I’m sitting in a Starbucks on Marshall Street in Syracuse, and it seems like a fair and reasonable thing to say that the louder a person (a woman in particular) giggles, laughs and shrieks in a crowded cafe, the less worthy they are as a human being and the less gifted their children will turn out to be, if and when they conceive. Loud whoops of laughter from groups of college-age chickie-babes are on the same level of offensiveness as a fat homeless man urinating on a crowded street in broad daylight. I’m listening to these women right now and I’m thinking, “You’re future is mapped out for you…you’ll never be invited to the White House…you’ll almost certainly suffer through a bad marriage…you’ll never run your own business…it’s highly doubtful that you read books, and if you do it’s only airport fiction,” etc.

There’s something bothersome if not oppressive about listening to three or four women sitting in the apartment next door as they laugh uproariously about anything and everything….”hah-hah-hah-hah-hah!” We’re talking one shrieking, gut-busting laugh after another, almost as if their lives depend on meeting a strict requirement that everything they say or think or hear must be wildly hilarious.

Oh God, that’s so funny….aaaaah-hah-hah-hah-hah!….noooohh! Hah-hah-hah-hah-hah-hah! Hyper-cranked! That’s funnier than what we just laughed about five minutes ago! No, no, wait….THAT’s funnier still! Why does it sound like anxiety laughter on some level, or panic laughter? Hah-hah-hah-hah-hah-hah!

After a half-hour of this I could just scream. Or shoot heroin into my veins. Okay, not really but you get the drift.

I had the same reaction while sitting in a press lounge at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival. Here’s what I wrote:

“A little part of me — okay, one that I don’t admire and probably shouldn’t acknowledge — wants to go up to one of these groups, bend over and say in a very quiet voice, ‘I’m sorry, guys, it’s obviously none of my business…but did you know that the stuff you say in conversation doesn’t always have to be funny? And that you don’t have to laugh uproariously all the time? You can just sit there and chill down and be heavy-cat Zen types. You could even be silent for a bit and read about the jet that splashed into the Hudson yesterday. Oh, I’m sorry — not funny enough, right?”

I went to dinner with friends a noche, and I was reminded that there are three things you should never do when you’re out for food on a weekend night in Los Angeles.

One, avoid clubby hipster places that are crowded and darkly lighted because they always attract socially aggressive under-35 types, and with the always oppressive house music the conversation levels are always really loud and assaultive. Always try to eat at unhip, semi-shlubby places that are past their prime.

Two, never sit next to a table of younger women numbering four or more. Once they’ve had their second glass of wine they always start giggling and whooping it up and shrieking. In fact, avoid sitting next to any groups of any gender or age. It’s better to eat fast food on the sidewalk.

And three, never send a dish back to the kitchen. I once worked at a short-order burger joint, and if the chef was in a bad mood he would spit saliva or phlegm or boogers into a dish before returning it to the customer. If you don’t like the way your food tastes just send it back and don’t ask for anything else. And make sure you can see the bartender prepare your next drink, just in case.

Initially posted on 10.12.08: Herewith a story of a wild train-trip drama during my first trip to Prague, which happened a month after the 1992 L.A. Rodney King Riots and six months before the election of Bill Clinton.

I had attended my first Cannes Film Festival that year (reporting for Entertainment Weekly) and would later visit Cortina d’Ampezzo and the outdoor sets of Cliffhanger for a Sylvester Stallone profile for the New York Times.

I took a train from Nice to Genova, Italy, and then switched to another heading for Prague. But a half-hour into the trip I realized the train was headed for Berlin and not Prague — I’d read the sign wrong. So I got off in Leipzig around 10 pm in order to catch a 2:45 am Leipzig-to-Prague sleeper. I was feeling whipped and unclean so I booked a hotel room to use it for three hours, long enough for a shower and a 90-minute nap.

I was back at the Leipzig bahnhof by 2:15 am. I bought a bunk on the Prague train and crashed in a sleeping compartment as soon as the train pulled out. Somebody had told me to be careful about sleeping-car thievery so I put my wallet (which had about $50 in Italian lira plus American Express traveller’s checks) under my pillow.

