Movies reviewed: The Others (2001), The Thirteenth Floor (1999) and Happy Accidents (2000) plus a short review of Grant Speaks by Ev Ehrlich at the end.

The Others (2001, usa) NY---times square

The Others is a cold blooded, slow moving, chilly, emotionally restrained horror/ghost story from Spain's Alejandro Amenabar's first English language movie and I liked it a lot. I was not among those impressed by Amenabar's Abre Los Ojos (remade with Grinnin' Tom Cruise and Cameron Crowe with the title Liquid Sky), although I will admit that Abre Los Ojos was a pretty audacious mendbender and was commendable for its out thereness. The Others is set in 1945 on an island in the English Channel and in a giant house, cocooned in thick fog, with a mother (Nicole Kidman), her two young kids and three house workers. The two kids are photosensitive and can be killed by strong light so the curtains have to always be drawn and the many doorways shut and locked so that someone doesn't enter bringing the dangerous light. But there are weird things afoot in the house and Amenabar keeps it so hidden beneath the surface that it barely is witnessed as we watch it. I liked that. If it had been in my face all the time, I wouldn't have thought much of The Others but Amenabar spends his time creating atmosphere and tension, not out of control cliche horror and the film is a success because of this restraint. The bulk of the action is inside the dark house, what few scenes that happen outside are filmed so grainy and atmospheric they almost have this surreal artsy quality to them. The Others really should have been shot in black and white as it has this old style gothic ambience teeming throughout that is perfectly suited for B &W. I haven't seen a ghost story this icy in a long while and its this coldness, imbibed with atmosphere and eery moments, that make the film a very welcome summer edition to theatres. Joshua: 4

Okay, here's a couple of sidebars connected to when I saw The Others. As I was riding up the escalator, I thought I saw the actress Heather Burns (Miss Congeniality, You've Got Mail) who is in the off-Broadway play Lobby Hero by Kenneth Lonergan. Naw, couldn't be, I told myself and went and found my seat and read my book, waiting for the lights to dim. While people watching the woman entered and lo and behold it was Heather Burns, wearing a backless green top, red hair swept into a frenetic mop on her head, with popcorn and soda. She took an aisle seat and slouched down for the movie. I actually now had seen the woman two of three days in different parts of the city.

Sidebar #2. Never again will I sit in a Times Square theatre on a Saturday afternoon as this was the loudest crowd I've ever had to endure in a non-midnight, $ movie setting. Can't go into all the details of chatter, speaking out to the screen, random conversations, loud eating and wrappers being torn and cell phones going off but a few must be mentioned. This effiminate Hispanic guy sitting two seats to my right (and who I moved down so he and his 3 friends could sit by me!) would say, "You go girl!" to the screen about every 5 minutes and he became embroiled in one of the more bizarre things I've ever heard in a movie. After one of his "go girl" comments early in the movie, someone about ten rows down and across gave him a loud "sshhh". The guy was having none of it and gave a "ssshhh" back. There was a response of "ssshhh" and he gave another "ssshhh". All of a sudden they started going "ssshhh" to each other over and over with both refusing to stop! Finally, after about 25 "sshhh"s the person down below stopped the "ssshhh" battle in defeat. Thrushed with victory, he hollers out, "You've got some nerve girlfriend!" Never in my life have I heard a "ssshhh" war like that! Another incident happened about 2/3 into the film. Some guy at the front stood up and walked all the way from one end of the screen to the other, I guess looking for an exit. After he got to the side and realized he wasn't on the correct side, he then proceeded to start back across to the other side, all the while visible against the screen and blocking the bottom images for the entire theatre. "Sit the fuck down!" someone yelled out. The guy pauses, starts walking and when he gets on the aisle starts saying really loud to the darkened theatre: "Kiss my ass bitch! People got no fuckin' respect for others!....." cursing all the way out the door, which he slammed as loud as he could. The guy from the "ssshhh" battle next to me yells out, "ssshhh, girl be quiet!" Ah, New York City movie watching in Times Square.

