst and The House of Sleep, by Jonathan Coe. Two bloody good stories told bloody well.

7. In Their Own Write: Adventures In The Music Press, by Paul Gorman. The interview format was stylistically uninspired, but the sections on the British music press were fascinating nevertheless, though the American sections felt pretty pro forma.

8. Attack Poodles and Other Media Mutants: The Looting of the News in a Time of Terror, by James Wolcott. Even a couple of months after reading it, I can’t really remember any of Wolcott’s masterful put-downs (well, some descriptions of Andrew Sullivan and my pal Mickey Kaus are coming back to me), but he sure has a way with words.

9. I Am Charlotte Simmons, by Tom Wolfe. Yes, some bits of it are very silly, but it was a great read nevertheless. (The television was barely turned on for a couple of days, and if you know me even slightly, you know that’s a miraculous achievement.)

10 Fever Pitch, by Nick Hornby. Added at the last minute because I didn’t want to have nine items on the list (I don’t care for multiples of three), but it does deserve a spot. I’m pretty sure that on a couple of occasions I took bus rides just so I could read a few more pages.

My Top 30 Movies of 2004

2005-01-03T00:24:00.000-05:00

I went to the movies 106 times in 2004, and for those of you keeping score at home, the breakdown was as follows: 50 films from the Americas (41 from the States, five from Central/South America, and four from Canada), 42 from Europe (10 from Spain, eight from Britain, seven from France, and 17 from the rest of the continent), eight from Asia, four from the Middle East, one from Australia, and one from Africa. (I use the official production designation to make this calculation, so even if a movie is about the Middle East, if it was produced by a European company, it counts as European—this was true of a couple of films I saw in the Seattle Arab and Iranian Film Festival.) I saw 91 features and 15 documentaries, two animated movies, and one silent film with live organ accompaniment. Purists would say that some of these aren’t 2004 films, but if that’s when I saw them, that’s what they are. The complete list of movies seen (at the cinema) is here, but my Top 30 are:

1. Mar Adentro (Spain). Since the key to enjoying culture (or perhaps life itself) is managing expectations, I was a little worried that I was going into this film hoping for too much. Having seen it, I’m not sure it would be possible to set one’s preconceptions high enough to be disappointed (though Stephen Holden, who wrote the New York Times review, wasn’t bowled over). All I can tell you is that I left the cinema devastated—a wreck who could barely speak—but not because of the sad story. Yes, Ramón Sampedro’s life story is sad, but although his struggle to end his life was at the center of the film, for me at least there were other, more dominating themes—particularly different ways of showing love. The film is so gorgeous (without that feeling of lovely emptiness that beautifully photographed films sometimes have) that it took my breath away. (I wish I could buy shares in Galician tourism.) And there just aren’t words (in English, Spanish, or Galician) to say how amazingly good Javier Bardem is. Outstanding.

2. Nathalie (France). As I’ve said elsewhere [penultimate item], I sometimes wonder if I can rely on my response to the movies I see at SIFF—seeing so many films so close together messes with your critical faculties—but I’m pretty sure this was one of the most erotic films I’ve ever seen, even though, as the woman sitting next to me said, with some irritation, at the end of the movie, “Nothing happened.” Fanny Ardant is a beautiful, elegant woman (the only actress who can outshine Catherine Deneuve—and if you don’t believe me, check out that scene in 8 Women one more time), and sometimes it’s hard to see past that, but in Nathalie she showed what a fine, subtle actress she can be. This wasn’t the second-best film of the year, but I was very affected by it, and it gets big points for that reason alone.

3. Dear Frankie (Scotland). Like the two films above it, I liked this movie as much for what it didn’t do as for what it did. The story of a woman who lies to her son about his father, and then tries to fool him by passing off a man she doesn’t know as his long-lost dad, the relationships were beautifully portrayed, and the acting was fabulous. Emily Mortimer was especially good—one of those portrayals that drives all the other movies you’ve seen her in out of your mind. I was positive she was a Scot, then days later I saw her as an upper-class English twit in Bright Young Things. This year, for reasons I can’t explain, a lot of the films I enjoyed had children at their centers; Jack McElhone, the lad who played Frankie, was also brilliant.

4. La Pelota Vasca: La Piel Contra la Piedra (Spain). A documentary by my favorite director, Julio Medem, about Basque nationalism/separatism. Seeing it in the States, where even the biggest newshounds in the audience couldn’t really follow who was speaking and what they represent, it’s hard to comprehend the immense controversy it aroused in Spain. It’s hardly surprising they couldn’t follow—Medem stuffed so much material into the two hours of the English version (I see there’s a very extended Spanish version now available) that he even cut out the natural pauses in speech, which means it was tough to keep up with the speaker IDs and the subtitles (and even Spanish speakers often needed to read subtitles since some of the interviewees spoke Basque). Although it was basically a talking-head documentary, the shot selection and direction were clearly the work of a genius. I do hope that Medem can make more features after the reception the documentary got at home—I love how his films are cerebral and emotional at the same time.

5. Harold’s Home Movies (USA). Harold’s Home Movies, a selection from the miles of footage shot over many decades by Hal O’Neal was one of my favorite movie events from 2002. Now it’s even more amazing, since my pals Sean and Jason spent hours interviewing Hal and Torg, his partner of more than 50 years, and have incorporated their commentary and a fabulous soundtrack into the movie. As I said back in 2002, it’s a fascinating flashback to gay society in very different times, and it was made all the more poignant by Hal’s death this June.

6 (tied) Wondrous Oblivion (UK) and The Miracle of Bern (Germany). Very similar movies in a way—perhaps the British and the German versions of the same idea. In Wondrous Oblivion, a cricket-mad Jewish English boy learns to play the game and learns about racism from the West Indian family that moves in next door; in The Miracle of Bern, soccer helps a German boy bond with the father who has returned from a Russian POW camp (Matthias wasn’t born when he left home) and is having a hell of a time adjusting to “normal” life. They’re both sentimental and more than a little bit clichéd, but they both moved me, and this list is about how much I liked them, hence their stratospheric placement on the list.

8. Spanglish (USA). I mostly went to see this film because I was curious to see how Paz Vega would do in a Hollywood movie (the short answer: very well; she’s ridiculously miscast, but she’s absolutely convincing, which is the most important thing I think). I expected it to be terrible, but how wrong I was. James L. Brooks’ ambition (to make a film about a family whose members love each other, even when that is a challenge) is commendable. I was shocked by how poor the film’s reviews were.

9. Off the Map (USA). To quote myself: “A very quiet and unhurried movie that never seemed slow. The story of a precocious and confident young girl who lives with her hippy parents in Nowheresville, N.M. … Actor-directors often make movies that are a long string of climaxes full of the kind of speeches that play well at the Oscar ceremony, but Campbell Scott completely avoided that here. There are some marvelous performances from Joan Allen, Sam Elliott, and Valentina de Angelis as the young narrator.” I’m really surprised it never had a proper theatrical release.

10. Cachorro (Spain). Back in October, I was on the features jury for the Seattle Lesbian and Gay Film Festival. I’m afraid it wasn’t a great year for gay cinema—at least at the Seattle festival—but this film was the unanimous choice for the Best Feature Film award, and I reckon it would’ve won even if there had been 10 great films up against it. A sex-positive film about an HIV-positive bear whose life is turned upside down when he becomes his nephew’s de facto guardian, it’s hard to imagine this film even being made in the States, much less receiving a buttload of public sponsorship money.

11. Noviembre (Spain). Perhaps this movie deserves a higher spot on the list since it has stayed with me longer than some of the films ranked above it. A kind of mockumentary from the future about an avant-garde theater troupe; the concept is a little bit strained, but the street theater scenes are amazing.

12. Jagoda in the Supermarket (Serbia). A great film about the changing political and social systems of Eastern Europe—worth its place on the list for the Balkan brass band that plays in the supermarket parking lot while the crowd gathers to cheer on Jagoda and her “kidnapper.”

13 (tied) Heir to an Execution (USA) and My Architect (USA). Heir to an Execution was directed by Ivy Meeropol, the granddaughter of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, and concerns her lifelong attempt to understand the family dynamics that allowed her grandmother to die, thus leaving her two small sons orphaned, when she could have made a deal and lived. In My Architect, Nathaniel Kahn tried to learn more about the father he barely knew, architect Louis Kahn.

15. In Your Hands (Denmark). A very moving Dogme film set in a Danish women’s prison. The main protagonist is a woman priest who longs to have a child; although she is undoubtedly a believer, she wonders if one of the inmates has spiritual powers. Although abortion is a major theme, it’s really a movie about faith.

16. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (USA). A better film than lots of the movies above it on this list, but I found it cold and calculating. I admired it greatly, but I didn’t really enjoy it.

17 (tied) Maria, Full of Grace (US/Colombia) and B-Happy (Chile). When filmmakers and actors show up at SIFF, their presence usually enhances the viewing experience (for example, the directors of Heir to an Execution and In Your Hands were both very impressive women who gave really interesting answers to the audience’s questions). I must admit that Joshua Marston rather put me off his film—he came across as smug and self-satisfied. Still, Catalina Sandino Moreno was magnificent, and Marston deserves credit for finding her and making the movie. Like MFoG, B-Happy is the story of a young woman who takes great personal risks to get out of a bad situation. Like MFoG, it’s the young actress, in this case Manuela Martelli, who makes it special.

19. La Vida Que Te Espera (Spain). A very flawed film that tried to do too much—it couldn’t quite decide which genre to explore—but it really got to me.

20. Walk on Water (Israel). The German siblings’ rendition of “Cinderella Rockefeller” at the kibbutz talent show isn’t the only reason I liked this film. I found its big issues—Israeli homophobia, right-on young Germans' attitudes to their grandparents' wartime politics—rather pro forma, but the acting was great as was the general tone of the movie.

21. Te Doy Mis Ojos (Spain). I think I gave this film my highest rating on the SIFF pass-holders’ ballot, but Icíar Bollaín’s harrowing movie about domestic violence hasn’t really stayed with me. All I really remember six months after seeing it are some beautiful shots of Toledo and Candela Peña’s wonderful turn as the abused woman’s sister.

22 (tied) Bonjour, Monsieur Schlomi (Israel) and The Triplets of Belleville (Canada/France). Two fabulous family dramas about grandparents and grandchildren.

24. Garden State (USA). More family drama. Hmm, I sense a theme.

25. A Mi Madre Le Gustan Las Mujeres (Spain). A silly movie, but full of joy. Still, I completely agree with the person who wrote this IMDb user comment: “The lesbian relationship between the mother's character (Rosa Maria Sarda, wonderful as always) and her lover is totally unbelievable and artificial—they don't even kiss each other during the whole film!”

26. The Game of Their Lives (UK). A documentary about the astounding success of the North Korean team in the 1966 World Cup. It’s fascinating to see how much international soccer has changed and how little North Korea has changed over the last 40 years. There are amazing scenes when the former players, now old men, weep when they think of former President Kim Song-il. Now there’s a cult of personality that even the most popular footballer couldn’t rival.

27. Torremolinos 73 (Spain). An encyclopedia salesman becomes a porn star and then a serious filmmaker in the middle of Franco’s Spain. Silly, but the acting of Javier Cámara (Benigno in Hable Con Ella, Paco in La Mala Educación) and Candela Peña is excellent.

