The West Wing (1999-2006)

As is our wont, we're joining a party 17 years late to rush in and say: OMG, guys, have you seen The West Wing? It's so good!

Just like Jesus Christ Superstar and Evita are about mobs; just like Star Wars is about false dichotomies; West Wing is about systems. Systems, systems, systems. And - since it's so goddamn optimistic and cleverly written - we find ourselves swept along: God bless America, indeed; God bless good institutions!

Told mostly via lively walk-and-talk dialogues between a core group of intellectual idealists (the White House staff), led by the most intellectualest of them all, philosopher-President Jed Bartlet (a born-for-this-role Martin Sheen), The West Wing unpacks both the quotidian chaos and overall chaos of Politics in America with glee and gusto. This stuff is fun and fascinating, episode by episode by episode by SWEET GOD IT'S BEEN TEN EPISODES WE NEED TO GO TO BED NOW.

One common, overarching theme is the clash between dumb humans, lofty ideals, and our institutions - and how that clash is constant, sometimes exhilarating, often painful. We're often reminded how much the President is a prop and a position, distinct from the individual currently wearing the suit, currently sitting in the egg-shaped office:

Father Cavanaugh: I don't know how to address you. Would you prefer Jed or Mr. President?
Bartlett: To be honest, I'd prefer Mr. President.
Father Cavanaugh: That's fine.
Bartlett: You understand why, right?
Father Cavanaugh: Do I need to know why?
Bartlett: It's not ego.
Father Cavanaugh: I didn't think it was.
Bartlett: There's certain decisions I have to make while I'm in this room. Do I send troops into harm's way. Which fatal disease gets the most research money.
Father Cavanaugh: Sure.
Bartlett: It's helpful in those situations not to think of yourself as the man but as the office.

Indeed, another thing we're often reminded about is that this group of idealistic, intellectual liberals are just one group in a long, long line of Presidents and staff: 44 such groups, so far!

King George III: They say / George Washington’s yielding his power and stepping away / ‘Zat true? / I wasn’t aware that was something a person could do / I’m perplexed / Are they gonna keep on replacing whoever’s in charge? / If so, who’s next?

We see systems come slamming down on the individuals when - for example - President Bartlet is shot (er, spoilers for season 1 stuff, whatever, we're like the last ones to have seen this). Everything goes batshit insane; Secret Service professionalism struggling to keep the blood and adrenaline and vomit from splattering onto everything (it does get on the cars). There's a wonderful quick moment - amid the assassination crazery - when the Vice President (Tim Matheson) is physically manhandled out of a low-stakes schmoozefest by a group of burly Secret Service officers: the look of fear on his face, marching with all those Secret Service hands on him, is - mwah - such perfect! Such writing! Such direction!

This trifecta clash - humans, ideals, systems - runs big and small. Such as the problematic charm of newspaper journalist Danny (Timothy Busfield) rom-com courting the White House Press Secretary, CJ Cregg (Allison Janney): doesn't this violate some sort of check or balance? And yet - it seems so innocent! So soft and fun! And then there's the unfortunate byproduct of these glorious, insane systems: politics (ughh). That is, the cynical political machine: the machine that worries about polls, reelection, and popularity - often at the cost of ideals. It's wrenching to watch CJ struggle to disentangle the personal from the political in the wake of a gruesome homophobia-driven murder in season 1: and she's the face! She's got to keep a lid on it!

And now: a loving paean to Toby. Oh, Toby Toby Toby. Like Season 3 Tigh, Toby is the heart and soul of the show for us: a hangdog Eeyore driven by seemingly limitless depths of feeling and intellect. And all conveyed with NOT ONE, BUT TWO, INCREDIBLE ACTING EYES. We doff our hats to Richard Schiff, who follows a Luigi Lo Cascio-esque style of acting: mostly stares (lots of staring), monosyllables, and lots of DEEPLY MEANINGFUL YET MUMBLED "okays" and "yeahs". Ah. So good. Incidentally, The West Wing Weekly podcast covered both the eternal shades of meaning in the show's abundant, Miles Davis-esque verbal tics ("yeah... okay."). Incidentally #2, the same episode has Richard Schiff co-hosting and confirming the eerie quality of hearing lines that weren't even said (INCREDIBLE ACTING EYE, I am telling you). And, frankly, we were touched by Schiff's still-fresh emotional resonance with the show's ideals.

Phew. Okay. So it's amazing. Watch it. We'll keep watching. Five seasons to go, wooo. What's next?

Then She Found Me (2007)

Then She Found Me is a lemon tart of a film; sweet, tart, small (90-ish mins). It breaks a lot of rom com conventions by following slightly older people with slightly older problems: biological clocks, baggage, ingrained imperfections. And, because of that, it feels refreshingly honest and it's unexpectedly touching. Honestly, this film really hit us right here. It had a romance that moved us in ways that movie romances haven't moved us in a long, PPCC-saturated time. Oh, you people.

April (Helen Hunt; appropriately named for themes of love and fertility) is a kinda high-strung, kinda devout, kinda nice elementary school teacher in New York City. She's "39 and a half", and feeling the strain of her biological clock. She desperately wants a baby, and has been trying for months. Things go sour (lemon tart!) when her husband, Ben (Matthew Broderick), decides he doesn't "want this life" and walks out (taking the dog!). Things pick up a bit when she meets Mr. Darcy - aka Frank (Colin Firth, in almost permanent smolder). Things go back down when April's biological mother turns up unexpectedly, and reveals herself to be Bette Midler playing a slightly less Bette Midlery Bette Midler. But still big! Still vivacious! Still faaaa-aamous!

And so forth. The movie follows April as she stumbles and hesitates and grasps through the ups and downs of her messy, complicated, not unlikable life. Her growing romance with Frank is tender, almost to the point of making us feel invasive of their intimacy (something which hasn't happened since a Raj Kapoor-Nargis film, so kudos to Colin Firth and Helen Hunt for generating such chemistry!). Her mother-daughter rapprochement with Bette Midler Starring Bette Midler always threatens with turning into madcap farce - but never does.

There's an interesting meta quality, as the movie establishes and subverts a lot of the New York City rom com tropes: New York, for example, looks drab and pedestrian. This meta extends to its casting, with each member of the pretty great cast playing a character who's like a warts-and-all "real life" version of their best-known roles. Helen Hunt is the typically New Yorker New Yorker - except her Jewishness is real and tangible (she prays often), her neuroses are strange and unsightly, and she has a tendency to anxiously talk over other people. She calls to mind an edgier version of her roles in As Good As It Gets or Mad About You, if that idealized New Yorker lady actually existed and actually aged and actually had problems and insecurities. Likewise, Matthew Broderick is like an aging, Peter Pan-type Ferris Bueller.

And Colin Firth! Ah. What to say of lovely Colin Firth. Who doesn't love this man? No one. We all know him as Mr. Darcy (which, wow, was 20 years ago) - smoldering, aloof, a man full of English passion. That is, passion that courses deep and silent under a buttoned-up surface. So it's interesting that Frank is, yes, also a smoldering, aloof, tortured stranger from across the pond. Yet the film's hyperrealism subverts even these Trademark Colin Firth Things: he's disheveled, shabby even, with tempestuous moments of insecurity and general capsizing. It's raw and unpleasant, rather than being sort of comfortingly Byronic. (The New York Times review has some interesting thoughts on this in particular.)

So we'd definitely recommend this film, even though the characters are sometimes annoying in their imperfections, the plot is sometimes frustrating in its refusal to adhere to standard narrative arcs, and, oh God, is the music hokey. We're actually quite a bit worried this - like the gorgeous nugget that is Cairo Time or the smart, funny, and surprising Leap of Faith - will be forgotten and disappear into the ethers in just a few years' time because it doesn't fit anyone's mold. Don't let that happen, people! This is a strong, solid, touching film with an awesome cast in very real performances. It deserves to be preserved.

