Blog Neglect Addressed

I have been neglecting this blog to argue about auteurism at Girish's blog. The conversation has taken some odd turns. I might have to bring some of it here - points are raised, examples cited, that I want to pursue, but would turn a long and probably deadly dull (to everyone but me and the 2-3 other people left in the thing) comment thread into a, um, longer and deadlier duller.... Anyway - you can read it over there: if I do bring some of it here, I will try to work out a coherent position, and maybe chase some of the specifics noted but not pursued - like Michael Curtiz' contributions to The Adventures of Robin Hood (which I cited as a great, non-auteurist films - though Curtiz in fact does great work, I think). Or something about the interplay between Fred Astaire (and Hermes Pan) and Mark Sandrich in their films together...

But that will have to wait. Right now? some quick film hits - a habit I should get back into...

Married Life: a rather nice pastiche of Hitchcock and Sirk from Ira Sachs, with Chris Coper and Patrcia Clarkson, and Pierce Brosnan, who keeps getting better and better... It's a nice little story, pitched somewhere between a breezy dark comedy, bitter tragedy and a sex farce, which may not seem like the most obvious place to pitch a film, but it works.

Leatherheads: George Clooney tries to make a Coen Brothers film about pro football, ca. 1925 - he plays an aging footballer who lures a college kid into the pros, while a hard-bitten reporter (Renee Zellweger playing Jennifer Jason Leigh playing Jean Arthur) tries to expose the kid's war career as a fraud... it has witty moments, and everyone seems to be having fun, but it's pretty flat. The story is about as fresh as one of those 20s uniforms might be if they had been left, unwashed in a suitcase for 80 years.... the most astonishing thing about it is that Zellweger does not ruin it - she almost pulls off the dame reporter bit. You can imagine her with better material not sucking. It's like the last 10 years have been erased.

Monkey Warfare: Canadian film starring Don McKellar and Tracy Wright as a pair of ex-radicals living off the grid picking garbage to sell on ebay... They meet Nadia Litz as a young pot dealer who before long is drawing them into her radical politics, blowing up SUVs. Secrets are revealed... it's funny, clever, with some okay Godardian moments, and a first rate cast. I haven't seen a Canadian film in ages apparently - Don McKellar used to be ubiquitous. I miss him.

The Bank Job: a slow weekend last weekend, so I caught up with this, mostly because a guy I talked to at one of the Oliveira films said it was pretty good. He's right, basically. A bank heist film - British intelligence (MI 5 or 6 - no one can remember which) sets up a small time hood to rob a bank to steal dirty pictures of Princess Margaret... he rounds up a bunch of losers and robs the bank, with the spooks trying to shield them from the cops, which goes about as well as expected. Gangsters, good and bad cops, MI 5 or 6, all come after them, but the randy princess trumps all.... It works for what it is - it has an odd tone, not as comic as Big Deal on Madonna Street, or as noir as Riffiffi or Asphalt Jungle, nor as dark as Sexy Beast, kind of sliding around among them - but it works.

And finally, more Errol Flynn - The Sea Hawk: more rollicking Warner Brothers action - Flynn as a privateer harassing the Spanish, with Queen Elizabeth playing for and against him, and Henry Daniell providing the blueprint for Christopher Guest's Count Rugen. Quite nice, as usual with that combination of talents.