Right around dawn, or roughly 2 and 1/2 hours after we left Leipzig, I was awakened by sounds of shouting and agitation. Young women’s voices, one of them shrieking. The first thing I noticed after my head cleared was my wallet sitting on the floor — empty, cleaned out. We’d all been hit.

I got up, ran out and began talking with a group of British high-school girls who were travelling to Prague with a couple of male instructors. More people came up to us, alarmed, anxious. A team of thieves, we quickly deduced, had crept into several sleeping compartments (which didn’t lock from the inside) in the dark, one after another, and taken all they could carry. And the poor British girls had been carrying nothing but cash.

But how long ago?, we asked each other. The train was moving so the baddies must still be on board, right? We started running from car to car, looking for help.

Then more shouting. The thieves, we were told, had been hunted down and were now huddled in one of the first-class compartments, protecting themselves from enraged victims who had chased and were now surrounding them, locking them in, taking them prisoner. Everyone in our group began running in that direction. Vigilante justice! Everyone enraged, determined, acting and thinking as one.

We came upon a beefy, pink-faced German train conductor and pounced on him, demanding in a mixture of English, German and Esperanto that he call the authorities and have them meet the train at the next stop so the thieves could be arrested. But the conductor, a lifelong veteran of East German socialism, was terrified at the idea of taking the initiative. I speak no German, but it was obvious from his squealing voice — the guy literally resembled Porky Pig — that he didn’t want to go up against a team of possibly armed thugs. Leave me alone!

As one who has suffered over and over from the shrieking, ear-rupturing laughter of groups (particularly women) who’ve had a couple of glasses of wine, I heartily agree with giving such rabble the heave-ho. I’ve sat through this dozens of times in bars and cafes from coast to coast, and giggly wine laughter is gross and repulsive. I therefore applaud last month’s decision by conductors on a Napa wine train to boot 11 women who wouldn’t stop wailing and howling and having a gay old time. The fact that this was an African American group (i.e., The Sistahs on the Reading Edge Book Club) may have been a factor. It certainly shouldn’t have been, and it absolutely wouldn’t have if I’d been the conductor, I can tell you. The only consideration would have been an apparent lack of breeding. Warning #1: “Hey, girls…we’re all here to have a good time but could you maybe keep it down a little bit? People are complaining.” Warning #2: “Please, ladies of the grape…not so loud…think of the other folks on this train.” Third warning: “Ladies, if you can’t show a little consideration for your fellow wine lovers you’re outta here.” Final communication: “All right, that’s it…you guys are off at the next stop.” The issue isn’t ethnicity but manners. Uncouth is uncouth, vulgar is vulgar. The more times loud people get disciplined, the better for civilization as a whole.

Some of the comments last night suggested that I should bring on a columnist who focuses entirely on TV and cable fare. And another who would post two or three times weekly on superhero-fanboy ComicCon cultural-genocide crap. I would do that in a heartbeat as that would broaden the readership, but finding somebody good enough to cover either of those realms means paying them a decent salary and I’m already splitting HE’s ad revenue with my ad guy as it is. And if they’re really good they always move on to the next gig within a year or so and then you have to find someone to take their place. And hardly anyone would be willing to keep up with the day-to-day like I do. It’s a huge pain in the ass. If someone just wanted to post on their own — frequently, I mean — and manage to generate ad revenue on their own, fine…but finding that person would be a needle-in-a-haystack procedure. I tried working with other columnists seven or eight years ago and it just didn’t seem worth it in the end. For better or worse HE is a one-man-band operation, I’m afraid. It’s not like I ignore TV-cable fare. I pay attention with some degree of regularity (The Leftovers, The Affair, House of Cards, Mad Men, etc.) Plus I write about other stuff in life (sobriety, women, travel, party elephants, shrieking girls in cafes). Plus I’ll be running GoPro footage in a month or two. I cover a wide swath.