Das Leben der Anderen (2006)

Like many other dystopian films, the hero of Das Leben der Anderen (The Lives of Others) is a common drone worker who breaks out of his shell, opens his eyes and rebels against the gray dystopia around him. Usually, aided via a soulful woman.

The kicker, then, is that the setting of Das Leben der Anderen is a real dystopia, not an imagined one. Taking place in 1980s East Germany, we follow an agent of the Ministry of State Security, better known as the Stasi. This agent, Wiesler (an owlish Ulrich Mühe), has recently been assigned the surveillance of a prominent, seemingly loyal playwright, Georg Dreyman (Sebastian Koch). After outfitting Dreyman's East Berlin apartment with various wiretaps, Wiesler sets up shop in his lair - big headphones on, single lamp illuminating - and listens into... the lives of others (sorry).

And oh, the tangled lives they lead! Dreyman's girlfriend, the soulful Christa-Maria (Martina Gedeck), is getting trapped in the sights of a lecherous, high-ranking East German politician (Thomas Thieme). Said politician's minion, and Wiesler's boss, Grubitz (Ulrich Tukur), decides to use the state surveillance apparatus for less than gloriously Socialistic means. Wiesler, instead, is a tidy, almost fastidious non-man. His gray outfits, emotionless expression, and all-seeing eyes make him look like the Ultimate Stasi Man, the ultimate dystopian drone. He sees everything, passionless, he is completely forgettable. So, of course, his slow warming up to humanity via the vicarious living-through the lives of Dreyman and Christa-Maria is subversively joyful. His tiny acts of heroics are powerful, and very moving.

Indeed, this film is about the banality of good (a nice inversion for post-war Germany), as Dreyman and Wiesler are both essentially good men, doing what they can in a stifling environment.

This film won Best Foreign Film at the 2007 Oscars, and, indeed, it is very much an Oscar Film: polished, feel-good, not too controversial either in its craft or its content. It's smart, but not baffling, not mind-blowing. Overall, then, this makes it a very nice film, but not a great one. And that's fine! It was a fascinating story, told with a deft hand, with a deeply humanistic message. The performances were great; Mühe, who passed away from stomach cancer shortly after winning the Oscar in 2007, gives a performance that is understated and tender; it really carries the film.

Julie & Julia (2009)

Julie & Julia is a lovely film about the joys of cooking, affection, inspiration, and good ol' fandom. It follows the parallel lives of celebrity cookbook author Julia Child (a wonderful Meryl Streep) and her superfan/descendant, modern-day blogger Julie Powell (also wonderful Amy Adams). It is sweet without being saccharine, punchy and pleasant. Really, a joy of a film. We found ourselves mostly smiling and laughing, not because there were jokes, per se, but because it just made us so damn happy.

Briefly, the plot tracks the two womens' lives such that each high, each low, is a mirror reflection: from Julia in the 1940s to Julie in 2002. For both women, the story starts with their fresh move to a new, strange place - Paris and Queens. Both women are at a loss, with fizzling careers and anxious to do something new. And, for both women, that inspiration becomes cooking: with Julia pursuing a degree at Le Cordon Bleu, and - reflecting forward - Julie deciding to blog her way through cooking all of Julia Child's 524 recipes from Mastering the Art of French Cooking.

The narrative arc is a slow rise, with little conflict. Sure, we get some historical moments - such as Julia's husband, Paul Child (Stanley Tucci, always lovely), getting a bit harassed by McCarthy-era bullying - but it's nothing heavy. Everything is as light and airy as a hollandaise sauce, where butter "dies and goes to heaven".

The performances are all strong, with the older couple - Meryl Streep and Stanley Tucci - perhaps outshining their younger counterparts. This is partly the fault of the screenplay; Julie comes across as a bit less likable, and more narcissistic, than the zany, towering Julia. Amy Adams - who can be just as adorable as Meryl Streep (and Meryl is pretty goddamn adorable in this film; her clucking and hamming it up made us LOL and wish she was our friend!) - does what she can, but she sort of comes across as, at best, a semi-precious Meg Ryan from You've Got Mail.

We hate to have to bring this up, but we do just because it's so rare: here is a film by a woman (the late, great Nora Ephron), about women, which is fun, funny, smart and eminently freeing. Why does that have to be so rare? We wish there were many, many more films like this. Films that didn't need to be labelled "chick flicks" (vomit), films that can show us fresh, new stories. Julia Child had a really interesting life! Dammit.

Also, Amy Adams is great. And Meryl Streep is our jam these days. Can this woman be more lovable? We think the answer is no. Here are some GIFs and some YouTubes and TA DAAAA.

Doctor Who: Midnight (2008)

Some mood music, while you read.

We at the PPCC are huge sci-fi nerds, and yet it has taken us a long (loooong) time to get into that one mighty pillar of sci-fi-ness, Britain's Doctor Who of Britain, starring Britain, co-starring Britishness. Okay, we tease, but, damn, that shit is nationalistic! Which is fine. Most spec fic is notoriously US-centric, after all. Anyway, we're glad we finally initiated ourself. In addition to being nationalistic like crazy sauce, it is also addictive and silly and fun and full of everything.

It's difficult to review a PILLAR, so instead we'll focus on a few things:

• The episode, Midnight, and how it's awesome and a good intro. (Review)
  
• Some Doctor Who themes, and how they run the gamut from awesome to stupid to huh-ness. (Thoughts)

Allons-y, then!  

Episode review: Midnight

Doctor Who episodes seem to come in three varieties:

• Really trashy, ridiculous, and occasionally awful one-off episodes, featuring a Monster of the Week. As some of our friends assured us, "You do know it's a kid's show, right?" (No, we didn't! But now we do. Oh, how we do.)
  
• Really spectacular, mind-bending one-offs.
  
• Mediocre-to-good episodes that are usually redeemed by giving us one more crumb along the Great Path of Understanding the Doctor, usually accompanied by a Great Emotional Moment for the Doctor as well. These are exciting.

Midnight falls into the secondary category. It's the perfect gateway episode; you can watch it while knowing nothing of the Doctor and his Interminable Journey. But, of course, the experience is much richer if you do know a bit, since Midnight takes several Doctory themes, and then subverts them in refreshing ways.

Midnight begins on a fancy, diamondy planet called, uh, Midnight. Which is ironic, since it is brilliant and sparkling and very, very sunny. It is also totally hostile to any form of life; the sun being "x-tonic", which is technobabble for "zapping killer laser beam-like". The Doctor (David Tennant) and his Companion, the wonderful Donna Noble (the wonderful Catherine Tate), are taking a (much-deserved) break on Midnight, which markets itself as a party planet. The Doctor decides to go on a nature tour, while Donna lounges by the pool.

On the nature tour, we're introduced to a variety of Typical Human People: there's the suburban couple (Daniel Ryan, Lyndsay Coulsen) and their sullen teen son (Colin Morgan), the bumbling professor (David Troughton) and his geeky assistant (Ayesha Antoine), the flight attendant (Rakie Ayola; called a "hostess" in the episode, since apparently it's also 1950), and a middle-aged divorcee (Lesley Sharp). After lampooning modern commercial flight (endless, chattering entertainment options, tiny peanut packets, and so on), the journey is underway. The Doctor makes a few friends, people joke, and obviously something horrible is looming on the horizon.

We won't give away the horribleness, because much of the episode's genius is the smart and inventive (and cheaply-produced!) monster that we meet. If it's a monster at all. But it's something straight out of The Twilight Zone or Hitchcock: the fear and tension is slow, subtle, and gripping. One subversion of the Doctor Who routine is that the Doctor is as ignorant as everyone else on the ship (and in the audience) as to what the It thing is. Nothing is supposed to live on Midnight, and yet it seems something has? (Note that we can't even conclusively say that something has. One lovely interpretation of the episode is that there was nothing there at all, and everyone just freaked themselves out.)