28. In Good Conscience: Sister Jeannine Gramick's Journey of Faith (USA). A powerful documentary about an extremely articulate nun silenced by religious authorities because of her work ministering to lesbian and gay Catholics.

29. Sideways (USA). I really should move this up—it’s a smart movie for adults, and I was really impressed by Alexander Payne, who took some questions after the screening I attended. I particularly loved his comments about casting—he chose the actors because he wanted them to look like the people they were playing (a middling actor, a schlubby wannabe novelist, a smart waitress, a vineyard worker), which really made me think about casting in a new way. But Tony Scott put his finger on my problem with the film in today’s New York Times: “It both satirizes and affirms a cherished male fantasy: that however antisocial, self-absorbed and downright unattractive a man may be, he can always be rescued by the love of a good woman. (What's in it for her is less clear.)”

30. The Aviator (USA). It gets its place on the list almost exclusively on the strength of Cate Blanchett’s portrayal of Katharine Hepburn. I have to say, though, that as I was leaving the cinema, I was very surprised to notice that almost three hours had passed—that’s a very good sign.

So, the breakdown for the top 30: US 10, Spain 8 (pretty amazing since I only saw 10 Spanish movies this year—let’s face it, I’m in the bag for el cine español), 3 from Britain; 2 from Israel, and 1 each from France, Germany, Serbia, Denmark, Colombia, Chile, and Canada. I missed several big movies—Vera Drake being the one most likely to have made the list. Funny how the ones that got away seem the most interesting sometimes.

Seen Any Good Movies Recently?

2005-01-01T23:46:00.000-05:00

Compiled to help me figure out my "Best of" Lists for 2004, here's a complete list of the movies I saw in 2004.

A couple of things to note:

1) I only count films that I see in a movie theater. Video or DVD viewings don't rate inclusion on the list (they're a form of TV as far as I'm concerned).

2) The ratings system is pretty obvious, but you should know that I rate based on enjoyment rather than my critical appreciation of the film's merits. For example, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is without doubt an ingenious film of enormous quality, but although I admired it a great deal, I didn't really enjoy it all that much; it struck me as way too cold and calculating. (I could almost hear Charlie Kaufman tugging on the puppet strings, "Here's where you're struck by my genius; here's where I make you cry," etc.)

3) This particular list is ordered strictly by when I saw the movies; just because The Triplets of Belleville is at the top, that doesn't mean that I liked it the best.

I Say Routine, You Say Rut

2004-12-29T18:43:00.000-05:00

So, the cat is finally out of the bag: Microsoft has sold Slate to the Washington Post, the Seattle operations are pretty much closing down, and in a few months (March?), R and I are moving to New York. It’s kind of scary: New York is a huge city a long way away; we don’t know many people out there—no one outside of work, really; and we have to figure out all the logistics of life that have become routine here in Seattle.

The move would’ve been a lot easier 18 months ago when we were still in a cramped, crummy apartment; not only have we gotten used to space, glorious space, as well as luxuries like our own washer-dryer and a garden (not that I ever sat in it—I get a headache in the open air; that and the whole not-driving thing make me a natural New Yorker, I guess), but we both really like our house.

Of course, I could’ve stayed in Seattle, but this was too cool an opportunity to turn down.

Choosing between D.C. and New York wasn’t that hard. I enjoyed living in Washington in my early 20s, but unless you’re an attorney or a politician, it’s pretty unappealing once you hit 30. (Interestingly, many of my friends who still live there are shrinks. Not a coincidence, I think.)

At this point, we’re thinking we’ll live in Brooklyn, but our entire experience of that borough comes from a few recces of a few blocks—I've spent about 12 hours there! An eastward-bound colleague has her eye on the Village, but I think we’ve been spoiled for space, and R needs trees—at least one of which grows in Brooklyn.

Of course, we’ll have packers and movers, but there are still lots of unappealing tasks to take care of—rooting through all the boxes we’ve never opened to decide if we really need to keep whatever it was that seemed so essential 18 months ago.

Instead of dealing with such disagreeable responsibilities, I’ve been getting sentimental: This might be my last chance for Cineoke; my last-but-17 ride to work in the vanpool; my last brunch with X, etc. We just got back from a five-day break in Victoria that was one long string of thoughts like, “Is this my last meal at Greens?” or, “Will I ever buy another overpriced, past-its-sell-by-date English candy bar at Ye Olde Britishe Sweete Shoppe?”

Our twice- or thrice-yearly trips to Victoria have become pretty formalized—brunch at Rebar, afternoon meals at Greens (old-school vegan buffet but shockingly tasty and totally addictive), book-buying at Munro’s and Well’s Books, stationery shopping at The Papery and Getting It Right, movies at the Vic (not this time—I’d already seen Kinsey, the movie they were playing), etc. The routine hasn’t changed much in the last 13 years (well, a few things: Marks & Spencer closed, and I snubbed Murchie’s once they turned the back room into a tea salon, thus confining the majority of the day's customers to crowded, uncomfortable tables while the best room in the house sits empty for all but a couple of hours—that must be some mighty profit-margin on the afternoon teas), so perhaps it’s played out, but I’ve always found Victoria to be an excellent place for Reste and Relaxatione, so when the Clipper pulled out of the harbor, I wondered, “Is this the last time I’ll …”

Small Things

2004-12-14T14:10:00.000-05:00

1) Check out today’s Slate cover (and don’t forget to check out the story—if nothing else, the clips are great).

2) I’m so excited, I can barely breathe: Tonight I’m going to a preview of Mar Adentro/The Sea Inside, which I’ve been gagging for ever since I first heard word of it in Mr. Holland’s Opus. The Spanish trailer (also via PdSb) has me reaching for tissues, so I can’t quite picture the mess I’ll be in once the real thing washes over me.

The Food Network Shows Pink

2004-11-28T18:42:00.000-05:00

I'm not sure I quite understand the Food Network's current ad for its holiday programming. Along with lots of happy, smiling people, there's a be-antlered dog thinking of a gift-wrapped (or decorated) bone while waving about a massive boner. I mean, this dog is hung and the lipstick is wagging in time to the music. Don't be telling me they didn't notice!

Update to Dogs With Bone(r)s

2004-11-28T16:09:00.001-05:00

I just caught an edited version of the Food Network commercial mentioned below. The dog's dignity appears to have been saved (though, Fido knows, he could've been proud) by a tasteful placement of the network logo. Right on the money-maker, so to speak.

How I Spent My Thanksgiving Vacation

2004-11-28T16:09:00.000-05:00

Ah, Thanksgiving, four blissful days of sitting around at home chastising myself for not spending the precious time off more wisely.

I didn’t write a novel, make much headway in the (very good) book I’ve been reading (very slowly), nor get the work I’d been intending to tackle taken care of (that comes next). However, I did: see two movies (Callas Forever—not an Earth-shattering film but that hardly matters because it stars the most beautiful and elegant woman in the world: Fanny Ardant—and Kinsey, which seemed to me to be a pretty standard biopic, but I loved Liam Neeson’s wardrobe; that bow-tied professorial look is my dream style); eat a fabulous meal in outstanding company; and, possibly most exciting of all, I made my selections for my Best of 2004 CDs. (I spared myself some aggravation and went the T-dash-D double CD route this year—though, wait, he went triple last year, didn’t he?)

In the last couple of years, I’ve started to wonder if I buy and listen to new CDs just for the sake of the end-of-year compilation, so all-consuming is the process of selection and ordering. (Yes, this is just the third time I’ve done one, but it feels like a longstanding tradition by this point.)

My taste took an unexpected direction this year—very folky, inspired in part by a group I first heard at the beginning of 2004, Warsaw Village Band. Like some cheeses and alcoholic spirits, a good deal of their appeal is that they seem slightly “off.” As I was picking out my favorite tunes, I was astonished to realize how many involved pipes or horns of some kind—though, trust me, I would still cross the road at the sight of a busker with bagpipes. In my youth, I couldn’t stand the taste of olives—when I first went to Spain I couldn’t enjoy the most basic of tapas—and then, without warning, something happened to my taste buds, and now olives are one of my favorite foods. I suppose it’s the same with music, and right now the drone of the chanter or the animal-like sounds of traditional horns like the alboka actively appeal to me.

If you want to take a squint at the track-listing, click here. One note: Almost all these albums came out in the U.S. in 2004, but I came to some of them late, so there are a couple of 2003 releases in there. There’s also an old song that represents my summer stay in my home town: “Hallelujah,” by The Happy Mondays.

What I Learned From Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s Q&A at Last Night’s Seattle Screening of A Very Long Engagement

2004-11-22T11:48:00.000-05:00

1) He recently turned down an offer to direct Harry Potter 5; 2) His original choice for the role of Amélie was … Emily Watson!

Postmodern Moments in Television, Part 103

2004-11-18T00:16:00.000-05:00

On last night’s Las Vegas, Ed asked Mike and Danny if they’d seen The Godfather. “Sure, 17 times. It’s my favorite movie,” mugged Mike. If that’s so, how come he didn’t notice he was speaking to James Caan, the guy who played Sonny?

PS: You too can dress in the slutty style of the women of Las Vegas.

One Not-Particularly Angry Woman

2004-10-16T13:25:00.000-04:00

For the next week I’ll be spending most of my “free” time at the movies (or watching tapes at home—since the festival lasts just a week and has four venues, it’s impossible to see all the eligible movies in the proper setting), since I’m on the features jury for the Seattle Lesbian & Gay Film Festival, which started last night.

Since filmmakers might come across this site (hey, it’s happened before), I’d better be circumspect about my opinions. However, I will say that the opening night film, Eating Out, was surprisingly good. “Surprising” could seem like a diss—and perhaps I did have relatively low explanations for a first movie that was made in just 10 days on a budget of $50,000—but mostly I mean that it managed to take a genre that’s become a tired cliché (the college sex comedy) and a plot line that’s just as played out (guy plays gay to win the girl) and produce a fresh, keep-‘em-guessing picture. A real crowd-pleaser.

The crowd was almost exclusively male—with the 800-seat Cinerama more than two-thirds full, I bet there were fewer than 50 women in the whole place—but even though it was a “men’s film,” there was nothing that would “put off” women viewers. In fact, it really is one of those gay films that’s fun for the whole family.

The Culture Gods Must Be Angry

2004-10-14T14:24:00.000-04:00

I was in New York Friday to Wednesday, but I don’t have much by way of witty urban anecdotes to show for it. I spent a lot of time walking strange (to me) streets and discussing Brooklyn neighborhoods, and I didn’t get to enjoy a single scrap of culture (unless you include two episodes of Desperate Housewives and a very unsatisfactory Law & Order: Special Victims Unit watched on the hotel-room TV—and I don’t).

On Saturday, we returned to the Theater District in just enough time to discover that there was nothing worth spending money on left on the TKTS board. On Tuesday, my last night in the city, the tragedy was even greater. I popped out of the office around 3 and snagged tickets for that night’s performance of I Am My Own Wife—Tony, Pulitzer, only two more weeks in the run—and arrived, after having grabbed a speed-freak dinner, five minutes before curtain up … only to discover that the actor, Jefferson Mays, was unwell. This is one of those tour-de-force one-handers in which the performer moves between character, genders, and so much more at the drop of an eyelid, so you don’t want to see the understudy (apparently, there wasn’t one anyway) or the provincial tour. There was no time to get to anything else, so, determined to see something, I propelled R to the one movie theater I knew of within a five-block radius of where we stood. So intense was the gods’ desire that I remain un-entertained that we were barred from this too: Duran Duran were doing a personal appearance in the Times Square Virgin Megastore and the security was at presidential levels. You couldn’t even look down at the boys from Brum (well, at this point, the old geezers), much less even think about descending the escalator to go to the cinema. (Actually, it was pretty wacky—because of the security, potential customers were shut out of huge sections of the store. Doesn’t seem like very good business practice.)