One of the perks of attending college in London is flying cheap to Europe via Ryan Air. So it fits the paradigm that Jett, currently enrolled at Syracuse University’s London annex for the fall semester, and his roommate Kyle Burda are off to Prague and Budapest next weekend. I’ve been to Prague three times — in ’87, ’92 and ’00 — so I sent Jett some photos this weekend and suggested some places he might want to visit.

Anyway, this all reminded me of a wild train-trip drama during my first trip there, which happened six months before the election of Bill Clinton. I had attended my first Cannes Film Festival that year (reporting for Entertainment Weekly) and would later visit Cortina d’Ampezzo and the outdoor sets of Cliffhanger for a Sylvester Stallone profile for the New York Times.
I took a train from Nice to Genova, Italy, and then switched to another heading for Prague. But an hour or so into the trip I realized the train was headed for Berlin and not Prague — I’d read the sign wrong. So I got off in Leipzig around 10 pm in order to catch a 2:45 am Leipzig-to-Prague sleeper. I was feeling whipped and unclean so I booked a hotel room to use it for three hours, long enough for a shower and a 90-minute nap.
I was back at the Leipzig bahnhof by 2:15 am. I bought a bunk on the Prague train and crashed in a sleeping compartment as soon as the train pulled out. Somebody had told me to be careful about sleeping-car thievery so I put my wallet (which had about $50 in Italian lira plus American Express traveller’s checks) under my pillow.
Right around dawn, or roughly 2 and 1/2 hours after we left Leipzig, I was awakened by sounds of shouting and agitation. Young women’s voices, one of them shrieking. The first thing I noticed after my head cleared was my wallet sitting on the floor — empty, cleaned out. We’d all been hit.

I got up, ran out and began talking with a group of British high-school girls who were travelling to Prague with a couple of male instructors. More people came up to us, alarmed, anxious. A team of thieves, we quickly deduced, had crept into several sleeping compartments (which didn’t lock from the inside) in the dark, one after another, and taken all they could carry. And the poor British girls had been carrying nothing but cash.
But how long ago?, we asked each other. The train was moving so the baddies must still be on board, right? We started running from car to car, looking for help.
Then more shouting. The thieves, we were told, had been hunted down and were now huddled in one of the first-class compartments, protecting themselves from enraged victims who had chased and were now surrounding them, locking them in, taking them prisoner. Everyone in our group began running in that direction. Vigilante justice! Everyone enraged, determined, acting and thinking as one.
We came upon a beefy, red-faced German train conductor and pounced on him, demanding in a mixture of English, German and Esperanto that he call the authorities and have them meet the train at the next stop so the thieves could be arrested. But the conductor, a lifelong veteran of East German socialism, was terrified at the idea of taking the initiative. I speak no German, but it was obvious from his squealing voice — the guy literally resembled Porky Pig — that he didn’t want to go up against a team of possibly armed thugs. Leave me alone!
So to show Porky we meant business somebody — one of the victims, I mean — pulled the emergency cord and stopped the train. If the train crew won’t act the train won’t move! The thieves will be busted or else!

But less than a minute after the train slammed to a halt came more shouting. We all ran up to the first-class car where the thieves had been held only to hear they’d opened the windows and doors and jumped out and run into the forest, which was dark and damp-looking and dense with pine trees.
But about 150 feet into the forest the thieves had stopped and turned and just stood there in a group, smoking cigarettes and defying their victims to run after them. Nobody did. Nobody knew if they had weapons or what. Everybody (myself included) wimped out. The thieves looked like shifty-gypsy types — dark eyes, dark hair, moustaches, scruffy, heavyish, not young.
So that was that. I was out only 50 bucks but the British girls’ Prague vacation had been ruined. I had kept my stubs and got some fresh checks back from a local American Express office by the end of the day.
A little voice inside is telling me I wrote about this before, but I can’t find it if I did.