A second subversion of Doctor Who's usual stuff is that, for once, humanity isn't celebrated, but instead retreats immediately into the banality of evil. When confronted with something difficult to understand and potentially violent, the passengers become scary and bestial themselves. It's reminiscent of J.G. Ballard's comments on seeing the "ragged scaffolding" of suburban civilization strip away, and how rattling that can be. For Doctor Who fans and the Doctor himself, it's especially rattling: usually, humanity has a big ol' crush on the Doctor, and is always happy to be helped. Here, they're skeptical, paranoid, hostile.

Anyway, the craft in this episode is just brilliant. The dialogue: building up tension, revealing aspects of the It thing's otherness slowly, taking sudden turns. Argh, as a writer, the PPCC burned with jealousy at someone having had such a good idea! The music. The acting: Tennant is always pretty damn good, but his role-reversal during the climax was so well-done. As with Lesley Sharp, especially in the earlier moments of being possessed, when she's/it's "learning". Ah! So good. Bravi, bravi.  

Big thoughts  

First big thought: Doctor Who is Buddhism

In fact, it might be as Buddhist as Groundhog Day, and that's pretty damn Buddhist. Except, whereas Groundhog Day is uplifting because it shows us nirvana (the ultimate happy ending), Doctor Who just grounds the PPCC down with its nihilistic woe. Seriously, how can this be a kid's show? HOW?! It is misery by design.

The most obvious Buddhist links are, first, the regeneration, and, second, the eternal woe. Oh, the woe.

One of the central tenets of Buddhism is that life is suffering, and it tends to repeat again and again, until we can break out of it by building mindfulness and compassion and non-attachment. Once you break out of that cycle of life and rebirth, you turn into Bill Murray - i.e. a Buddha, an enlightened being. In Mahayana Buddhism, there's an intermediate stage, called a bodhisattva - that's someone who delays nirvana, staying amongst the merely-stuck to teach about loving-kindness and being all nice and stuff.

You could argue that the Doctor's a bodhisattva. But we wouldn't. Because while he is pretty helpful and sorta nice and all that, he's also fighting the same battles over and over again: those Daleks never seem to die, do they? Nor does the (wonderful) Master (nor should he!).

Similarly, you'd think the Doctor would have learned, by now, that attachment leads to suffering (second Noble Truth in the ol' Buddhism). But he doesn't - constantly seeking out Companions, and constantly, ahem, effing them over. They never seem to emerge unscathed from their adventures. Seriously, after you've lost various Companions to death, dismemberment and being locked in a parallel universe, JUST STOP, DUDE.

So, it's Buddhism, but it's Buddhism at its saddest: the moment after the First and Second Noble Truths (life sucks, and the sucking will go on forever), and before the Third and Fourth (wait, maybe I should stop all this). To use a Christian analogy, it's like modeling a story on the moment after Jesus dies, but before he's resurrected. It's just miserable, dude.

 IS THIS WHAT YOU TEACH YOUR CHILDREN, BRITAIN?!

Which brings us to the second big thought.  

Second big thought: Doctor Who is Nationalism

 "Oh no," someone gasps. "They're headed towards Earth!"

Cut to outline of the UK.

The ostensible backstory is that the Doctor loves Earth like peanut butter loves jam. And that's fine. But Earth is basically Britain. And not only that - it's England. Scottish David Tennant wasn't allowed to keep his Scottish accent because, of all the regenerations a rogue Time Lord could make, of all the species, the genders, the heights and the everythings, the dude's gotta be a white English male every. single. time. Rumor has it the newest Doc, Peter Capaldi, will be retaining his Scottish accent, but this was - apparently - a major BBC decision.

Sometimes, the nationalism stuff is grating. But we know that we have no leg to stand on; most sci-fi is heavily skewed towards the US, and few people even seem to notice. At other times, the nationalism stuff is hilarious and wonderful, such as when an ailing Doctor - remember, this guy's a magical, super-smart, self-healing, time-traveling alien - is on the brink of death and then healed by the power of a CUP OF TEA. (Seriously, that was brilliant.)

Another wonderful byproduct of the Who's nationalism, is its portrayal of workaday Normal British Folk in all the supporting characters: Rose Tyler (Billie Piper), the London shopkeeper. Donna Noble, who's "just a temp from Chiswick!" And their funny families! Everyone is pretty modest, even mediocre. What's nice about the show is that it celebrates this normality for the inherent brilliance it can conceal.

Third big thought: Doctor Who is fandom

Fandom is nice. Fandom is fun. And Doctor Who has a huge, gigantic, long-lived fandom that seems to go on and on in every direction, and rival the Trekkies in terms of historicity and population density. Many of our good friends are Whovians. Some of the latest Doctors themselves - Tennant and Capaldi - are Whovians. And then you've got things like Adventure Time fans and fun, smart YouTube channel fans, and references all over the place. And the fanfiction! Oh, the fanfiction. We don't even want to go there.

For whatever reason (we still haven't pinpointed it), this miserable, lonely Time Lord has captured everyone and their mom's attention - including ours. The PPCC has basically put everything on hold while we finished off the Tennant years. And now we've still got all of Matt Smith to go - oh God.

There's still so much to say - how Doctor Who compares to Star Trek, especially The Next Generation, since we do think they are two sides of the same (weird) coin. Or the weird moments of transcendental, pulpy space opera in Who - especially when they talk about the Time War (and it sounds like the line-up for a heavy metal festival, "the Could-Have-Been King and his army of Meanwhiles and Never-Weres!"). But we'll leave that to another day, as it's 1AM here and a Time Lord has just regenerated in our laptop!

Milk (2008)

(Disclaimer: So it's been like donkey's years since the PPCC updated, and this is because life had us in its sweaty, meaty hold. Which is a good and bad thing, 'cuz creative endeavors, such as movie reviewing, are so good for the soul, na? But life is also important too, other-na? What to do! Anyway, we're back for today!)

One of the PPCC's Alternative Life Plans includes becoming mayor of some progressive, fun, thriving town such as Berkeley, New York, or Pittsburgh. You know. A place that has post-industrial art renaissances and such. And to be at the nexus of it all! Making decisions! Taking action! The throbbing inner workings of City Hall, the immediacy and passion of local politics, the feeling of being an active member of your community. And one of the deeply satisfying things about the already very satisfying - actually, basically perfect - Gus Van Sant film, Milk, is that it pays its proper respects to City Hall horse trading and regular old politicking/civic action. When Harvey Milk (Sean Penn; brilliant) stands in the back hallways making compromises and strategies with his fellow San Francisco City Supervisors, we plain glowed from the joy of it. And you can sense that Harvey's glowing from it too. When he organizes Pride marches, when he strategizes with his team, when he celebrates his political victories and mourns his losses... it's just fun.

Of course, that's what makes this film exhibit such deeply-felt highs and lows: this modern myth-making of a man who made an impact, and then had everything tragically cut short. For those that don't know, the story of Harvey Milk is a sad, strange, inspirational piece of American political-social history. In 1978, he was the first openly LGBT elected official in America, becoming City Supervisor of the hip and happening Castro District, San Francisco. After less than a year in office, Milk was murdered by fellow City Supervisor, Dan White. White's lawyers managed to get White a conviction of manslaughter using the much-derided "Twinkie defense" (short version: the junk food made him do it). And Milk meanwhile lived on as an icon of the LGBT movement, and an icon of San Francisco.

Sean Penn's performance really makes the film: Milk is warm, funny, a little neurotic, snarky, intelligent and joyful. Even though he works for a struggling cause - this was an America where leading an openly gay life carried significant threats, where gay men and women were unable to get jobs or homes, and where homosexuality was regularly conflated with bestiality or pedophilia - even in this place of oppression, and even coming from a life of challenges and pain (when Harvey, for example, describes his past relationships, it's heartbreaking), Harvey is all action and all optimism. The film leaps forward with him, its narrative arc coming fast and clear. Even the relatively obscure or esoteric niches of the political scene are illuminated efficiently and cleanly, so that you get a good sense of the world that Milk lived in: both politically and personally. His loves - from the mellow, reliable Scott (James Franco), to the volatile and dependent Jack (Diego Luna) - are likewise painted in efficient but broad brush strokes.