Ah, but I did get to shake hands with music god Bob Hurwitz of Nonesuch. (See this NYT article, but feel free to skip the first three grafs, which are execrable.) I was all flummoxed like the time someone introduced me to a bullfighter, and that was just a picador—basically a fat guy with a long sharp pole and an armored horse.

Best Review of a Nobel-Prizewinner’s Book EVAH!

2004-10-07T14:29:00.000-04:00

Amazon’s page for Nobel Literature Prize-winner Elfriede Jelinek’s book Women as Lovers contains the following magnificent Publishers Weekly review:

This brief, pitiless novel advances such a narrow, bleak vision of the human race that one wonders why its author, who apparently finds everything pointless, saw the point in writing it. In oddly punctuated, repetitive prose reminiscent of Gertrude Stein's but lacking Stein's energetic compassion, Jelinek's (Lust and The Piano Teacher) latest doesn't have much good to say about love or marriage or sex or babies. And for Paula and Brigette, these are the only escapes from a life--if one can call it a life--of sewing bras in a factory in the mountains of Austria. It's hard to imagine even the pretense of love in a marriage to a drunken lout like Erich, the rotting apple of his sad, miserable parents' eye, or to fat and stupid Heinz. What shallow, covetous creatures women are, is what Jelinek seems to say. It doesn't matter if they don't enjoy sex; they don't deserve it, and anyway, someday we'll all be dead.

I can’t believe I’m the only person who’d never heard of Jelinek, so I’m sure there are lots of folks rapidly catching up on her by checking out Amazon’s listings. Not the best impression (though possibly faithful).

With the Mennonites

2004-10-05T19:59:00.000-04:00

I’ve not had much time for blogging of late—and little inclination when I had the opportunity. Given how close we are to the election, it’s not surprising that it’s busy at work, and I’ve been traveling a lot recently. I haven’t even had time to watch much television—though as far as I know, they’ve not canceled any of “my” shows yet.

This weekend we went to the Mennonite Country Auction and Relief Sale in Ritzville, Wash. I’ve always had a soft spot for the Mennonites—I’ve never met one that wasn’t sweet and huge-hearted. If it became compulsory to have a religious denomination [insert lame PATRIOT Act joke here], I’d go with Menno Simon’s peeps, though I’d no doubt have to undergo re-education to remove my martial streak.

As well as some awesome food (man, I can’t get enough kraut runza—I’ve had them every day since the sale—and New Year’s cookies are sinfully delicious), there's also a fund-raising auction. The folks I was with spent some serious money: Several of the quilts pictured on this page (including the postage stamp quilt) went home with members of my extended Mennonite family, and even I bought a comforter (much cheaper, because there’s no quilting, but the colors were great).

I also bought a turkey—I know the family that was donating it, and I felt bad that the bidding was in the cellar. As of today, it’s still running around in Eastern Washington; I get to decide whether to have it delivered live or butchered. I’m trying to persuade R that it would be a great gift for Sooky, to compensate for stifling her hunting instincts by making her live indoors, but so far she’s unconvinced.

Law & Order’s Outsourcing

2004-09-28T19:40:00.000-04:00

Actresses of Indian descent get a lot of work from the Law & Order folks. Interestingly, though, they rarely seem to play Indians. A few weeks ago I saw an episode in which Sakina Jaffrey played an Iranian; just last week Sarita Choudhury played an Iraqi.

Coe and Kepa

2004-09-28T17:44:00.000-04:00

We had to rush back from Oregon (no stopping at Powell’s on the way back) because we had tickets to see Kepa Junkera at the Century Ballroom on Sunday night. I was a terrible passenger, with my head stuck in a book—Jonathan Coe’s fabulous House of Sleep, which I’d bought on the way down and was completely captivated by. I’d enjoyed his book What a Carve Up! (known as The Winshaw Legacy in the United States, for some reason), and while The House of Sleep lacks WACU!’s political context, it’s none the worse for that. Coe reminds me of writers like Patrick Gale, David Lodge, and even Robertson Davies, who conjure up complex situations and casts of characters and manipulate them really well. His new book, The Closed Circle, was due to be published in England just a couple of days after I left last month. Given the woeful exchange rate, I probably wouldn’t have bought it if it had been in stores while I was still there, but now I’m kinda sorta tempted to splash out on it from Amazon.co.uk. I also eschewed a piece of nonfiction penned by Coe: a biography of B.S. Johnson. I walked on by because I’d never heard of the subject, but now I’m thinking that was a mistake.

Kepa Junkera was awesome. It was a pretty concise show—90 solid minutes, no opening act and no messing around—because the Century Ballroom was hosting its usual Sunday night dance afterward. As fabulous as the show was, I was relieved to get out of there by 9:10. It was Sunday night, we’d had a long drive, and I wanted to finish my book.

The show was wonderful, though. Kepa on trikitixa, a drummer, a bassist (who looked like a cross between Ian Curtis and the guy who plays Mr. Vicary on Red Cap), an acoustic guitarist, and a txalaparta duo who also played alboka (the instrument I’d most like to learn to play) and tambourine. When I was a hip young thing back in the '70s, I’d never have thought that I would get all excited about a concert by a dude playing an accordion accompanied by a couple of guys banging sticks on some planks of wood, but there you go.

KJ won a 2004 Latin Grammy for the live album [backward K] (though Fnac lists it as K). They didn’t have that album on sale at the concert, but even the 2001 release Maren was a treat to find in the US.

Shock and Awe

2004-09-28T13:38:00.000-04:00

I’m still reeling from a computer disaster on my home laptop (the keyboard has gone kapow—only seven letters still work, and the R key now functions as the space bar). God knows what happened, it was fine last time I used it. Could Sooky have sat on the keys or something? I can’t for the life of me remember if I closed the lid. Either way, a major pain in the ass.

Until I discovered that little nightmare, the weekend was swell. We went down to the wilds of Oregon for R’s family reunion—she’s the oldest of 11 children and most of them have kids (and some grandchildren). It was held at the house where they grew up, and it’s in serious off-the-map territory, the like of which doesn’t really exist in Western Europe (that I’m aware of, anyway). It’s only a 30-minute drive from town, though you certainly need a vehicle to get anywhere, and they have electricity (it makes you realize what an achievement rural electrification really was), but that’s about it for modern conveniences; everything else is pretty much do-it-yourself. They have running water, you understand, it’s just that it’s not laid on by the county. The kids go to school, but they have to get there under the own steam—there’s no school bus, much less a “regular” bus service.

Even though I grew up in what felt like the country, it was only a 20-minute bus ride from Manchester, and every few minutes buses stopped just a few paces from our house going all over the show—Bolton, Wigan, Leigh, Manchester. If I wanted something to read or eat or drink, I could just walk down to the village shops. There’s nothing like that out there—if you want a latte, a book, or a chocolate bar, you’re SOL. Of course, the trees are bursting with fruit, so you can go grab an apple, or take a bucketful and make yourself a gallon of apple juice. They are so self-sufficient it’s scary—they hunt, fish, grow, and can most of what they eat.

When I first met R, I asked over and over if she could remember the names of all her siblings. (Gimme a break, I’m an only.) Of course, I now realize how silly this was, and I take particular delight in referring to them by number. As we were leaving, I rounded up the sibs that were standing around and ordered them to pose for a photo by yelling, “No 1, No. 3, No. 5, No. 8, No. 9, get over there.” Patrick McGoohan would be appalled.

Still More Fall TV Madness

2004-09-22T12:04:00.000-04:00

Monday night I eschewed LAX, which I’d enjoyed last week, because CSI: Miami (CBS, Monday at 10) had the ultimate season-opener ingredient: the death of a regular character. Usually that kind of thrill is reserved for cliffhanger finales, but I guess the contractual difficulties didn’t arise until the summer break in this case. I’d seen a spoiler about who was going to buy the gator farm, but even if I hadn’t, I’m pretty sure I could’ve guessed; there wasn’t a lot of subtlety about the way they played it. “I could kill X,” said one agent early in the show about the victim-to-be. “Hey there’s lots of time for that, right?” the dead-character-walking blithely announced to a colleague as they walked into what would be the crime scene. Other than the divine doctor treating the body with even more reverence than usual (she’s by far the best CSI doctor so far—I was really scared she’d be the casualty) and Horatio biting his lip in an even more determined manner than usual (c’mon, you knew it wasn’t going to be him), the loss was rather underplayed until the tacked-on lights-blazing police funeral at the end. I’m kind of curious about CSI: New York (only kind of—Gary Sinise is not my kind of actor; he blew in The Human Stain, though his casting was pretty moronic to begin with), but not terribly excited. Miami is too much about keeping Horatio’s promises that wrongs will be righted and disturbed people will be relieved of their grief and fear. The original is still the best, even if they have been suffering from character memory loss of late.

I also watched Listen Up (NBC, Monday at 8:30), the new Jason Alexander vehicle that is based on the Tony Kornheiser’s columns. (That’s right, his columns are based on his life, but the show isn’t. Whatev.) Dreadful! There’s something tragic about TV shows (and movies for that matter) that purport to show creative people writing something funny, moving, or sad when the product they’re laughing, sighing, or crying over is third-rate at best. All I could think when we heard “Tony’s” columns was, “Dude, never mind this crisis, you’d better worry about what you’re going to do for a living when the newspaper comes to its senses and realizes you can’t write!” And it just wasn’t funny. I’ve never liked laugh tracks (when we watched a show—inevitably American—that used one, my granddad would always say, “Yanks’ll laugh at owt, eh?”), but I felt like a creature from another planet when the soundtrack was signaling major merriment and all I could manage was utter puzzlement. It’s so terrible, it’ll probably be the next Everybody Loves Raymond.

The show I was most looking forward to was Second Time Around (UPN, Monday at 9:30), a sitcom in which real-life couple Nicole Parker (I guess she lost her Ari this summer—is it suddenly passé for actors to have three names?) and Boris Kodjoe play a formerly married couple who have come back together and re-married after years apart. I’ve been a fan of Parker’s since The Incredibly True Adventure of Two Girls in Love (and I'm really disappointed that she or the production company neglected to mention that movie in her Second Time Around bio—she was the lead in a pretty successful movie, I can't think of a good reason to overlook it, just lots of bad ones), and she and Kodjoe had great chemistry in Showtime’s Soul Food, but that connection seems to have lost its sizzle on the UPN set. Perhaps it’s something about the cheap-ass ticky-tacky sets that seem like something out of those late-night Christian youth shows (you know, when the pastor is all decked out in sports-logo gear, as though he were a football coach rather than a God-botherer). Parker’s character, Ryan (no Shenaynays here—it’s Jackson and Ryan and their buddies Nigel and Paula—as the bougie gold-digging Paula tells her man, “More suburban, less urban”), is an artist, so we’re subjected to those tired hippy-chick costumes that bohemian types so often get saddled with (in life as well as in art, unfortunately). She looked a lot better in the business suits and sexy lingerie of Soul Food. The sad fact is, Showtime’s willingness (boy, were they willing) to show off the gorgeous bodies of the Soul Food cast did a lot to establish the couple’s spark—here we have to imagine it, and unfortunately, neither the script or the actors do much to help that happen.