Eat Me

Here we go with another sad-irony weekend at the box-office…
The big openers are Four Brothers (spirited action crap), Asylum (British wife self-destructs from hunger for crazy sex with an emotionally unstable asylum inmate), Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo (simian-level geek-sex comedy), The Great Raid (passable, historically-invested World War II heroism drama), Pretty Persuasion (cynical time-waster about a pair of soulless manipulative high-school heathers) and The Skeleton Key (disposable southern horror crapola).
And oh, yeah…Werner Herzog’s Grizzly Man (Lions Gate, limited), for which internet ads aren’t even being composed because no one wants to stick their neck out.

Timothy Treadwell during one of his many Alaskan taping sessions, in a monochrome still from Werner Herzog’s living-color Grizzly Man.

This riveting doc is, of course, the best new film of all…and it’ll probably end up selling the smallest number of tickets (which will be only partly due to the number of screen it’s showing on). Of all the newbies, this is the one least likely to leave you feeling burned or under-nourished. But don’t let me stop you….Deuce!
It may not sound nourishing to involve yourself in the fate of a guy who got mauled and eaten by a grizzly bear but…
It happened less than two years ago in the Alaskan wilderness to an oddly brave, vaguely-loony former boozer named Timothy Treadwell, 46. He had become known in naturalist circles as a guy who’d gotten into communing with grizzly bears on their native turf and had published a book about his exploits (“Among Grizzlies,” co-written with Jewel Palovak) and landed himself a guest slot on Late Night with David Letterman, etc.
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And it all ended like that because a certain bear was hungry and didn’t care and just charged right over and slashed and tore into Treadwell and then got down to business and started biting in and chowing down.
And then he moved onto Treadwell’s girlfriend, Amy Huguenard, who was cowering in a nearby tent when it happened and for some reason didn’t run.
Guys like Hideo Nakata and Wes Craven dream up and manufacture horror presentations, but all their films put together are spit in the wind compared to the blind shrieking agony of what Treadwell and Huguenard endured in their final minutes.
Nature is not always sweet and calming, Herzog is telling us. It is often beautiful but it is what it is, and woe to the man or woman who expects it to behave according to their own neurotic imaginings.
Most of the Grizzly Man is composed of Treadwell’s videos, and they’re a fascinating window into all sorts of realms…not the least of which is Treadwell’s wacked but serene psychological state during his bear face-offs.

Timothy Treadwell and companion Amy Huguenard

“They’re challenging everything, including me,” he says at one point as a couple of grizzlies prowl around nearby. “If I show weakness, if I retreat, I may be hurt, I may be killed. I must hold my own if I am going to stay within this land. For once there is weakness, they will exploit it…they will take me out, they will decapitate me… they will chop me into bits and pieces.”
But Treadwell’s camera time with the bears was about proving to viewers (as well as himself and maybe God) that he was nature’s Exception Man…the guy who so loved and understood grizzlies that the usual laws and likelihoods didn’t apply.
Herzog has been drawn his entire life to stories of men who dig into their souls by traveling to exotic dangerous places and searching for something ecstatic or obliterating…or both.
Treadwell is cut from pretty much the same cloth as that manic 16th-century explorer in Aguire, the Wrath of God or the opera-loving fanatic in Fitzcarraldo (both played by Klaus Kinski) or that helium-balloon guy, Dr. Graham Dorrington, who was recently profiled by Herzog in The White Diamond.
Herzog’s documentaries, which he’s been making since the early `70s, are always extra-personal, intense and down to the marrow. Check out his authorized site or do a little reading about the guy, especially if you’re just discovering him. He’s a madman in the best sense of that term.
A friend who’s had dealings with Herzog says he’s not especially nice and is in fact an obstinate manipulative prick….whatever. Very few artists who are heavy drill-bitters are sweethearts. I will never forgive deliberate cruelty, but otherwise I believe in cutting artist eccentrics all the slack in the world.
I obviously can’t prove that Herzog will be one of the few filmmakers that people will speak of in hushed respectful tones 100 or 200 years from now, but I’m fairly certain of it.

Werner Herzog during last January’s Sundance Film Festival,where Grizzly Man had its U.S. premiere.