And then director Van Sant does that particularly Gus Van Santy thing of slowing everything down, bringing the impressionistic canvas a little closer, so that you notice the evocative, beautiful, pastel details. Scenes like Will Hunting's contemplative rides on the Red Line up from Southie to MIT. Or the rambling rural highways in My Own Private Idaho, or basically all of the elusive and powerful Elephant. The Very Van Santy moment in Milk comes during the early dawn hours on the day of Milk's murder. We see both Milk and Dan White, at home, taking highly vulnerable, personal moments. It's a classic highly detailed, pre-climax, warriors preparing for battle scene: like the lingering shots of Hector putting on his shin guards before fighting Achilles, we watch as Milk and Dan White experience the last normal morning of their lives. It's surprisingly tender that White's character is given this treatment as well - indeed, he begins to resemble Judas; someone you both fear and pity. Or maybe that's just because Josh Brolin is a wonderful actor. Either way, it's powerful, and it's sad, and we basically didn't stop crying until the movie credits had wound their way down.

It's THAT GOOD. Definitely deserving modern classic status; highly recommended.

Orgasm Inc. (2009)

Orgasm Inc. is a wonderful documentary pulling together the big issues of Big Pharma and feminism. It explores the medicalization of female sexuality, and the intense race by pharmaceutical companies to get FDA approval for a "Viagra for women" that will "cure" them of female sexual dysfunction (FSD). Whether FSD is a real illness, or the "hysteria of the 21st century", is still hotly debated - but Big Pharma plows on, preparing pills, patches and nasal sprays aimed at helping women achieve orgasm. 

The documentary is brief (80 minutes), informative and fun. It swings from hilarious (the San Francisco Museum of Antique Vibrators was particularly wonderful) to tragic (the women who've undergone vaginoplasty or invasive procedures where a tiny vibrator is put in their spinal chord (seriously, W.T.F.)). And, overall, outrage. Outrage both at the medicalization of everything in America (America and New Zealand are the only two countries where pharmaceutical companies can run ads), and at the punitive gaslighting of a culture that tells women they're not "normal" and need to be "fixed" if they don't always orgasm during sex. Indeed, the tragedy is hearing how often the "bad guys" (those scrabbling to find a corrective pill/patch/spray to "cure" women) invoke "normality" - and how internalized that language is. Consider the poor clinical test subject of Orgasmatron-inventor, Dr. Stuart Meloy. This woman, happily married in her 50s, describes "humiliation" at feeling like she's not "normal" because of her FSD diagnosis. Dr. Meloy tells her that "over 80% of women" have FSD. (And did we mention that the original academic article from 1999 basically asked women if they ever didn't feel like having sex? Or didn't enjoy sex?) Just this contradiction was astounding: something that, purportedly, a majority of women have, and it's still classified as abnormal? Something that needs to be labelled and chemically altered? 

The amount of misinformation regarding female sexuality is also, we think, outrageous - and a glaring symptom of our patriarchal, sexist culture (yes, in America). When the Vibrator Museum's curator mentions little old grannies not knowing where their clitoris is, we wanted to laugh and cry. Or the scene where the filmmaker pays a visit to the Dr. Berman's Chicago clinic, where - for the modest price of $1,500 - you too can be shown a porn film while a medical assistant uses a vibrator on you, and then they tell you what you did wrong. For the love of God! Arghhh! 

The documentary's narrative eventually culminates in an FDA hearing over a new testosterone patch by Procter & Gamble - a patch that found, in a clinical study, to increase sexytimes and orgasms for its test subjects. Leaving the issue of publication bias aside, the study was performed on a select subsample of the general female population. When the FDA makes its decision, in the final minutes of the doc, we almost whooped for joy. But we would have appreciated some of the focus to shift more to the sex-positive talking heads: people like Dr. Tiefer and New View, who work to combat both FSD and its products; or the hilarious and wonderful Good Vibes (with a shout-out to Toys in Babeland); or Ray Moynihan and Dr. Kim Wallen, who just talked a lot of plain sense about the whole pseudo-science of it all. 

As it was, the doc was infuriating - but, showing more of the work of these people, we think it would have been inspiring. (We also wanted more on the history of vibrators, since that was hilarious - oh well, onto Sarah Ruhl and Jonathan Pryce now!) A must-watch.

People singing in Nanni Moretti films

As a commenter on this vid said, "I love people who sing out of key. It's expressionist."


Palombella Rossa (1989)
Silvio Orlando and some swimmers singing Bruce Springsteen's I'm On Fire.



Palombella Rossa (1989)
Nanni Moretti and the crowd singing Franco Battiato's E ti vengo a cercare.



La messa è finita (1985)
Nanni Moretti singing Bruno Lauzi's Ritornerai.



La stanza del figlio (The Son's Room, 2001)
Nanni Moretti, Giuseppe Sanfelice, Laura Morante and Jasmine Trinca singing Caterina Caselli's Insieme a te non ci sto più.



Caro Diario (1993)
Nanni Moretti dancing to Silvana Mangano's Anna.

Has anyone seen Habemus Papam yet? And, if so, is there any singing? The PPCC hopes so.

Deadwood (2004): Season 1

Deadwood is one of those things that defies description. Ostensibly a lurid Western with cable TV swearing and cable TV nudity, it is vast and strange and powerful. We think it's about the rise of America's Americanness, the Henry Ford-inspired winners and Howard Zinn-lamented losers as they hack, drink and scrabble their way "from sea to shining sea". It's really difficult to review long form TV shows such as this, but we'll give it a go - if only to spread word of its magnificence!


Hu-fucking-zzah!

Deadwood aired on American TV from 2004 to 2006. Three measly seasons, two pitiful years! Anyway. The brainchild of the fascinating David Milch, whose previous credits include NYPD Blue, the show is an ensemble piece centering on the violent lives in the lawless, frontier town in what is now South Dakota. The Western genre staples are all present: the noble, handsome and reluctant hero, Seth Bullock (Timothy Olyphaunt), his reliable buddy and fellow hardware salesman, Sol Starr (John Hawkes), his arch-nemesis, the vile, exploitative pimp (and informal town chief), Al Swearengen (Ian McShane), the hooker with a heart of gold, Trixie (Paula Malcolmson, from Caprica), some snobby New York opium-addicted lady, Alma (Molly Parker), and her Scandinavian-Minnesotan semi-mute ward (Bree Seanna Wall), and the cranky old frontier doctor, Doc Cochran (a brilliant Brad Dourif). Oh yeah, and historical figures such as Wild Bill Hickok (Keith Carradine) and Calamity Jane (an excellent Robin Weigert) show up too.

The point of Deadwood, though - and we're not entirely sure this is the point, or the only point, at least - is to challenge, subvert, reinforce and then smash up these Western movie stereotypes while exploring some of the darker historical currents of America's cultural heritage. In particular, capitalism, expansion, exceptionalism and a can-do attitude! Huzzah! Throughout Deadwood, you can't be entirely sure if it's praising or criticizing these American foundational myths; it's certainly giving us a much more ambiguous West, where racist and sexist exploitation are used as regularly traded economic chips. Where power is ad hoc and maintained via brute force and sweaty-palmed corruption. Where everyone needs a bath and a change of clothes, as they dream bonanza gold rushes while wallowing in filth and poverty.

The characters are divided into two camps: the damaged and the damaging. The former - Doc Cochran, Calamity Jane, Trixie, the preacher - are variously healers and helpers, each deeply vulnerable and almost childlike because of that. Life is especially hard on them. Early in the first season, the preacher (Ray McKinnon), with his beatific, vacant, yellow-toothed smile, develops a brain tumor. His long, slow, ugly decline is harrowing. The various cobbled-together attempts to contain and aid this suffering - Al Swearengen kicks him out of the saloon with a sad look in his eye, Calamity Jane hectors him about hiding his symptoms from the Doc, the hookers mock him - only emphasize the setting's ability to strip away all dignity. Get thee back to civilization, for the love of God! This sense of helplessness - both existential (i.e. the Nietschzean "God is dead" symbolism of having your preacher die!) and practical (dude, it's 1871 in the middle of nowhere) - is acute.