The Thirteenth Floor (1999, usa)

This was a convoluted sci-fi reality/fantasy movie that was not all that good and I'm not going to spend much time talking about. This company has a new invention where their komputer logs into your brain and can transport you into a komputer simulation that feels just as real as the real world. The simulation is 1937 Los Angeles and one of the inventors has been murdered and while trying to find out who did it, another inventor must start going into the 1937 komputer world to try and solve the mystery. Vincent D'Onofrio is among the cast but this is kind of second rate Phillip K. Dick territory I'm afraid as it just gets kind of goofy by the end. I did sort of like the idea of the time travel back into other people's bodies though. The Thirteenth Floor is too much like some kind of made for tv sci-fi channel production rather than a movie movie. Joshua: 2.5

Happy Accidents (2000, usa) reviewed 5-19-2001 watched: seattle at the Egyptian

(I watched this last year at SIFF. It finally came out last Friday and feel it deserves to be seen. This is the review I wrote for it last year while in Seattle for the film festival)

Second movie from writer/director Brad Anderson, whose first film was Next Stop Wonderland. I liked the title but didn't think much of that movie but was completely roped into this charming, funny romantic comedy with a twist as it involves time travel. I love romantic comedies and time travel so to combine the two ideas: genius! I loved the two leads, Vincent D'Onofrio and Marisa Tomei, who have a real chemistry together. D'Onofrio is surprisingly effective as the romantic lead and Tomei has never been more adorable than she is in Happy Accidents. D'Onofrio plays Sam Deed, the latest odd boyfriend of Ruby. She thinks she's found a great, if somewhat eccentric, new guy and maybe has put all her messed up boyfriends behind her. When Sam confesses he's a back traveller from 500 years in the future, Ruby is tormented by the attachment she has to this man. Is he insane? Is he telling the truth? Do I ruin every chance I have at love? These are the questions Ruby asks herself and her friends. I loved the mix of romance, comedy, time travel and other sci-fi elements and fish out of water situations (plus a funny Anthony Michael Hall cameo). The end doesn't quite hold up to the rest of the film but by that point I was completely entertained and enjoying myself. Happy Accidents is a very charming little movie and is a time travel romantic comedy! How can you top that? Joshua: 4

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Grant Speaks (2000) by Ev Ehrlich

Grant Speaks is a novel that wants so hard to be a raucous, no-holds barred satire and takes a historical figure (Ulysses S. Grant) and completely turns his life story into a dark, comedic revisionist fictional memoir. Interesting idea but it has failed. I'll admit, in the early parts of the novel, I was intrigued by the set up of Grant's counterfeit assuming his identity and therefore his destiny, but that intrigue slowly burned away and left me with a tedious feeling as I tried to slog through the last third of it. Mostly, we get an endless parade of historical figures who are turned upside down from their historical perception and are basically just caricatures, without any sort of weight at all. Everyone is just another flimsy foil for Grant to inflame his ego as he "writes" his memoir on his death bed. That gets old real quick. Maybe that's what memoir writing is about anyway: the writer's ego. My big problem with the book is it feels disengenious to me. Certain historical events in Grant's life are skirted over and all his personal relationships are given very unbelievable angles. A heads up, don't think this is history, it's not. It's just an author using a trick to reinvent a historical figure to tell us the ways that Grant sinned, stumbled into lucky fates, erred and all the people he comes in contact with over his life like Lee, Lincoln, Sherman etc. No one comes off free of being ridiculed in the course of Grant Speaks and I have not a single problem with that as I love to see some come uppance to historical figures that are deified simply because they are that: historical figures turned golden and saintly by the distance of the past. I love satire (TC Boyle is one of my favorite writers) but this brand of reworking just comes off as false and doesn't pay off the Ev Ehrlich thinks it is paying off. Grant Speaks is just so flimsy and phony that it can't five that come uppance because it is always too busy trying to admire just how cute and devilish it is.