Live-Blogging the Emmys, Hour 3

2004-09-20T02:37:00.000-04:00

It’s way past my bedtime already, so just a few thoughts on Hour 3.

Thought 1: I said it yesterday, but now I really have to say it again: There are way too many awards for miniseries. If people watched them, they’d be on network TV. Was there a network miniseries nominated (not counting The Reagans, which started life as a network miniseries and ended up on cable—and doesn’t it say it all that that POS got two noms?).

Thought 2: Meryl Streep is a goddess. She is funny and smart and lovely. The little tribute to Tony Kushner and writers in general at the end of her speech was beautiful and moving.

Thought 3: James Spader is the spit and image of Arthur from Six Feet Under.

Thought 4: Why didn’t Al Pacino hear music? I’m thinking the orchestra are all fans.

Thought 5: The big winner wasn’t Angels in America—it didn’t really have any competition—it was Arrested Development. Huge wins for them.

Thought 6: Everybody Loves Raymond went home empty-handed. Yes!

Thought 7: Allison Janney is going to have to give that Emmy to Mariska Hargitay after embarrassing her like that.

Thought 8: Unintentionally funniest line of the evening came from Sarah Jessica Parker referring to the finale as “the end of a long sentence.”

Thought 9: James Gandolfini was definitely channeling Tony Soprano at the end when he cursed the mike being cut.

Thought 10: Thank God for Chris Rock. “Who’s Elaine Stitch?” saved the worst skit of the night, even if it was filmed in an appropriate spot—the urinal.

Thought 11: I went 8 for 13 in my predictions. I was going gangbusters until the end, but, hey, I feel better than Garry Shandling’s agent.

Live-Blogging the Emmys, Hour 2

2004-09-20T01:45:00.000-04:00

Well, I was right, I guess, Hour 2 was a bit of a snoozer. Jon Stewart opened up the hour and handled the MC duties way better than GS—but I guess it isn’t kosher to have stars who are likely to be nominated for and to win awards presenting the show for real.

Elaine Stritch was Elaine Stritch—I guess anyone who was surprised by her shtick doesn’t know much about her. And it sounded to me like she was bleeped for a “shit” and got away with an “effing,” mild stuff for ES! (It’s funny to see her on a Sunday night—when I was growing up, Two’s Company, her show with Donald Sinden, which came on before (or was it right after?) The South Bank Show, was my regular Sunday night entertainment.)

Not much else to write home about—the methods of presenting the names of the nominees for Best Writer in a Music, Comedy, or Variety Show award were pretty amusing. (I especially liked Howard Dean reading the Daily Show names, followed by a slightly muted “Yeow!”)

The farewell to TV shows clip segment was way too long. Is that going to be the Emmys equivalent of the “In Memoriam” section of the Oscar telecast? I hope not.

Speaking of going on too long, America needs to find another token Latino award-presenter, because George Lopez is tiresome (and I loved that The Donald couldn’t be bothered to disguise his disgust for the little pisher).

I’m no big fan of Tony Kushner’s, but it was cool to see a boy-on-boy kiss when his name was read and to hear his banter about hoping that he’ll be able to marry his “husband” for real some time so he can “make an honest homosexual of me.”

The business with the “real people” being flown in to present the Emmy for best Reality-Competition Show was way overblown. (If they’re “real people,” what are all the other presenters? Aliens?) The gimmick got more attention than the shows they were supposed to be honoring—and the guy’s description of The Apprentice as “my favorite show,” though kind of refreshing, must’ve felt like a slight to the other nominees.

The acceptance speech for Something the Lord Made (I hope HBO will play it—and Elaine Stritch Live at Liberty—again soon) was the most polished of the night. A little somber perhaps, but very professional and, well, grown-up.

Live-Blogging the Emmys, Hour 1

2004-09-20T00:41:00.000-04:00

An hour into the three-hour Emmys telecast, I’m giving TiVo a chance to get ahead of me while I type up some quick reactions.

My God, has there ever been a worse-scripted and presented awards show? I’m a longtime fan of Garry Shandling from It’s Garry Shandling’s Show (I can still hum the theme tune though I haven’t seen it in years) and The Larry Sanders Show, but he is stinking up the joint big-time. Everything about the presentation, from the very wooden and extremely unfunny taped setups to the truly awful and awkward monologue has just sucked ass. Around the one-hour mark, in yet another lame bit of business, Billy Crystal tells Shandling to get back on stage, because “the show is slipping away from you …” Dude, that happened about 60 minutes ago.

The exchanges between presenters were painful too—how did Chris Noth expect Sarah Jessica Parker to respond to his marriage proposal? “Erm, no, but thanks” was about as good as could be expected, and that’s pretty terrible. Still, Zach Braff’s aside to his co-presenter, Joan of Arcadia’s Amber Tamblyn—“Don’t you know God? Can’t we get a better line than that?”—was perfect.

And the premature music-players! This is an old bugaboo of mine—we want to hear the speeches—and it really doesn’t feel like they’re giving the winners enough time to even get through the basic acknowledgments. Jeffrey Wright, a wonderful actor who won an award for his portrayal of a beautiful character (Belize is Tony Kushner’s greatest artistic achievement in my view) is up there talking about AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa, and the band is playing the exit music, acting like he’s already walked off stage. It’s especially galling when the pitiful inter-award “comedy” material is so desperately in need of editing. (For the director of the Oscar telecast, who’s also directing the Emmy telecast, to be the next recipient was just shameful.) When the band started to swell about 20 seconds into Mitchell Hurwitz’s acceptance speech for Best Comedy Writing (for Arrested Development), his beautifully delivered line, “I’d like to sing this now if I may” provided the first genuine laugh of the night.

It sure feels like a lot of important awards have already been given out—I’m wondering if we’re going to be in a miniseries dead zone for the next hour—but I’m doing well on my predictions: Cynthia Nixon’s win for Best Supporting Actress in a Comedy was the first I’ve missed. It was kind of sad to see both Nixon and David Hyde-Pierce (who didn’t look terribly healthy) appear to genuinely miss their shows. Another actress who might miss her old show next year is Drea de Matteo, who didn’t thank anyone by name because “I might puke, choke, cry, or die—and you’ve already seen me do that.” A great line—apparently unscripted, but who knows, she is an actress after all.

Emmy Predictions

2004-09-19T00:29:00.000-04:00

Even though my favorite TV show, The Wire, returns for a new series tomorrow night, I won’t be watching. (Of course, that might not be so if HBO didn’t have such a generous rerun policy.) Instead, I’ll be watching the 56th annual Primetime Emmy Awards. The Oscars they aren’t, but since I’ve watched more network television since getting TiVo last summer, I’m more interested than usual. My feelings about some shows are stronger than my desire to make accurate predictions (I don’t care if Everybody Loves Raymond is likely to win awards, it’s junk, and I can’t bring myself to suggest it’s going to come out on top), but here are my guesses for the big awards.

Drama Series
Nominees: CSI, Joan of Arcadia, The Sopranos, 24, The West Wing

I haven’t seen Joan of Arcadia, but I think I saw all the episodes in the last series of the other shows. The West Wing was pretty blah last season—a viewer who’d never seen it in the Aaron Sorkin years must’ve wondered what all the fuss was about. The West Wing did more to establish the writer as the most important ingredient in a great show by having the same outstanding cast but leaving them with nothing to say and very little to do. Whereas before they’d soared with great speeches and slightly crazy but brilliant plot twists, this time around it was just a bunch of great actors saying and doing uninteresting things. Even when they ratcheted up the drama and killed off beloved characters, it felt like empty manipulation rather than inspired and inspiring puppetry. This year’s 24 was OK, but it’s a case of diminishing returns—it’s like an NBA game: You know the only reason to watch the first 95 percent is to see if anyone gets injured and who fouls out. There’s no reason to get invested in the characters, because you know most of them will be out of the picture before we reach the end. I like CSI, and the show has done a great job of maintaining its standards. We had a little bit of wobbling this season—it’s hard to figure out what’s going on with Greg; Catherine’s character got a little lost with all the business with her father (and it’s time to stop messing with that woman’s family—she’s now lost her ex-husband, had her daughter almost drown, and found out who her real father is); and the business of Grissom’s hearing loss was wrapped up very unsatisfactorily. Overall it was as if the show’s writers just couldn’t be bothered to deal with the traits and flaws the characters had been given over the years (as well as Grissom’s hearing, we also lost the thread of Warwick’s gambling and the odd attraction between Grissom and Sara). Still, I wouldn’t be disappointed if it won. I’d be a little surprised, though. This definitely wasn’t the best Sopranos series—an awful lot of the episodes felt like slow build-up to a climax that never came (and I hated that nonsensical dream sequence—if you’re going to do one, at least allow it to stand up to interpretation), but there were still moments that are more exquisite than just about any other show on television (The Wire is the only show I can think of that’s consistently better-written). So, my prediction: The Sopranos.

Comedy Series
Nominees: Arrested Development, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Everybody Loves Raymond, Sex and the City, Will & Grace

Comedy is more polarizing than any other TV genre. A couple of the shows on this list are undoubtedly high-quality, they’re just not my cup of tea. I’ve tried to watch Arrested Development and Curb Your Enthusiasm, but they’re not for me—I find AD frustrating and CYE too annoying to permit the possibility of pleasure. Everybody Loves Raymond I cannot stand, nor can I understand why anyone would think it has any merit whatsoever. I find it both resolutely unfunny and shockingly mean-spirited. Will & Grace isn’t part of my TV diet, but when I do see it, it strikes me as smart and funny. But Sex and the City was smart, funny, and convincing—although the characters and the situations were nothing like people and places that I know or particularly want to know, I believe they exist. Sure, there were some missteps last season—starting with Samantha’s cancer and moving through Charlotte’s infertility, Miranda’s exile to Brooklyn, and Carrie’s treatment by the Russian (Matt Haber wrote a great piece about the producers’ sadism for Slate)—but it still made me laugh a lot (and, I’m pretty sure, cry a little bit), so Sex and the City gets my nod for the Emmy.

Miniseries
Nominees: American Family—Journey of Dreams, Angels in America, Horatio Hornblower, Prime Suspect 6: The Last Witness, Traffic: The Miniseries

I didn’t see American Family or Horatio Hornblower, so I’ll have to exclude them from consideration. I didn’t like Angels in America—I didn’t like it when I saw it on stage years ago, either, so that’s no hard knock on HBO. Jeffrey Wright was awesome; Meryl Streep was fabulous as Ethel Rosenberg, not so good as the rabbi; Justin Kirk was great as Prior Walter (he’d better be by now); Emma Thompson was great as the angel, not so good as the nurse; but I can’t stand any of the Pitts, so the actors who played them left me cold. The whole play (I guess technically plays) strikes me as an overlong statement of the obvious, with a lot of business thrown in to distract the audience. I’m not a fan of Mike Nichols, either, so HBO had a hell of a task on their hands to win me over, so it’s no surprise that they failed. I was surprised by how much I enjoyed Traffic (though it wasn’t as good as the original or the Canadian miniseries Human Cargo that explored very similar material). Prime Suspect 6 certainly wasn’t the best Prime Suspect—I’d’ve liked a lot more of Tennyson’s private life; that strand has often been the juiciest material—but it was so much better than most shows on television that it deserves the Emmy. I don’t think it’ll win, though. Miniseries are over-rewarded at Emmy time (look how many statues the OK but nothing spectacular Door to Door won last year), and this year that’ll be even more true. My prediction: Angels in America.