The damaging characters, instead, are the driving forces of the town - and, by allegory, the expansion of America. Embodied in Seth and Al, they play out the conventional narrative of good and bad - mostly by both being very ugly. (OKAY, IT'S A WESTERN REVIEW, WE HAD TO MAKE THAT JOKE.) That is: just like the Jedi and the Empire, what, exactly, is the difference between these two? They both have nasty tempers. They both bully and coerce, when they need to, and exhibit great tenderness and conviction as well. They make hard decisions, usually involving killing or beating someone up. They exact justice. They build the town - Seth as its work, Al as its play - and leave various victims along the way. Presumably the only existential difference between these two is that Seth feels bad about all the bloodshed; but even that could be attributed to his youth. As Al says, you learn to fucking move on!


A blunt Janus shot: the "good" side.


And the "bad".

So the founding pillars of Deadwood/the West/America - Seth and Al - pretend to be in tension, because it's part of the standard story we tell ourselves about Luke and Vader, Clint Eastwood and that other guy (OK, we never actually saw that movie), the post-Enlightenment landed gentlemen in Philadelphia in 1776 and the post-Enlightenment landed gentlemen in London at the same time; but they're really just two sides of the same coin. And they could stand in for any number of such false dichotomies: the Republicans and the Democrats, for instance! What matters is that they are the hegemony. And, in Seth and Al's case, they thrive in the lawless pre-Hobbesian setting where everyone's lives are "nasty, brutish and short". Mostly because they're macho men. And this is a setting that rewards testosterone.

Of course, for we at the PPCC, our sympathies lie with the underdogs, the alternatives, the non-hegemonics. The ones who get churned up in Seth and Al's machinations and who don't fit in. In particular, we are inordinately fond of Calamity Jane and Doc Cochran. Calamity Jane, brilliantly performed by Robin Weigert, is an enigma: a gender role-breaking, child-like misfit who gets drunk (OK, everyone gets drunk in this show) and then naps by resting her forehead against a wall. She is hilarious, endearing, bizarre, contradictory and difficult to understand. The real Jane was similarly enigmatic; especially her manufactured (?) relationship with Wild Bill. What was that about? Tell us more, history!

For the good doctor, we have a soft spot for him because he ticks all of the boxes - grumpy humanist frontier doctor a la our beloved Doctor McCoy (or Hawkeye Pierce!), sci-fi pedigree (dude, Brad Dourif was in Duuune) and, we have just learned in these last few episodes, a Civil War vet. Not many know that we at the PPCC are something of a Civil War nut. And this new fact of Civil War veteranship, coupled with the Doc's total meltdown re: the preacher's awful, moribund state, confirms his victimhood - another person damaged by the great machine of American progress. The other side of the brave new world, that has such people in it!


Sing the praises of Brad Dourif! He is so good in this show. We haven't been this unexpectedly impressed with a sci fi actor knocking it out of the park in a long form TV series since David Warner blew our socks off in the Wallander series.

And this is barely scratching the surface! Season one is complete, now onto seasons two and three. We haven't even mentioned all the other magnificent creations of this show - the vile toady-turned-mayor Farnum (played by another sci-fi vet, William Sanderson), the buffoonish media rep/paparazzo, Mr. Merrick (Jeffrey Jones) - because they merit blog reviews of their own. Suffice to say that this is fantastic, stimulating fun. Strange, sad, touching. We often found ourselves laughing, then crying, then even getting that rarest of movie-evoked emotions: tears of joy! Don't be put off by its vulgarity or its Westernness or its whatever. To quote a period poet, Walt Whitman: "O I say, these are not the parts and poems of the Body only, but of the Soul, O I say now these are the Soul!"

Highly recommended.

Ricordati di me (2003)

With the allegretto pacing, semi-satirical tone and superficial beauty that is characteristic of all of director Gabriele Muccino's films, Ricordati di me (Don't forget about me, though the US title was Remember Me, My Love) explores and generally eviscerates the modern Roman yuppie.

The family of characters in Ricordati di me run the gamut between limp lettuces and egotistical jerks. Must be hereditary! Parents Carlo (Fabrizio Bentivoglio) and Giulia (Laura Morante) are suffering from the usual cinematic marital ennui. Their teenage children, the insecure Paolo (Silvio Muccino, the director's younger brother) and the predatory Valentina (Nicoletta Romanoff), are in the same predicament, restless and unsatisfied. All four seek external validation and gratification. All four repeatedly seek confirmation that they are still attractive in the eyes of "those outside".

Indeed, solipsism and selfishness run deep in this family. And each cultivates a private ego project: Paolo via an affair with an old flame (Monica Bellucci), Giulia by dusting off her amateur acting career, Paolo via an old crush on the shrewd Ilaria (Giulia Michelini), and - most troublingly - Valentina by becoming one of those awful TV starlets on Italian variety shows (if you're not familiar with these girls, BE GRATEFUL).

As in Muccino's other work, this film is fundamentally a satire of these people, even if it flirts with sympathy for them. But these are the most unlikable of Muccino characters - worse than the philandering 20somethings in L'ultimo bacio or the superficial rebels with adopted causes in Come te nessuno mai - mostly because these are yuppier, superficialer and pettier than all those other people. They're also living in an apathetic, post-political vacuum - something the film hints at by indicating, ever so briefly, at the Fascist heritage of the yuppies' neighborhood and the right-wing whitewashing of the Italian political landscape. These aren't the politicized, concerned citizens of C'eravamo tanto amati or Love and Anarchy; instead, they are as complacent as they are self-centered.

There's better versions of all these things: Signore e signori was a more cutting and more satisfying portrayal of bourgeois moral corruption; Revolutionary Road a better portrayal of a dissolving marriage; and Come te nessuno mai a more fun Muccino film. Plus, this film suffered from vague misogyny in portraying the women as either spineless lumps or sluts: then again, we couldn't tell if the cynicism of Valentina's Becky Sharp storyline or the eventual triumph of limp dishrag/sobbing mother into self-assured theater artiste were subverting the misogyny or condoning it.

The performances were notable, if only because they were all pretty likable or impressive, despite the horribleness of their characters and the meh-ness of the plot. Nicoletta Romanoff was phenomenal as the femmbot from the abyss, Silvio Muccino was his usual laconic slacker, Laura Morante was a pack of nervous energy (in great contrast to her usual roles), and Fabrizio Bentivoglio is our great discovery as the man born to play Lorenzo il Magnifico! Someone get that man a doublet!

Boy A (2007)

Boy A is an emotionally charged, gritty film about redemption and the inability to escape the past.

It follows the life of Jack (Andrew Garfield), a young man recently released from prison for a murder he committed as an adolescent. Under the wing of his protective, gruff case worker, Terry (Peter Mullan), Jack takes on a new name, a new job, new friends and a new life. For a while, things seem to be going great: his assertive, gorgeous coworker, Kelly (Siobhan Finneran), courts him, his friends introduce him to the time-honored English tradition of going down the pub, and even, by a twist of fate, he manages to save a young girl from a car accident. Everyone is very forgiving of his mumbling shyness or his embarrassed insecurities, and everyone - the characters, the film, us - is quickly charmed by his shaky vulnerability.

Of course, Jack is vulnerable. Despite Terry's proclamations that the "past is moot" and "we only look forward", Jack's past is constantly threatening to submerge his present. Wracked with flashbacks and nightmares, Jack is constantly dodging a limelight that feverishly searches for him. "EVIL COMES OF AGE," a local newspaper headline screams, touting a picture of Jack as a child on the cover.

The film does a nice job of portraying Jack as innocent and damaged, building up - both in flashbacks and in the present - Jack's essentially gentle nature. We can't help but feel incredibly forgiving of whatever it is he did. Indeed, we were already inventing excuses for him. Then, just as things are turning sour for Jack's present, we flash back to the murder itself, and our slowly-fermented sympathies are given a good jostle.

