Team Dame Maggie

If Dame Maggie Smith doesn't win an Emmy tonight for her spot on work on Downton Abbey, I will probably flip over a car in protest.

Rants on California Suite

A couple of days ago, I had the distinct pleasure of seeing a student-run production of Neil Simon's California Suite through Western Michigan University's Theatre Department. My school has an excellent program, so I knew the acting would be great, but I was worried about how well Simon's stuck-in-the-70's, middle-aged views of relationships and East Coast vs. West Coast views of the world would transfer with 20 year olds from the 20th century. Well, color me surprised that none of that seemed to matter and, in the hands of some gifted young actors that I hope many of you get to see some day, the play was alternately side-splittingly hilarious and heartbreakingly tender--a truly rare combination.

After having such a wonderful time at that performance, I decided to take a gander at Herbert Ross's 1978 film version which had been lying around my place for a few months at least. I had been putting it off for so long because of my aforementioned weariness of Neil Simon, but after seeing the show, I thought to myself, "Hey, if a bunch of college students can be great with this, just imagine what Jane Fonda, Dame Maggie Smith and Michael Caine can do in it!" Then you can imagine my surprise when it turned out that this star-studded extravaganza was nothing more than a pointless, inexcusable and all-around unenjoyable waste of talent.

In case you're not aware, on the stage, California Suite is comprised of four one-act plays all taking place at different times of the year in rooms 203 and 204 of the same posh Californian hotel. The first, and probably biggest, misstep the filmmakers make is to try to make the film more cinematic by having them stay at the same hotel during the same time and then sporadically intercut between all of their dramas. Also, they made the grave error of moving outside of the designated suites in an attempt to "open up" the movie. These are enormous problems because each of the stories require us to become intimately involved with each of these couplings and the constant cutting across the stories and multiple locations make it hard to really get invested for more than a minute or two at a time.


The story that suffers the most from this just happens to be the best of the bunch: the one concerning the visitors from London, Oscar-nominated actress Diana Barrie (Oscar-winner Dame Maggie Smith) and her antique dealing (i.e. gay or bisexual, depending on your interpretation) husband Sidney (a miscast Michael Caine) in town for the Academy Awards ceremony. On stage, the one-act is a luminous, extremely witty and intricate view of a complex and almost incomprehensible relationship. What suits this story extremely well is an intimate surrounding that the tiny, 75-seat theatre the play was performed in achieved perfectly. On film, Ross shoots everything from medium close-up, if not further away, and it's damn near impossible to connect with anything Diana and Sidney are saying or doing. Now, I don't want to suggest that the young actors I saw on stage are better than Dame Maggie Smith and Michael Caine since they are fucking legends for a reason. No, I just wish that the two of them, Smith in particular, had pushed it a little further. During her drunk scenes, she should have acted slightly more intoxicated and less quirky. Not only would her funny lines work better, but it would make the sharp, intense dialogue with Caine all the more heartbreaking.

If the best storyline is treated so shoddily, you can only imagine how the other three come out. Jane Fonda and Alan Alda star in the weakest one as a divorced couple fighting for their daughter. The dialogue is too spot-on and unnaturally witty, so the two of them don't really do anything besides bounce lines off each other for awhile. It's not a complete waste of time, but there are certainly other things I'd rather be watching. The less said about the Walter Matthau story, the better. The tendency to go over-the-top is inherent in the scene and Matthau is so far over it, he's on Mars. In fact, I think Matthau gives one of the worst performances I've ever seen. He's so stereotypically Jewish I'm surprised he doesn't have a yamulke and those curly sideburns; it's extremely insulting and almost disgusting to watch. Richard Pryor and Bill Cosby star in the slapstick portion of the film and that, too, is way too subdued to be half as funny as it could be. But, then again, I shouldn't be so surprised that Ross and company bungled it up as much as they did since that seemed to happen with everything in this film. D+

Don't Get Mad. Get Everything.

