Is it just me, or can the fact that NBC is using Sam & Dave’s “Hold On, I’m Coming” to promote Jay Leno’s forthcoming 10 p.m., five-night-a-week talk show kind of be taken as a dig at Conan O’Brien’s rocky-out-of-the-gates stewardship of The Tonight Show? Leno hasn’t been gone that long, really; it’s not like he’s a prizefighter coming out of retirement, or an actress coming back the small screen after a couple years of maternity leave. It’s just a weird song choice to me. Aimed at the segment of the old Tonight Show audience who wouldn’t know the Masturbating Bear from Comic the Insult Triumph Dog, the subtext seems to be, “Yeah, yeah… we know: but now you’ll get Jay earlier, and can go to bed at 11:10 after catching some local news, instead of 11:50, after his monologue!”
Daily Archives: September 6, 2009
The Burning Plain
In his screenplays for Amores Perros, 21 Grams and Babel, Guillermo Arriaga traded in a non-linear style, jumping back and forth from different settings and through different periods of time, and interlacing emotionally charged, seemingly discrete, sometimes convoluted narrative tapestries in a manner that, to critics, made his work seem as much about the artifice and construction as the actual characters. His directorial debut, The Burning Plain, evidences all these same old tricks, but generally ranks out among the better of his works, excepting a bit of curious overwriting.
In Mexico, a young motherless girl, Maria (Tessa Ia), lives happily with her father and his best friend until a tragic accident changes her life. In the New Mexico bordertown of Las Cruces, two teenagers, Mariana (Jennifer Lawrence) and Santiago (J.D. Pardo), find love in the aftermath of their parents’ sudden deaths. In an abandoned trailer, Mariana’s mother, Gina (Kim Basinger), embarks on a passionate affair. In Oregon, restaurant manager Sylvia (Charlize Theron) masks a sexually charged storm within via a cool, professional demeanor. When a stranger from Mexico confronts her about her mysterious past, though, Sylvia is launched forward into a journey through space and time that inextricably connects her to these disparate characters, all of whom are grappling with their own tragic romantic destinies.
Stylistically, The Burning Plain is more of a piece with Tommy Lee Jones’ dusty, restrained work behind the camera on The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada, which Arriaga also wrote. Smartly eschewing the frantic nature of Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu’s directing style, Arriaga also showcases a nice touch working with his actors; the performances in the movie are subdued and naturalistic.
Strangely, most of the film’s faults lay in its writing and construction. While his work is characterized by a novelistic depth where a character’s actions need not be explained immediately (or sometimes at all), Arriaga still doesn’t seem to completely trust his audience. Action is sometimes edited at odds with the emotion of a given scene. More bafflingly, Arriaga seems not content with the mere presentation of metaphor; he instead drags the movie’s subtext up to the surface, ladling on talk of capital-S scars both physical and emotional. This grates, but makes the rightness of the film’s slightly removed ending all the more acute, and striking. (Magnolia, R, 111 minutes)
Time for President Obama to Invite Crazies to New Jack Swing…
He probably won’t totally go Jeff Gillooly on some of the worst peddlers of fear-mongering and outright lies quite like he should (the office of the presidency seemingly impairs one’s ability to speak bluntly, at least for Democrats), but it’s (past) time for President Obama to get back some of the steely, chill-the-fuck-out confidence of the final leg of his presidential run last fall, and deliver another oratorical haymaker when it comes time for this Wednesday’s address to a joint session of Congress on health care reform. Newsweek‘s Eleanor Clift fairly eloquently asserts the same in a new op-ed piece, the key excerpt being:
“There are some things that only can do, or will do, and Obama should stop trying to appease his critics and take them on instead. The anti-government fervor that propels Republicans began with Ronald Reagan in 1980, when he proclaimed in his Inaugural Address that, “In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.” Obama’s election should have signaled the end of three decades of conservative dogma. Instead, he and too many Democrats have been intimidated into mimicking the GOP and accepting watered-down reform on the altar of bipartisanship. It’s time to call the bluff of the cheap-shot artists who demean government. The benefits of federal intervention touch every American — Social Security, Medicare, and fire and police services, which are all descendents of socialism.”
Of course, Obama could break out a brightly colored, merrily illustrated flow chart and none of this would probably register with Craig T. Nelson, who’s asserted that “no one helped [him] out when [he] was on food stamps and welfare,” or the people that have been showing up at Congressional town hall meetings and yelling “Keep your government hands off my Medicare!” at their representatives. These people, after all, are… idiots. Their opposition to reform and/or advocacy of the status quo isn’t rooted in reasoning, but rather tied up in a complicated emotional response to the fact that the United States of America is becoming less white, and more pluralistic.
Gamer
Marrying their cranked-up, high adrenaline style and penchant for adult content with their most ambitiously plotted narrative yet, Gamer writing-directing tandem Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor craft a violent, wild ride that triggers all the proper demographic tripwires of sensory overload, but also fails to satisfyingly explore the intriguing story it sets out to tell. If ever a movie tired of itself before an audience, this might be the one. For the full, original review, from Screen International, click here. (Lionsgate, R, 95 minutes)