The thing about Treadwell is that his life only started to come together when he began to seriously invest in something greater than himself, and yet, paradoxically, at the same time began to celebrate an imagined sense of himself…when he began to invest in performance art that portrayed the power of his personality and sensitivity to this corner of nature.
There is arrogance and foolishness in what Treadwell was doing in the Alaskan wilds, but also a kind of serenity. Herzog knows nature can be savage and unforgiving and that only fools risk their lives to prove otherwise, but he also regards Treadwell as a kind of kindred spirit, or at least treats him with understanding.
I still say this is finally a movie about a meal, and that viewers of the Grizzly Man DVD should be allowed to sample the horror straight-up.
I’m referring to that audiotape of Treadwell and Hugenard suffering their last…the one that Herzog is shown listening to in Grizzly Man but doesn’t share and in fact recommends, on-camera, that it be burned. That is nothing but showmanship on Herzog’s part. I don’t believe the sensitivity angle for a second.

Repent

Leonard Cohen is coming to the Toronto Film Festival. And I don’t just mean that Lian Lunson documentary about Cohen called I’m Your Man. I mean Mr. Zen-Cool himself.
Or…how else can I put it?…Mr. Former Buddhist Monk who couldn’t quite handle the austerity thing with the robes and seclusion and just had to go back to wearing suits and shades and inhabiting the persona of that guy who wrote “Susanne” and “Everybody Knows” and “I’ve Seen The Future, It Is Murder.”
Falco Ink is handing interview requests, if you’re so inclined.

Leonard Cohen

Cohen, architect Frank Gehry and stoner-comedian Tommy Chong are among the subjects receiving documentary attention at the festival, which unspools September 8th through 17th.
The Gehry doc, Sketches of Frank Gehry, was made by director Sydney Pollack (The Interpreter, The Firm). I love Gehry’s work, as far as I know it. Director Phillip Noyce, a friend, lives in a very cool Gehry creation on Melrose Avenue.
Josh Gilbert’s A/K/A Tommy Chong will focus on Chong’s bust and imprisonment for selling bongs online.

Bass Hail

Here’s my idea of a must-visit site — a showcase for the work of the great Saul Bass.
If you don’t know this guy, you oughta. He’s the main-title-sequence designer who gave birth to all those iconic visual concepts for all those cool ’50s and ’60s Otto Preminger films (Bonjour Tristesse, The Man with the Golden Arm, etc.) as well Psycho, Spartacus and so on.

It doesn’t have downloads of the actual credit sequences, but it lets you click along on each one and savor the still images as they were presented on film. There are also a couple of essays about Bass’s work.
Congrats to website creator-editor Rumsey Taylor, editors Matt Bailey and Leo Goldsmith, and contributing editors Thomas Scalzo, Beth Gilligan and Rich Watts.

They Live!

“There are still drive-ins, Jeff! I’m sure you were speaking in general terms and not meaning to proclaim their utter distinction. But as I pointed out in my sidebar on drive-ins in this week’s Entertainment Weekly, there are still over 400 in the U.S., representing about 600 screens.
“That’s a pretty serious comedown from 4,000-plus at their peak, obviously. And it’s mostly a small-town phenomenon at this point, since the land was too valuable in bigger cities for these lots not to become Walmarts. But there are plenty of small bergs across America where the drive-in is the only place in town to see a film.
“And plenty of big cities still have one or two — including L.A., which has the Vineland in the City of Industry and, a little further out, the Mission out in Pomona/Montclair (both four-screeners).

“There are still those of us who look at a trailer and think, ‘Probably sucks… but it’d be fun at the drive-in,’ then make good on that.
“Right now I’m in Massachusetts and I’m considering going to the Northfield Drive-in near the Mass./New Hampshire border to see The Dukes of Hazzard a second time, just because I love the experience and Dukes is a quintessential ’70s-style drive-in movie, at least for someone like me who grew up on Dirty Mary, Crazy Mary and other car-crash/chase films in the great outdoors.
“But Four Brothers? I don’t know if even a night under the stars would be worth braving something that smells from that far away.” — Chris Willman
Wells to Willman: I haven’t driven by a drive-in and seen a movie playing in the darkness in I don’t know how long, which is why they seem dead to me. But I’m glad to hear there are 600 or so still kicking. Four Brothers is first-rate crap. The Dukes of Hazzard isn’t crap — it’s gas.