"People can generally be classified into two groups: the mediocre realists and the mediocre dreamers."----Haruki Murakami




Hello. Only two movie reviews (more like rants and stories actually) with books on here too, but first off I've got to tell a few Maine stories (one gross and one celebrity). Robert Schrader and I went to Maine last week for five days as the "Get the Hell Out of NY!" summer camping tour. It was so great to get out of the noisy, hot, crowded city for a while and I wish I was still out there driving, heading into Canada, laying in the tent reading and listening to the wind in the trees. Day #2 had us in Belfast, Maine, camped out near the water on nice, soft ground. For supper we ate at a place down the road and had steamed clams, fried whole clams and I topped it off with a pretty big cone of soft serve ice cream. Little did I know this was going to be a dangerous mix that would come back to attack me in a few hours. I woke up at around 1 that night, with the awful rumbling in my stomach and this odd twitching nervousness that always tells me I'm about to be sick. I unzipped the tent, waking Rob up, "What's going on?" he asked. "I think I'm about to throw up." I reply flatly and bound off barefoot down a dirt path, trying to make it to the bathroom before getting sick. I don't make it. I threw up all over the ground near the walkway outside the campground office, five feet from the bathroom door! I rushed in there and spent the next two hours, without shoes and alone, being sick, shivering and cursing my entire existence. There is something about getting food poisoning and throwing up that upsets my entire chemical make-up and I become unbelievably depressed and dark. I just want to die it's such a terrible thing. This is the first time I'd gotten sick like this since December of 1996 when I ate one of those potato things, baked and with sour cream, bacon bits and the works over the top. This was worse though. To be alone, somewhere in Maine, in the middle of the night, wearing no shoes in a semi-dirty toilet and puking up these undigested clams! It's not a moment I want to relive anytime soon. I returned to the tent at almost 3am to find myself shivering with a slight fever and unable to stop my teeth from chattering loudly against each other. The next morning I was weak and ate bland foods but two days later I was back at my usual diet. It has put me off the clams though. Never again will I eat steamed clams.

Maine story #2 is for the film geeks out there and involves a celebrity sighting. We had made up to Bar Harbor, Maine and were staying near the Acadia National Park. We were returning on a shuttle bus from the park and a great couple of hours hiking along the rocky shoreline that had the waves of the Atlantic Ocean crashing into the giant rocks while a soft drizzle fell from the sky. It was around dusk and the shuttle bus was stopping at various campgrounds letting people off and get on. At one of these stops a couple of kids get on and this normal looking guy. I noticed him and thought, "That looks like..." but then thought, "Naw, what's he doing up here on a shuttle bus in Maine?" but realized it was him and turned to Rob and said, "Hey, that's an actor named Luis Guzman!" "I was just about to tell you that I knew that was some famous actor," Rob replied. I was psyched. Guzman (Traffic, The Limey, Boogie Nights) is one of my favorite character actors and I always mention him in my reviews. Rob and I made a series of jokes about what we could go up and say to him that would be funny to us and that would catch him off guard being up here in the boonies of Maine and we decided to get off when he got off to at least say hello, thinking he surely doesn't get spotted a lot, especially here. We kind of walked behind him, that saw us having to pass a couple of his daughters to pull up even. I was walking a little ahead of Rob and Luis made eye contact and I said, "Luis Guzman?" "Yeah." "I'm a big fan of your work." "Hey, thanks a lot. All right." "What're you, up here to see the park?" "Yeah, up here for that, watching the whales." It started to rain and I don't recall much that was said after that but we all started running for our various tents or RVs or whatnot. It was cool. Luis Guzman. He seemed nice and kind of into being complimented and had it not started raining I may have gotten a longer conversation but it was funny as we weren't really expecting to see someone like that on this bus shuttle to the campgrounds. Now, to the movies/rants and more Maine stuff during the Rat Race review.