Variety, Music, or Comedy Series
Nominees: Chapelle’s Show, The Daily Show With Jon Stewart, Late Night With Conan O’Brien, Late Show With David Letterman, Saturday Night Live

I should sit this one out since I’ve never been a late-night viewer. My guess, though, is that although The Daily Show’s political tendency could affect the voting (possibly positively if it’s really true what they say about Hollywood being liberal—though I never quite believe that since so many of them are rich) and the topical nature of the show limits the shelf life of the humor, Chapelle’s Show is too contentious/edgy to win an award. Prediction: The Daily Show With Jon Stewart.

Reality-Competition Program
Nominees: The Amazing Race, American Idol, The Apprentice, Last Comic Standing, Survivor

Here’s another one I should abstain from. I’m not a regular viewer of any of the reality shows (one series of Big Brother was enough for me), but it’s a genre that permeates the Zeitgeist more than most. Amazing Race may well be the best, but it’s between American Idol and The Apprentice for which has had most effect on people who didn’t watch a minute of the thing. I’m going to guess: American Idol.

Actor, Drama Series
Nominees: James Spader, The Practice; James Gandolfini, The Sopranos; Kiefer Sutherland, 24; Martin Sheen, The West Wing; Anthony LaPaglia, Without a Trace

I don’t watch The Practice, but I did read and hear from several people that James Spader single-handedly saved the show. Despite all that screen time and all those heroics, Kiefer Sutherland doesn’t really get to display a lot of range in 24—he’s always under pressure, always running, always aggressive. The whole business with his heroin addiction proved to be a silly Maguffin this season. Martin Sheen is just as good an actor as he always was, but his material was about half as good as it used to be—and besides, he’s playing a lame duck president now. Anthony LaPaglia is a good actor, but the Without a Trace role is one where he’s constantly having to swallow his personality or his desires, so it often feels like his performance is being muted. Tony Soprano certainly wasn’t muted this season—he gave free rein to his inner asshole—but he was always convincing. So, my prediction is: another Emmy for James Gandolfini.

Actress, Drama Series
Nominees: Jennifer Garner, Alias; Amber Tamblyn, Joan of Arcadia; Mariska Hargitay, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit; Edie Falco, The Sopranos; Allison Janney, The West Wing

I can’t speak to Garner and Tamblyn’s performances, since I don’t watch their shows. I’m not a regular viewer of L&O: SVU, but I’ve seen it enough to know that although Hargitay does the role very well, it’s another of those muted performances that doesn’t spotlight the kind of acting that wins awards. Allison Janney is a great actress, but she had nothing to do this season. The relationship with Ranger Rick was a nonevent, and although I don’t think she wanted to, Janney got to mail in her performance. Carmela is my favorite Soprano, but she was absent a lot this year, so she’s certainly not the lock she might’ve been in seasons past. Still, for the dinner party racism, the post-coital attempt to get help for college-placement help for AJ, and her not-so-subtle blackmailing of Tony, Edie Falco gets my bet.

Supporting Actor, Drama Series
Nominees: Victor Garber, Alias; Brad Dourif, Deadwood; Michael Imperioli, The Sopranos; Steve Buscemi, The Sopranos; John Spencer, The West Wing

Sorry Victor and Brad, I don’t watch Alias or Deadwood. John Spencer had some decent scenes this season, but like all the other West Wing actors, he just didn’t get a chance to strut his stuff. Steve Buscemi was the key character in the Sopranos series that ended in June, but he was too much of a cipher—his sudden snap that took him from the one righteous member of the family to a guy who cold-cocks the guy putting up the money for his massage therapy office wasn’t altogether convincing. Michael Imperioli has the advantage of a character who goes to extremes—from a sober 12-step evangelist to a guy who downs a bottle of vodka and injects himself with smack, from a loving fiancé to the guy who sends his intended to the Pine Barrens. My prediction: Even though we’ll never again hear Adriana yell, “Kristopha!” Michael Imperioli will go home with an Emmy.

Supporting Actress, Drama Series
Nominees: Robin Weigert, Deadwood; Tyne Daly, Judging Amy; Drea de Matteo, The Sopranos; Janel Moloney, The West Wing; Stockard Channing, The West Wing

I’m only familiar with the work of the last three nominees, and although Donna and Abigail were probably the only West Wing characters to have good years, this was an awesome season for Adriana, so I reckon Drea de Matteo will get the nod, despite the embarrassment of Joey.

Actor, Comedy Series
Nominees: Larry David, Curb Your Enthusiasm; John Ritter, 8 Simple Rules; Kelsey Grammer, Frasier; Matt LeBlanc, Friends; Tony Shalhoub, Monk

It’s always hard to beat a dead man, especially a popular one who died young and unexpectedly. I know he’s hugely popular, but I don’t like Larry David’s schtick, so I can’t tip him. Matt LeBlanc was the worst actor in Friends (and God knows, he had some competition from the other guys in the cast—by the end of the final series, David Schwimmer had turned into one long series of facial and vocal tics). I’ve always had a soft spot for Tony Shalhoub—I was shocked when, after years of watching Wings, I discovered he wasn’t really Italian—but Monk’s just not a very good show (though it’s good at being what it is—the 21st century version of Matlock). I wasn’t always a Frasier viewer, but the episodes of the last season that I saw were very good and very funny (the episode with Patrick Stewart as the opera director who fell for Frasier made me laugh even the second time around), and it seems likely that the voters will want to give a final statue to the longest-running character in TV comedy. My prediction: Kelsey Grammer.

Actress, Comedy Series
Nominees: Patricia Heaton, Everybody Loves Raymond; Jennifer Aniston, Friends; Bonnie Hunt, Life With Bonnie; Jane Kaczmarek, Malcolm in the Middle; Sarah Jessica Parker, Sex and the City

I can’t stand Everybody Loves Raymond, so I can’t even consider Patricia Heaton, and although I like Bonnie Hunt and Jane Kaczmarek, I don’t watch their shows. I don’t know when the Emmy votes were cast (the nominees were announced way back in July, so it’s hard to guess), so I don’t know if the long Friends farewell fest would’ve helped Jennifer Aniston’s vote total. Sarah Jessica Parker would’ve been subject to the same emotional assistance, though, and her work in her show’s final series was way more impressive than Aniston’s. So, I’ll go for Sarah Jessica Parker.

Supporting Actor, Comedy Series
Nominees: Jeffrey Tambor, Arrested Development; Brad Garrett, Everybody Loves Raymond; Peter Boyle, Everybody Loves Raymond; David Hyde Pierce, Frasier; Sean Hayes, Will & Grace

Brad Garrett and Peter Boyle, don’t think I’m even contemplating picking you out of the lineup. I liked Jeffrey Tambor much better in The Larry Sanders Show. Sean Hayes’ character goes through too many switcheroos to get a sense of what he’s capable of, and although Niles underwent his share of incredible plot twists in the final season of Frasier, my money’s on David Hyde Pierce to take home the Emmy.

Supporting Actress, Comedy Series
Nominees: Doris Roberts, Everybody Loves Raymond; Kim Cattrall, Sex and the City; Kristin Davis, Sex and the City; Cynthia Nixon, Sex and the City; Megan Mullally, Will & Grace

The conventional wisdom seems to be that the three Sex and the City nominees will split the HBO vote, leaving the door open for Doris Roberts. My hatred of Everybody Loves Raymond is stronger than my desire to predict accurately, so I’m giving it to Megan Mullally. It’s not just a process of elimination, however. With Debra Messing’s pregnancy limiting her involvement in the last series of Will & Grace, Karen’s character became even more central, so she deserves it. (She’s always been the element that makes the show special, but it was especially obvious last season.)

More Fall TV

2004-09-15T00:13:00.000-04:00

LAX (NBC, Monday at 10): After all that un-love for NBC, last night I saw a new fall show that I actually kind of liked, and of all things, it was the new Heather Locklear/Blair Underwood vehicle, LAX. I mean, it’s not exactly David Hare (which may not be a bad thing), but it was clever and entertaining and not too silly to be annoying.

The basic plot line was established in the opening moments when the airport manager (played by Tanner 88 himself, Michael Murphy) walks out onto the tarmac and kills himself with a landing 747). Then it’s the next morning and a Tannoy announcement spreads the word and acts like a combination of the precinct briefing in Hill Street Blues and the morning announcements on Degrassi: The Next Generation. Two hip-looking young dudes get the job of catching viewers up on what a thriving place LAX is and what a killer (geddit) job the dead man had: “The guy had over 16 million passengers a year, 700,000 takeoffs and landings, 60,000 employees. He had two police forces, CIA, Customs, the FBI, TSA, immigration, over 100 different airlines.”

From there, we move into some nice camerawork introducing the two main candidates to take the dead man’s job. Harley, played by Heather Locklear, came to the office still in her evening gear, but the intro was a nice piece of subtlety—we saw her feet, eventually her body (but her head was out of the frame), then her back, then she was in soft focus (but not too soft; it was cool, trust me), then half-reflected in a bathroom mirror, then in a car mirror … and then … by this time, even I, not part of the Heather Locklear demographic, was panting to finally see her.

After a little bit of funny business with the hip dude (he’s LAX’s version of CSI’s Greg, in other words), we move on to Roger, played by Blair Underwood, her dashing, handsome, African-American rival. He’s also fetishized—first we see just his hand, then his feet, then his back, his profile, then we see him fancying himself in some reflective glass at the foot of an elevator. They’re both cute but flawed (that whole driving to work straight from a night on the town thing for her; gambling for him).

There are some other by-the-numbers characters—the dude in the Hawaiian shirt (the chief air-traffic controller); the uptight, too-sure-of-herself woman (a dog-handling Customs agent); the gullible newbie (the most unconvincing immigration official evah); the flawed but dedicated peace officer (a boozer demoted from the bomb squad), the good-looking airline supervisor (my bet for the character who’ll turn out to be gay), etc.—but the show had a nice, kinetic energy, and some great music (including “Rose Rouge,” by St. Germain, one of my very favorite songs). Best of all, even with the personal distractions (Harley and Roger have history, which does allow for some good exchanges, like, “Kiss my ass.” “Been there.”), the show’s about work and trying to get along with your colleagues while you try to get ahead—and though you’d never know it since so many shows shy away from the topic, work makes a great subject for TV drama. (After all, isn’t that one of the reasons why The Wire is so brilliant?)

Of course, there were some frankly ridiculous moments—the naïve new immigration officer seemed to be learning for the first time that there are visitors to the United States that might indulge in a little deception to get into the country (what else do you suppose there is to learn at INS school?). The biggest “as if” moment came at the end, when a huge crowd of airport employees—naturally including the cast of characters we’d come to know during the pilot episode—ended their frantically busy day by going to meet Flight 174 from Shanghai, “the orphan plane.” Then, of course, their tired frowns turned to huge smiles as the new parents brought their new babies home for the first time—the Love, Actually moment when they introduced them to friends and family. (Apparently, they didn’t have to go through immigration—just walked right into the lounge, which, as any fule no, isn’t how it works after an international flight.) Still, I have to admit that even though I knew it was dumb, I got a little moist-eyed, especially when they showed the gay and lesbian couples with their new children. I’ll definitely watch LAX again.