An unexpected and tenuously successful parallel is drawn between Jack and Terry's biological son, a mediocre loafer who hangs around the house watching TV and cradling beers. Filial jealousy and paternal bewilderment hinted at classical themes - King Lear-ish? - but it felt forced and inorganic. The best thing about this part of the film was its portrayal of a vigilante society using ex-convicts as scapegoats for its own failings.

Andrew Garfield and Peter Mullan were perfect in their roles. Andrew Garfield's wispy boyishness struck us in the otherwise awful Never Let Me Go, while Peter Mullan likewise made an impression as the crusty, psychotic guard, Sid, from Children of Men ("Sid doesn't want to know. Sid doesn't care."). The filmmaking style was low-key and evocative, similar to Michael Winterbottom's Code 46 in tone and Dead Man's Shoes in the portrayal of a disaffected rural England where horrible violence bubbles under the surface. Recommended.

Igby Goes Down (2002)

Igby Goes Down fancies itself a Catcher in the Rye-style exposé of old money immorality. It centers around the coming of age of young Igby (Kieran Culkin), a 16-year-old trustafarian misfit who can't seem to not flunk out of his prestigious northeast prep schools. Like Salinger's Holden Caulfield, Igby flits in and out of New York's glittering squalor - drug dens of failed artists, mansion parties at the Hamptons - doing designer narcotics, slumming it in the Upper East Side and getting his heart broken again and again.

Unfortunately, Igby is no Holden. Persecuted by bad memories surrounding his charismatic, schizophrenic father (an unexpected Bill Pullman) and his shrewish, pill-popping mother (Susan Sarandon), he can find no comfort in the world - and so he's angry, a rebel without a cause. He falls for the lower class (which, in this story's hierarchy, means upper middle class) Sookie (Claire Danes), he works for the slimy, powerful D.H. (Jeff Goldblum), and he angsts at his older, successful brother, Ollie (Ryan Philippe). The moral of the story seems to be that people are evil and money makes them eviler. And this is presented as a satire.

It doesn't really work. The central misanthropy is naive, cliche and unrealistic (military school beatings are one (albeit tired) thing, but lacrosse girls pummeling themselves in Central Park? when does this even happen?). The writing is full of affectations and name-dropping - see how smart and well-read these characters are! See how intellectual and bourgeois! Yes, yes, yes. We get it. But we aren't really impressed, and we certainly don't care - mostly because the tone is so uneven. How can we be angry or sad when everything is painted like a dark comedy? The rare sad bits - a flashback to the father's breakdown - are jarring. The funny bits - usually, revelations of how a character is a hypocritical reptile - are tiresome.

This is a shame, since Kieran Culkin, Jeff Goldblum, Susan Sarandon and (again, unexpectedly!) Bill Pullman can be really charismatic. Ryan Philippe puts in a strong performance and Claire Danes we've loved since My So-Called Life. Some of the song selections were fun flashbacks to 2002 indiedom. But the writing was just too blah, trying to make up for a lack of depth by inserting stereotypical dysfunctions. For better "coming of age in New York City" stories, see A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints and The Squid and the Whale.

Speakeasy (2002)

We were kind of hoping Speakeasy would be a hidden gem, something demonstrating the grassroots screenwriting talent that Matt Damon and Ben Affleck's Project Greenlight was supposed to uncover. Unfortunately, Speakeasy - the runner-up for Project Greenlight's first year - demonstrates only how mediocre and uninspired screenwriting can be.

Failed magician Bruce (David Strathairn) lives a monotonous, suburban existence with his wife, Sophie (Stacy Edwards), and scrappy black labrador. One day, he gets in a minor traffic accident with Frank (Nicky Katt), a pawn shop owner, and they become friends. Sophie's father (Arthur Hiller) is deaf and Sophie doesn't like this - in fact, she's not on speaking terms with him. Frank's daughter (Gage Golightly) is also deaf, but Frank is OK with this. One day, a former classmate of Sophie's, now a successful psychiatrist, Dr. Addams (Christopher McDonald), starts flirting with Sophie and giving her informal therapy sessions at the local coffee shop.

The writing and direction, both by Brendan Murphy, crawl along with amateur aimlessness - the tone is indistinct, the point mysterious. At times, we sensed that it was going for an American Beauty-type vibe of quirky, semi-philosophical cynicism. But we really can't be too sure, since the music was so campy and the writing so full of lazy clichés. Some melodrama is weakly injected via Sophie's "therapy" - where she relates the various traumas of her youth, and Dr. Addams becomes a caricature of jealousy - but it's forced and inorganic.

Such a shame! That moody, red-lit poster deceived us - we had imagined all sorts of grimy, exciting storylines full of envelope-pushing, slightly surreal ideas. You know: David Strathairn is a unicorn hunter addicted to magical space glitter; his ladyfriend is only one incarnation of a hive mind. Music by The Mars Volta. Dystopian. SOMETHING LIKE THAT. ANYTHING. Not this unimaginative pap.

Adam Resurrected (2008)

Adam Resurrected is a bizarre, hypnotic tragedy about one German-Jewish circus performer, Adam Stein (Jeff Goldblum), in the years immediately following the Holocaust.

Essentially a character piece, we meet Adam one day in 1960s Tel Aviv when he is - apparently not for the first time - sent to an insane asylum for Holocaust survivors. He is charismatic, loopy and flamboyant - so, basically just Jeff Goldblum. And everyone loves him - the patients, the wry head psychiatrist (Derek Jacobi), the sexy nurse (Ayelet Zurer) and (as always) the PPCC. During this introductory sequence, we get scratchy, black and white flashbacks to pre-war days when Adam was even more Jeff Goldblumy - we learn of his zany cabaret-vaudeville standup routines, his adoring family, and, ominously, his almost magic(al) realist ability to read the mind of one near-suicidal young German, Klein (Willem Dafoe). We should pause here to note that Jeff Goldblum doing his schtick can be very loopy indeed, and his German-Yiddish-English "Ja-haaa!" jokes were genuinely very funny. Ja, ja, ja!

Adam swiftly falls apart, figuratively and literally, when he meets a mysterious patient at the institute - a young boy (Tudor Rapiteanu) who is convinced he is a dog. This sends Adam reeling back into his own private hell, and we relive his trauma of being taken to the concentration camp, re-meeting Klein - now a Nazi Commandant - and being forced to live as Klein's dog while his family suffers in the camp. Here, both Adam and the filmmaking go off the rails - drunken ranting (and drunken camera angles), extreme close-ups and the previously whimsical imagery turning nightmarish. Think Pan's Labyrinth for the same mix of surrealism, magic(al) realism, fantasy and horror. The restoration, or titular "resurrection", of Adam takes the form of healing the boy who thinks he is a dog, whom he names David ("King of the Jews! Descendant of Adam!"). A number of Biblical allusions follow, as well as expected "weeping clown" archetypes.

This film really surprised us. First, because the reviews for it had been so lukewarm (the New York Times called it "flat"!). We were expecting something earnest but dull. Instead, we got something screwy and challenging and, often, gut-wrenching. Second, this is a Holocaust Movie that still manages to remain a Jeff Goldblum Movie - that is, the weird, highly potent charisma that Jeff Goldblum seems to chug out from his pores isn't stifled for this very serious topic, but is instead channeled in an ingenious and powerful way. We were very skeptical of him playing straight and serious - he's never really been a heavy; his performances seem to subsist entirely on bubbles and glitter and airy good humor (the Guardian once called him the "Buddha of Hollywood", likening him to a "unicorn"!). We were even skeptical of his German accent. So it was a real shock to see how entirely believable, and yet entirely himself, he was. It was brilliant casting and a brilliant performance: using that very same jester quality which is Goldblum's brand to flesh out the character of Adam Stein. And the characterization was so varied, with rich highs and devastating lows. It was powerful in ways we weren't expecting at all. Did we mention we had to take a breather about halfway through? Our heart was taking a pounding.

It's not a perfect film - we didn't agree with some of its choices, and especially found Klein uninspiring (despite Willem Dafoe's best efforts to infuse Klein with his own kind of nightmarish instability) - but it is an adventurous and imaginative one.