The Score (2001, usa)

The heist film is back in style and I'm glad for it. The Score, starring a bunch of heavy hitters such as Marlon Brando, Robert De Niro, Edward Norton and Angela Bassett, is one of the recent heist film releases (upcoming movies such as Heist (that's original!) and Ocean's 11 (with the above mentioned Luis Guzman I'm sure as he's a Steven Soderbergh regular) also have big starpower around capor action and double crosses). Maybe it's because I'm such a flat out sucker for these movies but I found The Score a pretty solid and enjoyable little heist film. I wasn't really surprised by anything but it follows such a steadfast and winning formula that any any film that adheres to the basic heist bluebook and has good performances, I'm going to recommend. All the actors are very competent (although Bassett is barely used) as De Niro plays a master thief making one last job before (I told you it follows the formula!) and joins up with a cocky, unknown guy (Norton) who is the inside man. Norton is an actor who is often said to be the finest of this generation (I'd probably go with Sean Penn myself) but come on, let's be honest, he couldn't carry De Niro's bags when De Niro was in his prime in the mid to late '70s and early '80s. The Deer Hunter. Taxi Driver. Raging Bull. Just three of De Niro's career defining roles during this period. Maybe he could rise to such lofty heights but those kinds of intense, epic, decade defining roles and movies aren't made these days (horrible state of American cinema is to blame. Again, I'm bashing American Hollywood movies but try and convince me this isn't true. How many great American movies have been released this year anyway? A tiny few at best. Wait a sec, let me see how many American releases I've scored a four or better so far in 2001 Kinetoscope. Here's the list: Traffic, State and Main, Momento, Moulin Rouge, Ghost World, that's it, 5 movies, 2 of which I saw in the first 2 weeks of the year. That's pathetic in any book you look at. Let me count up the foreign films released in America in 2000-01 that I've seen this year. Chunhyang, In the Mood for Love, Afterlife, The Taste of Others, The Gleaners and I, The Foul King, Amores Perros, Eureka, With a Friend Like Harry, Sexy Beast, Seance and Thomas In Love. 12 movies. I don't need to write more on the subject. 6 of the 12 are out of Asia. I'll say it again: the best movies in the world are coming from Japan, South Korea and Hong Kong/China right now. It just sickens me that with so much money at their disposal that American films aren't more up to snuff. Nothing but blockbusters and lowest common denominator cinema I'm afraid and I just expect too much I guess because I'm not satisfied by the litany of crap movies they produce. Well, an unexpected rant has emerged to comprise the bulk of this review! American cinema is in such a weakened state I truly feel compelled to go after it at every opportunity.). Okay, now I'm in a downer, don't feel like picking up where I left off. I wouldn't call The Score original but it's a very solidly made heist film with a great "big job" at the end that should be enjoyed as an entertainingly done genre picture. It kind of has an old time feel to it as it is mostly business around the capor. The scenes away from the robbery kind of drag it down but thankfully those scenes are few. Film geeks take note: Gary Farmer is among the cast. Solid, no-frills, pulls no punches heist movie here. Joshua: 3.5

Rat Race (2001, usa) Weir's Drive-In Theatre at Weir's Beach, New Hampshire w/ Rob

Rob and I are on our "Get the Hell Out of NY!" summer tour, New Hampshire portion and happen to be camping out in a little town with a drive in theatre, one of the last bastions of authentic Americana. After we ate supper at a great place called Hart's Turkey Farm (their motto: Where Everyday is Thanksgiving Day! and had the world's largest turkey plate collection that was started by Grandma Mae in the '50s. See this is the real America that you only see by travelling around to small little, off the turnpike towns.) where I had turkey livers, more turkey, stuffing, gravy, mashed potato, butternut squash and a slice of key lime pie (my clam/ice cream poisoning was in the past as you can see), we drove down to Weir's Beach and the drive-in. Yes, we got in a honk before the film started when we felt that it was dark enough to start the movie (the honking is a part of the experience and tradition of the drive-in). Call me old fashioned, but I prefer the old style metallic window mounted speakers to the fm radio signal that is used now. Sure it sounds better on fm but there's something unique about having to attach this oblong, beautifully silver, heavy object to your window and then adjusting the static filled volume up and down and then making sure you don't drive off with it still on your window. The movie we came to see, Rat Race, is not really worth going into as its an updating of the Cannonball Run genre of picture. A big group of stars go on a chaotic, loopy road race while trying to win a chunk of money by crossing the finish line first. Rat Race is a silly movie that is certainly enhanced by the drive-in setting of cars, night sky with stars, trees next to the screen, people hollering out around us as they sit in folding chairs or in the back of trucks and the flickering image burning its way through the darkness and showing up on the screen that needs painting. My score would have been lower had it nod been seen in the great drive-in atmosphere but that fact added a great deal to watching a not so funny zany road picture. Joshua: 3 Robert: 2.5