Yeah, I Like Television; You Got a Problem With That?

2004-09-14T00:17:00.000-04:00

For years I fought my addiction to television—I intentionally chose not to watch the hyped-up new shows for fear of adding another hour to my weekly viewing schedule. Now I've just decided to let go, let TiVo, and this being the start of the new fall season, I'm falling for it hook, line, and season pass.

With the weird prolonged rollout, I've only seen three of the new shows, and none of them are threatening my career yet.

Joey (NBC, Thursday at 8): Talk about a nothing-burger. Since the big structural differences between Friends and Joey are that he’s now alone and in Los Angeles, I guess it’s an In & Out Nothing-Burger. Matt LeBlanc’s a one-note actor (and, memo to the writing room: He’s dumb, we get it; it’s not that funny), and although I yield to no one in my love for Adriana La Cerva, I concluded from the pilot that Drea de Matteo can’t really act either. (I had to rewind on several occasions just to figure out what she said—a problem I never had on The Sopranos.) I don’t get what role the cute, married attorney neighbor is supposed to perform. Perhaps she’s the Monica character—someone who’ll indulge his cute stupidity and explain stuff to him; and I guess the bright nephew is Chandler, a smart guy (let’s hope he’s not quite that smart-mouthed) who’ll sort out the big fat mess he makes of his love life.

Medical Investigation (NBC, Friday at 10): OK, we’ve finally found a forensics investigation-type show that I won’t watch. As I wrote elsewhere about another canceled “all the members of my supersmart team are frowning really hard and talking into high-tech walky-talkies until we solve this problem that’ll kill us all if we don’t figure out the solution in the next three minutes” show, the problem with programs like this is that none of the characters can crack a smile for the entire hour because it’s all so damned serious and deadly. This one is also deadly dull. The lead actor, Neal McDonough, has a face that can only play cops, and the short-handing on the inevitable “I sacrificed my family so I could protect my country” motif was just plain lazy. Television is supposed to be fun. The new season isn’t looking good for NBC thus far.

Jack & Bobby (WB, Sunday at 9): I agree with the Surfergirl—once you know which one of the McCallister brothers is the president of the future, what’s to watch for? The pilot was interesting enough—Jack is appealing and good-looking, and I got a sense of what it must be like to be the big brother reluctantly accepting the burden of making sure his weird little brother adjusts to high-school life; Bobby was quirky and “different” without seeming self-conscious—finally an eccentric and lonely teen who is also quite charming with a personality that’s heart-wrenching without resorting to pity. Christine Lahti is a good actress, but her part’s a bit one-dimensional; she’s a pot-smoking professor mom who wants the best for her boys, but it seems that in every exchange she ends up cajoling and shouting at whoever she’s talking to. (And, professor, don’t get involved with guy from K Street—he’s a pornography addict.) The West Wing-influenced elements (one of the J&B producers served time on TWW) were fun, but that whole flashback from the future thing was done so well in the Spanish movie Noviembre/November that I couldn’t help thinking of the awesome film rather than the so-so TV show. I’d probably watch it again, but without much enthusiasm.

(Weirdly, the theme of a mother treating two brothers differently because one boy had been sick came up in the great Israeli movie about selfishness and selflessness, Bonjour, Monsieur Schlomi, which I saw on Sunday. It was spooky to see the whole mother-brothers theme played out again so soon afterward.)

La Zarzuela en Zaragoza Es Gozosa

2004-09-07T16:46:00.000-04:00

I saw La Mala Educación/Bad Education in England, and I must confess I don’t know quite what to think. I need to see it at least one more time before I make the genius/junk call, I think.

Still, in the long and somewhat unsatisfactory profile of Almodóvar by Lynne Hirschberg in this week’s New York Times Magazine, Gael García Bernal complained about being forced to disguise his Mexican accent for his role in the movie: "He wanted a Spanish accent and that is a colonialist thing. The Spanish accent sounds like … Flemish to me. But Pedro is a very specific person with a very personal point of view."

Where to begin? Peninsular Spanish as Flemish? Total crap—unless, perhaps, García Bernal is channeling his inner Dutchman. And it hardly seems like cutting-edge verisimilitude to insist that a character who’s supposed to have grown up in rural Spain wouldn’t talk like someone from 6,000 miles away! That character already has problems establishing his identity—a foreign accent would sure help a lot.

Reliving the Olympics

2004-09-06T21:57:00.000-04:00

Although it was wonderful to be in Britain during the Olympics—whatever I may have said about CBC, the BBC was much, much better; sure, they spent a lot of time focusing on the sports that Britain is good at (otherwise, how would I have seen so much sailing—yawn—rowing, and cycling), but also providing great coverage of the rest of the events—I did miss out on the North American coverage (and also on blogs like this one, which I would’ve been checking out constantly if I’d been living my “normal” life).

Before I left, I bought a new TiVo with a 140-hour hard drive so that I could tape a whole bunch of Olympics coverage and enjoy it upon my return. I’ve started at the beginning, with the Canadian and U.S. coverage of Day 1, which we missed altogether because we were in airplanes. After only one day’s worth, I know for sure that I’m going to hate the NBC version. Bob Costas is so full of himself, it’s almost impossible to watch—at the start of every show, and often at the start of a new segment, he has to play the sports poet, treating the sporting events as if they were a matter of life or death (especially hard to take when we are, like it or not, at war). I wouldn’t mind if the writing was any good, but it’s not—it’s just ponderous and portentous instead of inspiring and/or illuminating. And Jimmy Roberts? I can’t talk about him—there are still 15 days to go, and if I think about his schlock too much, I’ll go off the Games.

What I never understand is why NBC allow some comments to go by unchallenged. For example, after U.S. gymnast Blaine Wilson’s first-day fall from the high bar, when he was whining (reasonably enough if NBC’s presentation of the last-minute judging-standards change can be trusted) about having had to incorporate new elements into his long-established routine, he said, referring to the Japanese judge whose decision had necessitated his disastrous routine-change, “If you can’t beat us fairly …”—an outrageous, open accusation of cheating on the part of a judge on behalf of his own nation. Did NBC offer any reaction or follow-up? Hell, no.

It really was unfortunate for the fragile, at times, U.S. psyche that Michael Phelps came across as a vapid car-loving blandoid, while Ian Thorpe is a smart, articulate superstar. Phelps is still young, but Thorpe is only 21, just two years older. Thorpedo's the kind of guy who would've been a star no matter what field he'd gone into; Phelps is now famous because he has the perfect body for swimming and has worked his ass off to become one of the best in the world, but he has nothing to say for himself and seems to have about two brain cells in that permanently conjested head of his.

Back to the Brits: The BBC TV presenters were almost too informal—dressed in super-casual clothes and just leaning on the set most of the time. (I’m a life-long slumper/sloucher, even I was upset by their terrible posture.) No suits or poetry for them.

And who could have guessed that Sue Barker would’ve turned out so well? Back when I was a mad, crazy women's tennis fan, Sue was a rather dull girl who didn’t do much to stand out among the players. I thought she sublimated her own fame and success amazingly well—for example, in her interview with the mega-gold-winners Mark Spitz, Carl Lewis, and Steven Redgrave, she didn’t stop to correct them when Spitz and, to a lesser extent, Lewis treated her like a dumb blonde who didn’t know anything about being an athlete or winning a major world title. (She was always surprisingly good with her obviously gay fans. I remember a Barker-freak who was as butch as they come, with major visible tattoos—and this is back in the late-'70s/early '80s when tattoos were fewer and farther between—who would get a kind word and an occasional ticket from la Sue. I suspect my own internalized homophobia would’ve driven me to give said fan a wide berth.)

Bye Bye, Booknotes

2004-09-06T13:29:00.000-04:00

This week’s Booknotes was a classic example of why I’ll be gutted when the show goes off the air in December. Few weeks have passed in the last decade or so that I haven’t watched Booknotes—I often watch with one eye on a newspaper or magazine, but when it engages, it’s one of the most compelling shows on television.

I have often found it most interesting when the book is one I’d never consider reading—perhaps because I know less about those subjects and so have most to learn. (For instance, from this year: Martin Marty on Martin Luther and David Cay Johnston on the U.S. tax code.) This week’s writer was Richard Viguerie, author of America's Right Turn: How Conservatives Used New and Alternative Media to Take Power. As Viguerie himself admitted, he got no interest in the book from established publishers, even on the right, so he went with a small house, Bonus Books, based in the publishing powerhouse of Santa Monica. Brian Lamb didn’t spend a ton of time on the book itself; this can sometimes be a bad sign, there have been cases recently where the author just couldn’t handle the kind of close questioning that Lamb dishes out—I’m thinking of Alyn Brodsky, who was just too forgetful, and Nikki Giovanni, who was just too quirky (besides which, it’s kind of hard to treat poetry like other nonfiction)—but in this case, it was that Lamb recognized that the interest was in Viguerie’s life and career, not whatever truisms he’d dug up (with a co-author) for this book.

Viguerie is a conservative who pretty much established direct mail marketing as a fund-raising (and consciousness-raising) tool. He didn’t talk about the computer programs he used (thank God), but there was some fascinating detail about the way he went about gathering the first lists of conservative names and addresses. I was surprised to hear the vehemence with which he distinguished between conservatives (he’s definitely one) and Republicans (they’re the people conservatives have to go through to enact their agenda). He talked about how he would definitely not work for a client he disagreed with, but he gave a very revealing example about a client who he had been sure he’d never work with, but then circumstances changed: For years, he’d disliked Rudy Giuliani, but as soon as he ran against Hillary Clinton … It was one of the highest fund-raising returns he’s ever generated.

Brian Lamb has cut down on his most famous habit of asking super-basic questions—“Who was George Washington?”—perhaps because it’s just too awkward when guests don’t know about the tactic and think he really doesn’t know who Karl Marx is. He is a bit of a prude, though. I notice that when he reads excerpts from books, he’ll often make little tweaks like “BS” for “bullshit, though this week he did say “bastards.”

Building a Bridge to the 21st Century

2004-09-05T21:44:00.000-04:00

R and I had talked about going down to Tacoma today to see the Andy Goldsworthy show, but in the end we couldn’t face the drive (we’re both still coping with the last—I hope—of our jetlag), so we decided instead to see the Santiago Calatrava exhibition at the Henry. The University District was packed with people in purple and gold off to support the Dawgs in the first football game of the season, but the Henry’s galleries were depressingly quiet.

We’ve had a bit of a Calatrava thing going on the last two years—last year we went to Bilbao to write a travel series about that city and got to marvel at his fabulous Zubizuri bridge as well as the wonderful airport; then this year we went to Manchester for the same reason and stayed at a hotel that is connected to the rest of the city by Trinity Bridge, designed by the great man (it’s the hotel’s logo as well), so we walked over it at least a couple of times every single day we were there.

The show mostly consisted of architectural models (fascinating things but a little cold) and his incredible sketchbooks. I adore seeing writers’ and artists’ sketchbooks/journals—some of the things I remember most clearly in decades of museum-going are pages from Anne Frank’s journals in Amsterdam, Vincent van Gogh’s letters and sketchbooks in the same city (though there were even more fascinating examples of van Gogh’s “rough” work in the Kroller-Muller exhibition currently at SAM). Calatrava’s sketches, drawings, and watercolors were almost too perfect—if those really were his initial sketches, the man’s an automaton.