Lincoln Ford

“I was staring at the photo of Abraham Lincoln on your site this morning, trying to place the not-Liam-Neeson actor it reminded me of. There was something about the way his lower lip plopped out on the left side that set off the dead-ringer alarm in my head. Finally it hit me: Harrison Ford.
“You don’t have to look any further than the picture on Ford’s IMDB page to see that, facially, Ford has a lock on this role.

“The lips are a match, from the plopping lower to the philtrum above the upper. Neeson’s nose, though prominent, is too chiseled and lacks the squat, bulbous nostrils of Lincoln and Ford. With the amount of weight he’ll likely lose for the role, Neeson will develop Lincoln’s hollow cheeks naturally, but the prominent cheek lines on Ford’s face compare exactly to those on Lincoln’s.
“Finally, Neeson’s eyes are crystal clear and alive, and will leap past whatever facial prosthetics and bushy eyebrow makeup he is outfitted with. Ford’s eyes are more closed up and less expressive, much closer to the beleaguered, blunt eyes of Abraham Lincoln in the photo on your page.
“But when you stop comparing the photos and evaluate the two actors on a performance level, Neeson books the role hands-down. While I’d much rather see Ford and Spielberg re-team on this project than the inevitably regrettable Indiana Jones 4 we’ve been promised, it’s been obvious for years that Ford is not at all interested in the stretch that a role like this would demand of him as an actor.
“Can you imagine how he would react, for instance, to the note you passed along to Neeson about the pitch of Lincoln’s speaking voice?” — John C., Brooklyn, NY.
“Ford did play Lincoln on the cover of George magazine back in 1997. You’re right…he’s perfect.” — Rob Thomas, Entertainment Writer, Capital Times, Madison, Wisconsin.
[Note: I don’t know why the link won’t work but one URL for the Ford/George cover is http://www.apartment42.com/images/hf-pics/mag-geo97.jpg.]
“Glenn Close would make a fine Mary Todd Lincoln, but Cherry Jones would be even better.” — Richard Hashagen

Dreamland

“It wasn’t on your Toronto list but Terry Gilliam’s Tideland is premiering there on September 9.
“I’ve been looking forward to it since reading Mitch Cullin’s novel last year. It’s a terrific ballsy little book about a little girl whose father dies of an overdose and leaves her stranded in a country house in the middle of nowhere.
“If the film is even half-true to what I read, it’ll be the darkest, most twisted thing Gilliam’s ever done, and that’s saying something.

Tideland director Terry Gilliam and star Jodelle Ferland.

“It’ll definitely be a divisive film, it’s not gonna break any opening weekend records, and it might even cause controversy among the League of Decency types, but it should be interesting.
“The little girl is played by Jodelle Ferland. Her adult costars are Janet McTeer, Jeff Bridges, Brendan Fletcher and Jennifer Tilly.
“If you’re going to Toronto I’d love to hear your take on it, even if you trash it… actually especially if you trash it.” — Max Evry.

Brothers Blows

“Jeff, sometimes you are truly confounding. You railed on Mr. & Mrs. Smith, a piece of harmless fluff, for what seemed like years, and then you turn around and give a pass to a piece of worthless shit like Four Brothers…a movie that is fucking
garbage from start to finish.
“It’s impossible to care about their mother because she is gunned down in the first scene and we never get to know her. The attempt to humanize her by having her lecture the kid she catches stealing candy is laughable.
“The action scenes are horribly shot and poorly edited. It’s one of those movies in which the bad guys can’t hit anything despite having automatic weapons and outnumbering the good guys.
“The story is totally predictable the whole way through. Walhberg is okay, but his fag jokes get old after about ten minutes. The villains are a joke. There isn’t an original moment in the entire flick. The emotional scenes are unintentionally funny. I could go on and on.
“Four Brothers is an awful, awful movie with no redeeming qualities at all. There’s clearly a reason it’s an August release.” — Paul Doro

Grabs

Hollywood Reporter columnist Anne Thompson with daughter Nora (center) and a friend, waiting for the L train at the 14th Street and 8th Avenue station last Monday evening, after we’d all visited the Reel Paradise party and hung with John Pierson, Kevin Smith, Ming Chen and the gang.