Believe it or not, up until a couple of days ago, I had never seen The First Wives Club (Hugh Wilson, 1996) or, to tell you the truth, even had the slightest interest in it. But then, while hanging out with a couple of friends, it came on TV and we decided to watch it. In retrospect, I don't know what the hell I was thinking, because not only is The First Wives Club supreme escapist fun, but it also contains a cast that would give any serious actressexual a wet dream: Diane Keaton, Bette Midler, Goldie Hawn, Dame Maggie Smith, Sarah Jessica Parker, Eileen Heckart and Marcia Gay Harden. So what if the plot is a little predictable; every minute with these amazingly classy women is an utter joy. The main trio of Keaton, Midler and Hawn handle the overused comedic situations they are given like old pros and give them fresh spins that are funnier than they should have been. The "fall-out" scene where Midler and Hawn hurl non-stop insults at each other, one right after another, while Keaton stands back and refuses to take a side and ends up with a "merry-go-slap" was a thing of beauty. What about that fabulous musical finale? Check out the clip below (don't worry, there aren't any spoilers here) and tell me you don't feel a swell of emotion as they strut their stuff down the street to Lesley Gore's "You Don't Own Me". These few moments nearly contain as much Girl Power as Spice World and that's never a bad thing. B+

Weekend Rental Picks

A couple of weeks ago, I received this really lovely e-mail from a reader who took the time to compliment my blog and my writing. Needless to say, as I'm sure other bloggers can attest to, this little bit of ego stroking was extremely welcome. In this readers extremely thorough e-mail, he mentioned that there might be young readers just getting interested in film who may not know where exactly to start when at their local Blockbuster or loading their Netflix queue and that I should point them in the right direction. I thought about this for a little while and I decided that this would be a good idea to try. So, every Friday I'm going to offer three movie suggestions for the weekend using my rental methodology (which is, admitedly, a little OCD on my part): I always get one "modern" film from the last 20 years that, for one reason or another, I missed out on, one classic film and one foreign film. I hope this helps out at least one reader who just feels overwhelmed at all of the movies they can explore.

A Room With a View (James Ivory, 1986)

I respected Howards End and The Remains of the Day, Ivory's big Oscar films from the early 90's, but I didn't exactly like or ever have a desire to see them again. When I rented A Room With a View for my Dame Judi Dench celebration last year, I was excited for the Dench, but I wasn't looking forward to the film at all. Nevertheless, I gave it a shot and, lo and behold, it was a magnificent film. Where Howards End and The Remains of the Day are too restrained in their emotions for my taste and tad stodgy, A Room With a View is full of life, humor and color. Helena Bonham Carter is fun as the spunky heroine, but the film belongs to Dame Maggie Smith as Carter's befuddled chaperone and Daniel Day-Lewis as Carter's stuffed shirt fiancee.

Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (Mike Nichols, 1966)

Be prepared for this one. Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? is one of the most intense filmmaking excursions I've ever seen. From the opening moments with Elizabeth Taylor berating her husband, Richard Burton, for not remembering the name of the Bette Davis picture that the line "What a dump!" comes from, you get sucked into George and Martha's intense game of wits and viciousness. Plus, the cast is all in top notch form, giving the best performances of their respective careers.

Cleo de 5 a 7 (Agnes Varda, 1962)

While the Nouvelle Vague (French New Wave) was receiving worldwide attention, a smaller movement called the Rive Gauche was taking place inside France. Cleo de 5 a 7 was one of the masterpieces from this movenment. The film follows two hours in the life of a young woman awaiting test results that will tell her if she has cancer. During those two hours, the woman contemplates her mortality, escapes her situation for a few fleeting moments with a friend, meets with her accompanist to go over songs she may never record and may possibly find a new relationship with a young man she meets on the way to find out her results. It's true that not much happens, plot wise, but this possibly the most fascinating character study I've ever seen. So many different emotions pour through Cleo during the course of the film but it never feels trashy or over the top; instead, Varda focuses on ordinary life and makes it fascinating.