There’s a 52-minute movie that features him speaking to camera and shows him sketching out and explaining his work. The video is too long (30 minutes is as long as it’s comfortable to sit still in a cold gallery with other visitors coming and going all around), but it was fascinating and revealing. As well as being a brilliant engineer, the guy’s a very gifted artist, which I guess is the definition of a great architect.

At $8, it’s feels a little pricey for folks without a ton of disposable income, but I’d definitely recommend it, not so much for people interested in architecture, but definitely for anyone interested in witnessing an artist’s creative process.

And the Award for Worst TV Awards Show Goes To ...

2004-09-03T01:12:00.000-04:00

Best-value television in a long time Tuesday night: The Fifth Annual Latin Grammy Awards on CBS. It started on a high note in the opening number, with David Bisbal grabbing onto the giant belt buckle of his white jumpsuit in his solo and then, just a few minutes later, dry-humping Jessica Simpson with this shit-eating grin on his face, like they were having real rather than fake sex. Jessica Simpson looked like she was on the verge of laughing right in his face, so immense was the provocation of his ridiculous hair, clothes, and facial expression.

George Lopez was dreadful. The constant wardrobe changes I could take—not understand, but take; I know short guys can be insecure—but the patter? Unforgivable. CBS bleeped several of his “jokes.” If only they’d bleeped the rest of them. (Actually they just silenced the sound, which is a much more effective way of leaving listeners with no idea what was said than bleeping; when you get an aural cue, you can look up quickly and try to read lips—you don’t have to have worked in a mill to understand the most frequently used expletives deleted.) I couldn't figure out how CBS decided what to bleep. According to MSNBC, “Lopez said he understood that President George W. Bush speaks some Spanish. He then uttered some of the language [which CBS bleeped] in a phrase that, politely translated, means: ‘Don’t lie to me.’ In English, he joked that it meant: ‘Good luck in your future endeavors. ’ ” So, a lame political swipe they censor, but referring to William Hung as “the little chinito” they kept? (Lopez must’ve known that he’d gone too far on that one—he repeated the phrase “little chinito” referring to Ozomatli’s percussionist, who’s of, erm, Japanese descent, but pretty unconvincingly.)

I felt worst for the non-musicians who were called upon to present the awards (for one thing, they would have at least three people for each one—but they usually didn’t even have any lines of humorous dialogue, and it doesn’t take that many people to say, “And the nominations for Best Album are …” and then after the tape had run, “And the winner of the Latin Grammy is …” I felt particularly bad for Wilmer Valderrama, who I was shocked to hear really does speak like Fes in That ‘70s Show. He was stuck with some egomaniacal rapper with a political agenda—his parting shot was that he hoped a Latino rapper could be president one day. Let’s hope so, but please Allah, not that one. Wilmer’s girlfriend, Lindsay Lohan, also had a cringe-inducing exchange with her co-presenter, Carlos Santana. She thanked him for his music, and he wished her the best of luck in her future endeavors. Carlos took away the “Worst Reading From Cue-Cards” award, and believe me, he had competition (including from craptacular G-Lo, who at one point started to read his own introduction and had to step away superquick).

I also couldn’t figure out how they chose which awards to put in the telecast—a lot of the ones they elected to televise were won by artists who weren’t present (including two Spaniards—Alejandro Sanz, the night’s big winner, and Rosario—the matadora from Talk to Her, for anyone who doesn’t know her shockingly catchy music). The other big winner was Maria Rita, who I’d heard for the first time that morning on NPR's Morning Edition and who, for reasons I couldn’t quite put my finger on, I’d immediately taken against. Let’s see: very unimpressive audio samples and what felt like excessive self-reverence. I guess I don’t care for contemporary MPB—I’ve now given Bebel Gilberto two chances, having bought both her albums, but I can’t bring myself to like them.

There were some good bits—the number with Bebo Valdes and Diego el Cigala, with Paquito D’Rivera guesting; having people speak Spanish on prime-time network television; seeing Spanish-language ads on prime-time network television—in fact, the whole campy train wreck was irresistible, but it was one of the most amateur awards shows I’ve ever seen, up to and including several late Saturday night “image” award shows (always MC’d by Jimmy Smits for some reason) on the UHF channels.

PS: I was SHOCKED to see an ad for the next Adam Sandler movie, Spanglish, because the lead actress appears to be Paz Vega. Judging from the trailer, I thought Vega’s character was married to Sandler’s, but the IMDB summary suggests otherwise. Phew!

Help Wanted

2004-08-31T21:19:00.000-04:00

Some friends who are having a baby in six weeks or so asked me to put together a CD to play during the birth! I imagine they had soothing strings and breathing sounds, perhaps some whales, in mind, but I’ve always had a soft spot for thematic compilations, so I’m thinking more along the lines of “(Push Push) in the Bush” and “Love Will Tear Us Apart.”

Any more ideas?

Manchester, So Much To Answer For

2004-08-31T18:03:00.000-04:00

My mysterious absence over the last two weeks is explained here (two entries published so far; three more TK—one for each day of the week sort of thing).

Two weeks in a five-star hotel was very nice indeed, thank you very much. That it happened to be the one in which Madonna stayed (though I had absolutely no idea—I was totally jetlagged the night we slept under the same roof), and that we were woken one morning (not that it was early) by screaming fans of the group (adopts old-style high-court judge intonation) "Westlife" was merely an added bonus. R, whose knowledge of pop culture is gained exclusively by walking through the room when I’m watching television, asked a young girlie who on earth Westlife were. The young woman just proffered a photo of the group that she happened to be holding. R just nodded and said, “Ah!”

Actually, my biggest thrill was seeing so many Mancunian males sporting the “funky chop” haircut. Not because I liked it, but because I can finally picture WTP is going on with K’s hair.

I [Heart] the CBC Olympic Coverage

2004-08-13T12:24:00.000-04:00

My love letter to the CBC is in Slate today. In the interests of snark, I had to exaggerate my feelings rather. Should anyone doubt it, let me say it loud and pround: I love you, Canada!

Only 30 minutes to go. (Thank God I have a television in my office. For keeping up with the news. Yeah, that's the ticket.)

I Didn't Hate It

2004-08-11T17:14:00.000-04:00

I’ve never seen worse reviews for an important director’s movie than Spike Lee got for She Hate Me.* (Slate’s “Summary Judgment” rounded them up here. An example: Entertainment Weekly called it "racist, homophobic, utterly fake, and unbearably tedious.")

I saw it last night, and while there’s no doubt it is deeply, deeply flawed, I certainly didn't hate it. First, the movie’s problems: At two hours 20 minutes, it’s at least 50 minutes too long. There are about eight big themes, which is about six more than it needed and could handle. Similarly, there are WAY too many characters (just because you can get big stars to do cameos, it doesn’t mean you should). Some of the acting was atrocious (Woody Harrelson should be banned from movies on the basis of this performance). The political content was laughably lame and tin-eared (though, predictably, it was very well-received by the Seattle audience). And, I swear, I would’ve walked out if they’d inserted one more absolutely unnecessary explanatory clause along the lines of (NOT verbatim; the real thing was even worse) “Watergate, a break-in that revealed massive corruption at the very highest levels of government and brought down a president” or “The XFL, that lame-ass fake National Football League rip-off.”

The highlight was very definitely Kerry Washington, who played the “she” of She Hate Me: the main protagonist’s former girlfriend, now a lesbian who brings him some serious cash by introducing him to 18 rich, successful, and mostly glamorous Sapphists who want his sperm for $10,000 a sex act. It’s a ridiculous role, but she manages to turn a character written as a two-dimensional ball-buster into a sympathetic, loving person we’d all be overjoyed to spend the rest of our lives with. For a young actor, she’s done some amazingly good work, apparently under the radar. She was the lead in the underappreciated movie Lift (which also starred SHM actor Lonette McKee, who doesn’t seem to get much work even though she’s always wonderful). She was also outstanding in The Human Stain, where for my money she outshone Nicole Kidman and Sir Anthony Hopkins, which is no small feat. (She was also excellent in the very hot girl-on-girl action in She Hate Me.)

Spike Lee does something intangible very well. Even when I dislike the characters, the setting, and the plot, I almost always end up being emotionally overwhelmed by his films. For all its many faults, that was definitely the case with She Hate Me, and it counts for a lot.

*OK, Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut got even bigger pans, but c’mon, it deserved them.

I [Heart] American Candidate

2004-08-05T00:17:00.000-04:00

I put off watching American Candidate for a couple of days—it seemed like the kind of show that you record because it sounds worthy and then don’t watch because you’re too busy taking in the ancient episodes of The Simpsons and Law & Order that TiVo has gathered in its suggestions folder. I’m glad I hit play before its place was taken by English soaps and Olympic documentaries.

Man, that’s some good television! The first episode had it all—candidates you can't dislike, even when you disagree with them on just about every issue, aggravating SOBs who you know you’re going to love to hate so you hope they won’t be eliminated too quickly, weird ciphers, freaky ciphers, and interesting, cool peeps.

Poor Chrissy Gephardt—she turned out to be a sacrificial lamb. Being the first person eliminated is the reality show equivalent of finishing fourth in the Olympic trials: “the worst place in the world,” as they liked to tell us on NBC. First her dad drops out after he’s expected to do well (wasn’t he the first candidate eliminated during the primaries?), then the pretend candidate with the real-world political pedigree gets sent home the first week. 2004 hasn’t been kind to the Gephardts’ electoral ambitions. The triumphalism of the other candidates was a little hard to take—weird LA guy Bob had a ridiculous speech in the voting booth in which he said he’d been looking forward to making change with her, but then after watching her in action, he was disappointed to find “she couldn’t joust.” Joust? Well, he had just gotten medieval on her ass in the booth.

It’s clear that the most important element to the game is a good campaign manager. Chrissy chose a pal, which is nice—John was a sweet, loving guy who gave her great support when she got the ax—but he wasted too much time at the beginning, pratting about waiting to find out if Patrick Kennedy was going to make it to the rally (and I guess that was a no—never trust a Kennedy, Chrissy!). And in the end, press releases just didn’t matter—it was all about getting bums on seats in the rally venue. With Chrissy’s contacts, she should’ve been working the phones, lining up people to pack her rally. It didn’t matter who they were—you don’t get more points for one of the attendees being a Kennedy or a former majority leader. Hell, Joyce didn’t even have a venue for her rally until a few hours before the event, and she got the third-largest tally. (She also has a very tall, pale shadow for a campaign manager. He’s about as much use as a plastic poker.)

Chrissy and her campaign manager disparaged Keith’s decision to have his boyfriend be his campaign manager (“there’s a breakup [waiting to happen]”), but Keith was fierce, voting with his heart rather than tactically to remove the other gay candidate, even though his partner recommended otherwise. I love Bruce’s CM, transsexual Kayla, though she seems a strange choice for the job, since she doesn’t seem to have any experience, nor does she seem to feel particularly comfortable with people, which would seem to be requirement of retail politics. I usually don’t care for animal-rights activists (they tend not to support a woman’s right to enjoy bullfighting), but Bruce sure seemed like a cool Christian.

Park is going down—or I sure hope so. He’s the front-runner because he’s from Hicksville and could turn out a lot of folks to his rally. It gave him a lot of power in the tied first elimination event, but his heavy-handed attempts teach Chrissy Gephardt a lesson about the evils of abortion weren’t very tactful. I guess I shouldn’t be so harsh on a guy who’s done relief work in Africa, but he is one unbearable Bob Jones U. graduate.