The Rivalry (2009)

Okay, so this isn't a movie, but whatever.

We finally got our hands on the audio recording of The Rivalry, a play that was performed at the LA Theatre Works in 2009. Written by Norman Corwin, The Rivalry examines the legendary marathon debates between incumbent Senator Stephen Douglas and a young(ish) Abraham Lincoln for the Illinois Senate seat in 1858. It stars Paul Giamatti (!) as Douglas and David Strathairn (!!!) as Lincoln. Holy mother of God.

So we haven't reviewed it yet, but the HBO miniseries, John Adams, was something of a Big Event here at the PPCC, and it rekindled the flame we have in our hearts for American history. Gosh, we do like our American history. And Civil War stuff is one of our favorite topics. Hence our nerdgasm upon seeing Paul Giamatti, of John Adams fame, and David Strathairn, of glorious John Sayles movies and, of course, Good Night and Good Luck, in a play about that fertile, fascinating period.

The play does a great job of capturing the character of Lincoln (we're not as familiar with Douglas - shamefully). Apart from being, well, really tall and vaguely noble, not many know that Lincoln also had quite a high-pitched voice, suffered from recurring bouts of serious depression, and was famous for telling good jokes. This is all (wonderfully) exploited in the play, what with Strathairn's wry, drawling debate style and - typical for Strathairn roles - underlying sense of the dignified yet damaged. Giamatti brings his John Adams-the-firebrand passion to the role of Douglas - indeed, the story is told from his point of view, and it really raises the historical figure of Douglas out of his "racist guy who lost to Lincoln" hole (well, in our heads) to someone much more complex and intriguing.

Mostly, we just follow the debates - the main argument between the Democrat Douglas and the Republican Lincoln was over slavery, and whether states had a right to maintain their slavery-enabling status quo, or whether the Federal government was justified in abolishing slavery on a nationwide scale. The debate over this issue was eventually one of the things that split the country in two - something both Douglas and Lincoln are anxious to avoid during these debates, even if both are pessimistic. And the debate itself is passionate, if unnerving - they debate over the relative inferiority of races (and if such a hierarchy exists), over the Declaration of Independence's interpretations ("…that all men are created equal…"), over the rights of the state versus the rights of the nation. Everything is done with great passion, debating cleverness and respect. The arguments are exhilarating and maddening.


Woohoo!

There are also brief, revealing interludes - the "backstage" moments between the two men and, occasionally, Mrs. Douglas (Lily Rabe). In fact, one of the best bits is when Mrs. Douglas runs into Lincoln on the train; their candid confessions and respectful disagreements are touching. Is it time for shameful, totally inappropriate yet totally awesome historical fanfic? WHAT?! I'M JUST SAYIN'. It's probably out there already, knowing the intertoobs. (If you find it, tell us.) (Actually, maybe I'll just get down to writing it myself.)

Now, if they only turned these debates into an anachronistic, ironic, Jon Stewart-flavored punk rock musical, life would be complete.

Racing Daylight (2007)

If NPR ever decided to start making movies, Racing Daylight would probably be their first box office smash. (Or flop, actually.) Because Racing Daylight - a tweedy, low-fi look at a small, East Coast town's past and present - is very, very NPR. And it stars David Strathairn! You can't get more charmingly "this American life" than that. Cape Cod ho!

Sadie (Melissa Leo) lives a dead-end life on Sesame Street whatever street she lives on in Cedarsville, New York. Death and life are a bit blurred here in Cedarsville, since Sadie's been receiving spectral visitations from Civil War vets. When not seeing ghosts, she tends to her catatonic grandmother (Le Clanche du Rand) and pines mutely after the dashing handyman (and adorably nerdy Civil War freak), Henry (David Strathairn, looking pretty dashing indeed!). The ghosts meanwhile creep in and take over Sadie's life, flinging her back to the high romance of Cedarsville during the Civil War, when she - now named Anna - was pining much more vocally for the dashing soldier, Harry (David Strathairn, now with facial hair and even more dashing!), and her young, slightly dodgy "killer inside me" husband, Edmund (Jason Downs).

Filmed on a shoestring budget, with costumes and props seemingly from the Dollar Store, Racing Daylight has some moments which are adorable and quirky and charming, and many other moments which are scrape-out-your-eyeballs awful. Relatedly, the tone swings wildly around - is it a Gothic horror-romance? Is it a whimsical What's Eating Gilbert Grape?-ish look at the weird and wonderful of American's forgotten poor? Is it a David Strathairn/Civil War broad comedy gush fest? Any of these options would have been great. Unfortunately, Racing Daylight has shrieking violins in one moment and dueling banjos the next. It has some very good acting - such as David Strathairn's pitch perfect weirdness as Henry the Nerd, with his "Do you like facts?" non sequiturs - and some very bad acting - such as Melissa Leo going a bit too broad on the coy girlishness of Sadie-infatuated. The writing is rough. And, overall, everyone is very, very earnest - which earns some points, at least. Hey, we wouldn't mind sitting in a classroom or a museum and watching this while someone explained the threading work in Union uniforms. Hey, so we're earnest Civil War buffs too - sue us!

But should YOU watch it? ("Wait, wait, don't tell me!" we hear you cry.) Well... if, like us, you get your kicks from American history and, especially, facts, then yes. There just aren't enough Civil War movies out there, and it's always nice to see a smart Union uniform. Be warned, though, this is not by any measure a "good" movie. It's clunky, clumsy, awkwardly filmed and very cheap. If you want fancy, polished filmwork on the era, go for Glory (to cry), Gettysburg (to learn, and then cry), Cold Mountain (OK, we haven't actually seen this one) or Shenandoah (to Jimmy Stewart). If you don't need to focus on the Civil War, but instead would just appreciate a handheld tour through history with David Strathairn, preferably in a state of romantic poverty, then you can watch any number of excellent John Sayles films - Limbo (Alaska!), Matewan (West Virginia!), Eight Men Out (daaaa Bears!). If you don't have any of those at hand, this will do.

Oh yeah, and if you like Tom Waits' experimental industrial music with saws and banjos and other hard-to-identify instruments, you can watch this. The intro music is crazy!
<=== and what is that cover about?!

Caos Calmo (2008)

Caos Calmo (Quiet Chaos), the weirdly derivative film starring Nanni Moretti as yet another grieving parent, is bad, people. Just bad.

It's also weird. Weird because it is so derivative - essentially a lesser, paler, crappier copy of the far, far superior The Son's Room, a film directed and starring Nanni Moretti, and the film for which he won the Palme D'Or back in 2001. In Caos Calmo, Moretti returns, seven years later, with much the same parlor tricks: a sudden death of a loved one leading to warmly nihilistic despair, meandering through the comfortable Italian bourgeoise, Silvio Orlando wringing his hands in anxiety, some unexpected pop tunes, and some sex (not with Silvio Orlando).

All these things came together to form a cohesive, bright, beautiful thing in The Son's Room, a film which left us in a sheen of brilliance for years and years. Yes, it was that good. It makes you love humanity, for the love of… humanity. And it makes grief something dignified and heroic, something tragic and pure. It made us cry so, so much.

Caos Calmo, instead, nearly bored us to tears. After Pietro's (Nanni Moretti) wife dies unexpectedly, Pietro - a top man in some sort of fancy film distribution company - spends his days sitting on the bench outside of his young daughter's school. There, he makes flimsy connections with the local characters. Let the healing begin?

Nanni Moretti's father figure here seemed selfish, vapid and whiny - quite a feat considering how naturally charismatic Moretti normally is for us. But his ordeal is nebulous and ill-defined: a loved one has died, but he doesn't feel bad? He didn't love her and he feels guilty? She was crazy? No wait, his sister-in-law was crazy? …What?

