Well, the cold that I felt was coming all last week hit me hard yesterday and I was “home” sick today – which I guess is OK since I didn’t take any time off of work these holidays. Actually, I was at my folks house Uptown for dinner and a reunion with my Dad’s side (which was lovely – a typically Southern New Year’s meal of black-eyed peas, ham, and collared greens) and I was too ill to make it the trek back downtown to my digs so I spent the night in my old room, with my dog keeping me comfort. And just like the “sick days” of my youth my mom promptly kicked me out of bed this morning. For which I was ultimately grateful because it was unseasonably warm and pleasant out today and the fresh air did me good.
The first Monday of every month is 20% off at the folk’s neighborhood’s overpriced garden center so I stocked up on some more paper whites – I can never get enough of those and have them in various stage of bloom all over the house since November – and I also noticed a bunch of the “forced” bulbs that they had in stock at the store (with inflated price tags) looked a lot like some of the life emerging from my planters outside right now. I’ve already got some reclaimed hyacinths, lilly, crocus, and amaryllis bulbs from my garden going on strong indoors and so when I got back downtown this afternoon, I did a little digging and potting and now I’ve got some more flowers – muscari, iris, and tulip - to look forward to in the coming weeks and get the house through the winter months! Forcing can be so satisfying, especially for the impatient types like me.
I finally made it to The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou this weekend! Perhaps I was just excited about the premise and potential of Wes Anderson’s vision, because honestly I didn’t care too much overall, despite the inspired art and musical direction, for last year’s The Royal Tenenbaums (although I really enjoyed the simpler Rushmore) and this has been on the top of my list. The Life Aquatic actually gets off to a delightful and promising start with a gala film premiere in Rome, the introduction of celebrity oceanographer Steve Zissou, who has seen greater glory, and his motley crew - and the familiar and homey Jacques Cousteau-affectations of the footage are charming and nostalgic for those of us who were fed a steady diet of such documentaries growing up. The informed audience has a pretty good idea of what Anderson is trying to accomplish, and hopefully like me appreciates the love, detail , and imagination that went into bringing onto screen his well meaning vision - Zissou’s ship, The Belafonte, his island headquarters, the whimsically CGI-rendered exotic marine life – the Jaguar Shark, the phosphorescent jellyfish, etc.,- and the mythical locales which could well be real such as Port du Patios (I spotted a Francesco Clemente in that Villa!), and a derelict, monsoon devastated resort (which in an unfortunately timed bit of reality reminded of me the ruined Phuket – BBC has been broadcasting from the hotel we used to stay at all week!). Oh, and the Filipino pirates – I loved that!
What a fantastical and wonderful world to experience if only the plot weren’t so meandering and the writing hadn’t been so hackneyed. I still can’t figure out why Cate Blanchett was in the film- although she looked stunning – and I’m still trying to pull together the narrative in my head. The Life Aquatic really could have been pulled together much more effectively with some basic editing; my guess is that Disney/Touchstone gave Anderson carte blanche and the play money might have well gone to his head in lieu of actually telling a story. The film could have succeeded in the same way The Incredibles scored this year – a glorious packaging of inspired vision, top-rate art direction, memorable, vivid characters, wide-ranging adventure, carefully incorporated nostalglia –but it fails to connect with the audience on any sort mutually inclusive playing field.
From what I understand, The Life Aquatic was filmed partly at Italy’s legendary Cinecittà studios. Actually, much of the hodgepodge of the product brings to mind the US/Anglo/Euro “all star” affairs produced on their soundstages and sets in the sixties and seventies. You know, getting Peter Sellars, Sophia Loren, David Nivens, Sammy Davis, Jr., Cappuchine, etc.. together for some kind of all-star extravaganza nonsensical caper. There is a high calorie-count of talent in this production and most of the players, if not all, appear to be underutilized and more often than not disinterested in the proceedings. For starters, Bill Murray seems especially dyspeptic- even for him - throughout the proceedings and I’m sure I’m not the only audience member to question how much of that actually was written into the Steve Zissou character. Anjelica Huston and Jeff Goldblum seem to be merely phoning it in and relying on their trademark quirks and mystique in Aquatic. Willem Dafoe, Michael Gambon, Noah Taylor are pretty much wasted in thankless supporting roles with truly embarassing lines and minimal screen time. And what might be a truly brilliant stroke of genius casting, Brazilian actor Seu Jorge (City of God), doing a turn as the The Belafonte’s resident troubadour, re-interpreting David Bowie classics in Portuguese in a sort of fado/calypso style gets real tired and loses its novelty right from the start. And I’m not even going to get into the Owen Wilson thing and the "father-son-maybe not?" dynamic which is at the core of the film. But never satisfyingly realized or developed.
Yikes, The Life Aquatic is whatever... clever and all.... but I don’t think most audiences will dig it…
Last night when I was going through my chills and fevers with that cold I finally caught on cable Party Monster, which was truly just awful and overall meh but sickeningly mesmerizing nonetheless. Check out the series of James St. James telephone interviews with incarcerated Michael Alig on http://worldofwonder.net/(which is actually just about one of my favourite sites these days). From all accounts, Maulkaly Culkin and Seth Green are pretty spot-on in their performances. Chloe Sveginy was bizarro and oddly, as she usually is on screen, affecting. Poor cracked-out Natasha Lyonne! Yikes, I used to go to Limelight often during the day thank god I never got messed up with that scene!
I guess IFC was running some sort of gruesome twisted real-life scenester murder double feature because they programmed STOKED: The Rise and Fall of Gator right after Party Monster – an absolutely delightful and uplifting way to bring in the New Year lemme tell ya! I watched a bit of Exotica for the millionth time – Atom Egoyan films never fail to mesmerize me - and then stumbled upon the start of HBO’s My House in Umbria. I thought it was going to be geriatric but it turned out to be one of the freshest, most poignant, and timely productions I’ve seen in a while! What sets out to be the somewhat stodgy usual tale of an old English lady in pastoral Italy becomes a thoroughly affecting story of recovery, connection, forging new family bonds, and forgiveness in the aftermath of a terrorist attack. The casting is fantastic -Maggie Smith turns in a nuanced and bravely vulnerable performance as the larger than life – and tarnished - but selflessly generous Emily Delahunty; Timothy Spall is amazing and down-to-earth as always as her longtime caretaker; and my fave Giancarlo Giannini shows up as the investigatore di polizia! Oh and Chris Cooper and the girl playing the orphaned American kid are quite fantastic as well! Powerful, memorable stuff and well-worth checking the HBO schedules for an encore presentation
Unrelated dispatch:
Ay, in the latest of the series of high-tech, expensive, and ultimately useless, gifts Sugar Daddy sends to supplement Housemate D, this holiday season brings a robotic vacuuming orb. It works by sensor and I don’t really think it does that good of a job, but D is quite smitten with the toy and has named it “Jonathan.”