Underneath the graffiti another person wrote that “the 4th Amendment really isn’t that important” and that the other person should “get over it!”

A dull photo…really and truly nothing.

I’ve been thinking all along that Seann William Scott is going to give his career a fresh infusion when he appears in Richard Kelly’s currently shooting Southland Tales, but damn…that haircut! It makes his ears look juggy and his teeth a bit more feral than usual.

Wrongo

“What I’ve read so far about The Constant Gardener has left me wondering if Fernando Meirelles could make the first genuinely kickass Bond film in ages.
“And by the way, maybe it’s the color correction or just a light
trick, but does he have violet-colored eyes? On my monitor, that’s what they look like, or are they just intensely blue?” — Lindsey Corcoran
Wells to Corcoran: I know you mean well, but you don’t ever want to use the term “Bond film” in any sentence containing the words “Fernando Meirelles.”

Beach Girls…baah!

“I’m amazed that the helicopter banner for Lifetime’s Beach Girls resulted in your declaration that ‘apparently it’s not too bad.’ I watched the two-hour debut with my girlfriend, and we both agreed that it was almost unwatchable.
“And I know from where I speak. I regularly watch the teen/parents soap opera One Tree Hill on WB to see what my production friends in Wilmington, NC are up to, and while I admit it’s a mere guilty pleasure, this show at least knows how to create dramatic tension beyond just providing backstory conflict for characters.
“Beach Girls seems so flat and all the actors come off badly, either through poor direction or the leaden dialogue (you would think George Lucas was the ghostwriter). Searching around after your comment, I found that it is getting surprisingly okay reviews, but this one from the Boston Globe agrees with my assessment. Here are the key quotes:
“And much of the dialogue feels like heavy-handed psychological exposition — in case we can’t deduce their emotional states, the characters will make it all very, very clear. ”Aunt Stevie and Aunty Maddy were Mom’s best friends,” Nell tells her father during one confrontation. ”They have all these memories, all this information about her. If I can’t see them, it’s like you’re taking her away from me all over again.”
“Like most scenes, this one smacks of actors reading lines: too many awkward pauses, too little chemistry. Nobody behaves like a real person, which might be acceptable if Beach Girls was either highly literary or highly schlocky. But it’s neither. It’s far too dull and heavy for a hot summer night.” — Jay Smith

Round Trip

“I was pretty surprised to see Michelangelo Antonioni’s The Passenger on your list of upcoming releases. I’ve thought about that film often. I don’t think it’s available on DVD, but knowing your fondness for Antonioni (I just looked at L’eclisse after your mention of it…a treat), and wondered about your thoughts on it.
“I saw The Passenger when it first came out, and was left cold. It seemed an attempt to capture all the clich√É∆í√Ǭ©s of foreign films.
“But then I went back to the same theatre a while later to catch a sneak preview of The Wind and the Lion (which I, of course, liked a lot) and said to the folks with me, when the regular feature started after the sneak, ‘I’ve seen this, it isn’t any good, let’s just stay till you get bored and we’ll split.’
“But the movie came alive and opened up. For whatever reason I had the patience or stillness of mind to follow along the second time. We stayed for the whole film.” — Joe Hanrahan, Phoenix Creative.
Wells to Hanrahan: I don’t think The Passenger is in quite the same realm as the Antonioni films of the ’50s and ’60s, but second-tier Antonioni is still worth it. And that last shot that tracks slowly toward the hotel-room window and then goes through the window bars is a classic.

More Grabs

Lunch at Pastis, the lower west-side French joint where Woody Allen filmed that bookend scene for Melinda and Melinda

The Cagle family performing near the R train entrance at the underground Union Square subway station on Wednesday, 8.10.