The ultimate reality show: Fijase en ese!

More Like the Queen of Bitches

2004-08-02T18:43:00.000-04:00

I saw The Manchurian Candidate on Sunday—a nice bit of mainstream Hollywood fare well worth the 50-minute wait for the bus (as the woman waiting with me said, “I defend Metro to all my friends, and then …”). Meryl Streep is amazingly, brilliantly, wickedly fabulous. (Though why everyone’s comparing her character to Hillary Clinton, just because they’re both white, fiftysomething, female senators who were married to powerful but disappointing men before they were elected to the upper chamber, I just can’t fathom. All the reviews that make this parallel cite similar hairstyles as evidence for the claim. Streep had the same hair-do in The Hours; critics, if you’re going to make the comparison, at least have the guts to do it for the right reasons!)

As you may have heard, the queen of diamonds is absent from this version of the movie, replaced by a trigger phrase. At school, my friends and I were obsessed with developing a secret word that would—how to put this tactfully, or at least without grossing out every single reader that wanders over here—act as a laxative. We all claimed we wanted to achieve this trick in order to solve the terrible problem of constipation, but we knew it really was so we could whisper said word when one of us was called to the front of the class to solve a math problem.

Perhaps the oddest part of the movie was the echo between the implausible whiff of incest between Streep’s Sen. Eleanor Prentiss Shaw and her son, vice-presidential nominee Rep. Raymond Shaw, and the very odd (though, I’m sure, quite innocent) opening line of Vanessa Kerry’s speech to the Democratic Convention last Thursday: “As someone who knows all 6 foot 4 inches of my dad best …”

Sitting in the Garden, Looking at the Peaches

2004-08-01T20:10:00.000-04:00

Garden peaches

Yesterday evening, R came in from the garden bearing peaches. Last year, it was all about the plums. This year the plums are underachieving, but the peaches and pears are in overdrive.

I feel slightly odd eating fruit from the garden—it feels like stealing. Everyone knows you're supposed to get your food from the store. (The exception to this rule is the tomato—my dad and grandad were both keen tomato-growers, and family gatherings often included discussions of trusses.)

Invasion of the Body-Snatchers

2004-08-01T01:16:00.000-04:00

I just finished reading Murder in the 4th Estate, by Peter Deeley and Christopher Walker, a 1971 book about Britain’s first kidnapping, which I bought last week, more or less randomly, at Powell’s in Portland.

I’m not quite sure why I even picked it up—though I suspect it was its location in the journalism section of the store. Muriel McKay, the victim, was married to Alick McKay, an Australian newspaper executive, who a few weeks before the Dec. 29, 1969, kidnapping, had been named to the No. 2 spot at what was at the time the world’s largest-circulation newspaper, the News of the World. He’d been hired from rival publishing group IPC by his compatriot Rupert Murdoch, who’d just survived a drawn-out and acrimonious battle for the paper with Robert Maxwell. The crime occurred just weeks after Murdoch launched the Sun, in the words of the book, “a brash, campaigning tabloid with a healthy predilection for printing photographs of semi-naked girls.” Apparently, the kidnappers, two Trinidadian brothers with little talent for crime, were after Murdoch’s wife (of the time), Anna.

Told in a very straightforward, non-sensationalistic style by two broadsheet-newspaper staff writers, the details were hardly very scintillating (there’s no attempt to speculate on McKay’s treatment post-abduction, for example), but it was fascinating to see how rudimentary British police methods were 35 years ago—even elite London police had no access to tape recorders, much less effective bugging devices or helicopters. In these days of CSI, Cold Case Files, and Without a Trace, the 1969 investigation seems like the work of the Keystone Kops.

The police never found Muriel McKay’s body, and the contrast between the apparently efficient abduction and the laughable attempts to squeeze a ransom out of the victim’s family led to speculation that a third party was involved at the beginning of the crime but that he or she walked away when they realized that the person snatched was not Anna Murdoch. At the trial, Arthur Hosein, the older brother, claimed that Robert Maxwell was behind the kidnapping. At the time the book was written, Maxwell was an outsider in elite British society—as an Eastern European Jew he never exactly fit in—but he’d been an MP and was part of the Establishment, and the claim was dismissed as "untenable." These days, 13 years after his mysterious death at sea, outlandish speculation about his wild life of crime and intrigue is pretty much the norm.

Because of McKay’s journalism connections, I was reminded of the Patty Hearst case, which obsessed me when I was a kid. At this year’s SIFF I saw Guerrilla: The Taking of Patty Hearst (which now appears to have been renamed Neverland: The Rise and Fall of the Symbionese Liberation Army), a slightly credulous documentary whose interesting topic almost makes up for bog-standard storytelling technique. As in the case of the Hearsts, the McKay family’s press connections fed a media frenzy that severely hampered the investigation of the crime.

I don’t remember anything about the McKay case, but I have a very clear memory of the 1975 kidnapping and death of Lesley Whittle, by Leslie Nielson, the "Black Panther." Adam Mars-Jones, whose father was a high-court judge, wrote an incredible story about Nielson, his crimes, and his trial called “Bathpool Park.” (In Britain it appeared in the collection Lantern Lecture and Other Stories; it’s available in Fabrications in the United States.) If you only read one creepy and brilliant story about a British kidnapping, let it be “Bathpool Park.” Weirdly enough, I was just looking at the story, and according to Mars-Jones, Nielson studied Murder in the 4th Estate when he was planning his own kidnap operation.

(I hadn’t thought what good literature kidnapping has helped create before tonight. I loved Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s News of a Kidnapping, and although the crime in Bel Canto isn’t a standard kidnapping, holding hostages for ransom is, well, kidnapping, right? I’ve also written quite a bit about body-snatching myself.)

Adventures in Novelty Dentistry, Part 145

2004-07-29T19:42:00.000-04:00

I am DIAGNOdent. I will diagnose you.

Is It a Movie Treatment? Is It a Storyboard? No, It's a Graphic Novel

2004-07-28T11:48:00.000-04:00

I loved Birth of a Nation, a new graphic novel with a story by Aaron McGruder and Reginald Hudlin and illustrations by Kyle Baker. The concept—outraged by being disenfranchised by shoddy electoral procedures, the city of East St. Louis secedes from the United States and becomes the independent nation of Blackland—is smart, and there are enough interesting subplots—a banker with a killer scam, renewable energy, a convenience-store-owning sleeper, and bougie armchair radicals who drive down to Blackland to live the revolution, to name but a few—to keep things moving once the main theme is established. The Bush, I mean Caldwell, administration is played for laughs, which is too bad in some ways, since the writing is weaker in those sections than in the rest of the book, and Mayor, later President, Fred Fredericks is a rare portrayal of a devoted public servant. On the whole (I wasn’t too keen on some of the fluorescent highlights), the art was great.

I’m no comic-book queen. I have maybe one and a half shelves of comics and graphic novels, and they tend toward the political side of things—Dykes to Watch Out For a-go-go, Maus, the collected works of Joe Sacco, etc., so maybe I just don’t know the genre, but my big complaint about Birth of a Nation was the way that its style shifted from comic book to screenplay at times.

For the vast majority of the book, the characters spoke directly (there were no speech bubbles here, the dialogue appeared underneath the panels, but still …), but from time to time, it became more indirect. For example, on Page 43, alongside an illustration of guys entering a room under heavy manners, it says, “There are noises of people outside the room. A secretary’s voice is heard. ‘Wait … you can’t just—” Even a small slip like that was jarring, but on some pages, there are whole paragraphs of exposition, and in most cases, they didn’t feel necessary. In the spots where more explanation was needed, it would have worked better if the information had been presented by some kind of narrator, so that the direct manner of address could be maintained.

I suspect the problem is that the creators hurried to get the book out during the 2004 election season. In the (fascinating) introduction, Hudlin mentions that he and McGruder originally conceived of the project as a movie, but the studios all passed. For the most part, they succeeded in turning movie storyboards into the panels of a graphic novel, but there were a few spots where the transition didn’t go far enough.

Funnily enough, in Slate on Monday, Aleksandar Hemon talked about books that appear to have been written and published with the primary intention of snagging a movie deal. Birth of a Nation isn’t a movie treatment disguised as a novel, it’s a movie treatment repurposed as a comic book.

Law & Order: Special Plagiarism Unit

2004-07-27T17:32:00.000-04:00

One of the TV shows I watched Saturday night, when I was too tired even to turn the pages in the books I’d just bought at Powell’s, was a rerun of Law & Order: Special Titillation Unit that bore a remarkable similarity to the 2003 Mexican movie Nicotina.

I don’t mean to suggest plagiarism—as the cable guy once said when I suggested it was too great of a coincidence that my TV stopped working the day he came to tweak something, “That’s what a coincidence is.”

The episode of SVU, called “Surveillance,” concerned a concert cellist, who is attacked in her apartment. When detectives investigate the scene of the crime, they discover several Webcams hooked up to various rooms in her apartment. She’s being spied on by an obsessed computer geek while carrying on a relationship with the orchestra’s maestro.

In Nicotina, a computer geek, who happens to manage an apartment building, places Webcams in the apartment of one of the tenants with whom he's obsessed—a concert cellist who’s involved with her orchestra’s conductor.

Nicotina has way more going for it—hot diamonds; lots more characters, including Russian gangsters; the recurring theme of smoking and attempts to give it up; and Diego Luna (of Y Tu Mamá También fame and Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights infamy). Still, it’s a small world …

From Senegal to Portland

2004-07-26T23:50:00.000-04:00

A fabulous birthday weekend, starting with Youssou N’Dour at the Paramount Friday night. I’ve never been to the Paramount before (unless forced to testify under oath, I will deny having seen Miss Saigon there; it would be an insult to the sublime Madama Butterfly—and the tickets were free, so since I didn’t hand over any dosh, I feel that my position is morally defensible), and I wasn’t quite sure how the whole no-seats thing would work. It was outrageously simple—seats in the upper tier and the downstairs cleared for dancing.

Unfortunately, it seemed like the setup confused more than just me; until pretty far into the set, when some of the upstairs people came downstairs to dance, the room was only about one-third full.

Still, people were into it. With four percussionists, two guitars, two keyboards, a backup singer (an insult to her role, but words fail me), and his longtime bassist/side man Habib Faye, they rocked out. Africans were dancing alongside Swedes. I doubt there have ever been so many returned Peace Corps volunteers in one Seattle room. Robert Christgau wasn’t far out when he called N’Dour “the world’s greatest pop voice,” and he put on a hell of a show—despite the relatively thin audience.

On Saturday morning, we headed down to Portland. It was a hideous day for the ride—the temperature reached 100º F, and traffic was snarled almost all the way. Both R and I were reminded of Lisbon—triple-digit temperatures and trams whizzing by. It’s been a long time since I lived in a warm climate, and I’ve definitely softened up. The heat was nothing compared to D.C., where I lived for five years—none of that hideous humidity—but it’s enervating to walk through a door into what feels like a fan blowing hot air into your face.

Because of the weather and my general lightweight-ness, we didn’t get a lot done or wander very far—the weekend was basically about 12 hours in Powell’s, two meals in Manzana, Saturday night supper snagged at Whole Foods (not a patch on the Seattle store, BTW, living proof that layout is everything) and eaten in the hotel room, and quick pops to Oblation, Reading Frenzy, and the comic/p0rn store two doors down. Fabulous!