It's all a big, unfocused mess, without a single redeeming feature. Like The Son's Room, it clocks in at under 90 minutes, but - unlike The Son's Room - these 90 minutes feel like a plod. If you're looking for charming, humanistic, recent-ish Italian films, steer clear of this one, skippers, and point your vessels to other, better fare such as The Son's Room (DID YOU GET THAT? THE SON'S ROOM, RIGHT HERE), Caro Diario or The Best of Youth.

Dirty Filthy Love (2004)

It's unfortunately very rare to see a responsibly-made, informative and entertaining film about mental illness. Dirty Filthy Love, which covers obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) and Tourette's Syndrome, is just that: educational without sacrificing narrative, touching without sacrificing realism.

Mark's (Michael Sheen) life is falling apart. He just lost his job at a prominent London architecture firm and his wife (Anastasia Griffith) has filed for separation. Worse still, he seems to live in a prison of irrational tics and ostracizing habits: every day is an uphill battle with the stairs, chairs, shaving, the metro, and other people. When Mark asks his (NHS?!!) psychiatrist (John O'Mahony?) for help, the psychiatrist tells him again that it's just "clinical depression", and surely if he ups his anti-depressant dosage, he'll be fine. Mark knows that it isn't depression, he knows that the drugs aren't working, but he's not quite sure what it could be either: at the moment, he's narrowed it down to a brain tumor, meningitis or early-onset senility.

That is, of course, until Mark meets Charlotte (Shirley Henderson, "Moaning Myrtle" from the Harry Potter series) - a fellow OCD sufferer and the Beatrice to his Dante as she leads him out of the Inferno. And it is a pretty harrowing inferno indeed - be prepared for some shockingly awful stuff as Mark crashes down to the bottom.

OCD is one of those things that isn't normally presented realistically; the cinematic shorthand we have for OCD is Jack Nicholson dancing over pavement cracks in the dreamy fairy tale that is As Good As It Gets, or Tony Shalhoub's latex-glove wearing detective in Monk. That is, "pop OCD" is all about washing your hands repeatedly and being a sort of old-fashioned, Woody Alleny type of quirky urban neuroticism. It's about as helpful a representation as the "hysteria" label that women would get slapped with on their foreheads back in the day. In other words, not very helpful and basically made-up.

Dirty Filthy Love, thankfully, keeps it real. It represents. Mark's fears, compulsions and tics aren't cute and filmi - they're awkward, painful and, often, baffling. When Mark hits bottom, it's not rock star glamorous, it's ugly and uncomfortable to watch. Tragically, Mark is fully aware that he is suffering from some deep problem, but he has a terrible time pinpointing what, exactly, is wrong - a characteristic of OCD. In the sea of anxiety that Mark navigates every day, everything seems threatening. And Mark's "cure" isn't a miracle drug or a cuckoo's nest (sorry, Jack) or love (sorry, Jack) - it's not even a cure at all, but more of a management technique. Shout out for cognitive behavioral therapy!

Michael Sheen is great in these sort of modern edutainment roles, what with his Tony Blair looks and Every(British)man versatility - so we don't know why he spends his time taking loony bit parts in big-budget fantasies (Tron, Alice in Wonderland), or taking big parts in morally dodgy B-films (Beautiful Boy, Unthinkable). As a friend of ours said, Michael Sheen should be playing BP's Tony Hayward (seriously, they're identical) or Lancelot or some other modern British docudrama thing. Or a Zadie Smith film adaptation.

The Dish (2000)

The Aussie faux historical The Dish is a sweet, wholesome movie exhibiting much of the usual irreverent humanism that characterizes the region's more enduring comedies (think Strictly Ballroom or Muriel's Wedding).

The Dish centers around the Apollo 11 mission to the moon, and Australia's involvement via its satellite communication and televised broadcasting of Neil Armstrong's legendary first steps. In the usual style, a motley crew of gently quirky scientists are assembled - led by the wry Cliff (Sam Neill), with the young, spaced out Glenn (Tom Long) and the puckish Mitch (Kevin Harrington) in assistance - and advised by the boorish Yankee NASA representative, Al (Patrick Warburton, Elaine's boyfriend from Seinfeld). The tone is one of ad hoc genius and cobbled-together solutions for the curveballs these scientists encounter in their job to track and broadcast the Apollo 11 communications.

The humor is gentle, the history a bit tweaked and the vibe generally warm and bittersweet. It's a great movie for chilling out with tea (and maybe a blanket), and it leaves you with a warm fuzzy feeling inside. There's also - as with all mainstream films that deal with the Apollo missions - a lot of celebration of man stuff, a relishing of our technological achievements. Think long, loving shots of the satellite. Couple this with some Australiana nostalgia - doo-wop and flower power acoustic guitars feature heavily in the satellite-fetish shots - and the viewer is lulled into a comfortable, warm zone of easygoing optimism.

Sam Neill, one of the gods of our idolatry (OK, our pantheon is pretty big), is his usual craggy, sardonic self - and we love him for it, as we always do. This time we even get the bonus of sweaters and pipes! Oh, our hearts - be still! The people who are not Sam Neill are also fairly decent, but they suffer somewhat from the fact that they're not - in fact - Sam Neill.

We should also note that one character - the comical mayor's comically angry feminist daughter - was a little ruffling to our feathers. Every line Feminist Girl spouted was meant for ridicule, even though some of them were, well, pretty good points. Poverty alleviation or space exploration? It's a good point! And mocking the poverty of India - which was, essentially, the punchline of one of the jokes at her expense - wasn't very funny. Oh, Sam, why did you laugh? For money? We'll give you money!

The Deal (2003)

Screenwriter Peter Morgan does it again for modern British history in the excellent BBC movie, The Deal. For anyone unversed in British politics, it's a brief, fascinating primer of the Labour Party's ascendancy in the 1997 elections.

We've already noted Morgan's work in The Damned United - our pick for best film of 2009 - and Frost/Nixon. As always, Michael Sheen is his preferred actor, and Sheen carries himself well as the whippet upstart Tony Blair. But the core of The Deal is really Gordon Brown (David Morrissey), and Brown's relationship with Blair. As in The Damned United, this relationship carries romantic and epic undertones - there's a Shakespearean, archetypal quality to the friendship and strains between the boorish, "saturnine" Brown and the wily Blair.


Some excellent details from Stephen Frears' direction.


Michael Sheen as whippet Tony Blair, the Early Days.


The imposing David Morrissey imposing some imposingness in one of the great Parliament scenes. I SAY!

The story begins in Thatcherite Britain, when the Tory Party is well in power and the Labour Party struggles, seemingly endlessly, in Opposition. Brown and Blair both join in the late 80s and, sharing an office, form a friendship despite their differences. And the differences are notable: Brown is an "old Labour" type, with his working class vibe and party loyalty, whereas Blair is posh, Oxford, English and seen as something of a cultural usurper. Indeed, this tension between the old, working class (and largely northern) order and Blair's southern, posher, politically correct "New Labour" movement is directly embodied in Brown and Blair. When Thatcher resigns, the Tories begin coming apart and well-loved Labour leader, John Smith, dies unexpectedly in 1997, a vacuum of power opens up - one in which Blair ambitiously moves in.


Not unlike a similar shot from The Damned United.


In the meanwhile, within this film, great visual paralleling.

A movie about politics, with no action, assassinations or violent intrigue, may seem like a bore, but trust us - all that other stuff is just distracting fluff. This is the good stuff. The core of this film is Blair's emotional treachery of Brown in the name of politics - and it is intriguing, gut-wrenching and absolutely compelling. The actors do a great job capturing their real-life counterparts and infusing them with the Shakespearean grandeur that we mentioned before: David Morrissey's scowling, bent-over Brown, his gait and his cadence, were great, as was Michael Sheen's slightly saccharine, artificial good humor. (In fact, their juxtaposition was not unlike the Nixon-Kennedy debate!)


More visual parallels between Blair/Brown here and Blair/Brian Clough.


And Brown.


And between this film...


...and reality!
We worry that this is one of those great little films that will get lost in the miasma of time. It is, after all, a brief 80-minute BBC docudrama thing. Please rescue it from the abyss! It is too good to be forgotten so soon.