(book review time: ***********Tokyo Underworld (1999)*********** by Robert Whiting

The subtitle of this non-fiction book by Robert Whiting is The Fast Times and Hard Life of an American Gangster in Japan. That American is Nick Zapetti and Tokyo Underworld follows Zapetti from his early days as GI and black marketeer in post WWII occupied Japan. Zapetti managed to make ties with prominent Japanese organized crime branches, the Yakuza, which was unheard of for a gaijin. Zapetti lived an up and down life with riches beyond riches and then trouble with his Japanese wives and money problems that cost him the bulk of his empire. Zapetti also had a highly popular group of pizzarias called Nicola's that were a haven for celebrities and yakuza. My favorite moments of Tokyo Underworld were the Zapetti stories and the yakuza ones connected to him. The exerpts on pro-wrestling as nationalistic ego builder and the America vs. Japan mindset are two of the more enjoyable areas of the book. Unfortunately, the book goes into the details of the past 25 years of the yakuza and the white collar crime as they became more mainstream and moved away from the back piece tattooed, chopped off pinkie finger, sword carrying criminals there were known as in the '50s and '60s. I'm into the old style yakuza more than the new breed who are just basically businessmen with no scruples or ethics (but that might be common for the world of business?). Anyway, I'd have liked more crime and less business at times during Tokyo Underworld. This is the second book by Whiting I've read on Japan. He also wrote the classic You Gotta Have Wa, an examination of the differences of America and Japan throught the viewpoint of American baseball players in Japan and the difficulties they face on foreign soil. I wouldn't put Tokyo Underworld in the class of Wa but if you are into crime/mafia/yakuza/ Japan, then it's certainly worth checking out.

Okay, that's all this time. I'm hoping to catch a few films from the Korean Film Fest here in the next week so it might be all Korean films when I send another Kinetoscope out. Hope you enjoyed the stories and weren't too disgusted with the clam/ice cream one!





Hello. Excited to be getting out of New York for a few days to-morrow. Heading up to Maine to camp and drive around. We're not exactly going to rough it as we are taking a couple of lobster pots with the plan of eating some lobster at the campground/beach. Wilderness man on the loose! I'm sick of the hot, noisy, crowded NY summer that's for sure.

Movies reviewed: Thomas in Love (2000), Brother (2000) and Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex but Were Afraid to Ask (1972). Plus, there are two more book reviews at the end, Footsucker and Andy Kaufman Revealed! as I attempt to catch up from the backlog of books I've read this year.

Thomas in Love (2000, Belgium) NY--Cinema Village

Thomas In Love is one of the more unique films I've seen in a while. Directed by Pierre-Paul Renders, it offers us life as Thomas sees it, through his visiophone (new teknology that is the phone and video through his komputer: the visiophone). Thomas is agoraphobic and can only communicate with people through his komputer. This is sort of a sci-fi film because of its futuristic setting and new teknology but the film isn't your normal sci-fi film as it is just a collection of people talking into this digital camera and Thomas' voice as he responds (we never actually see Thomas). I thought seeing everything from the perspective of a single camera would get old but that wasn't the case. The film was visually striking with all these hyper colors and strange face tattoos and makeup that's popular in Render's future world. Thomas' psychiatrist signs him up for a dating club and his agoraphobia scares all the women off except for one named Melody (Magali Pinglaut, who is doe eyed, cute as all get out fiesty actress who has an incredible way of biting her lips as she pauses between sentences that was very beguiling). Melody and Thomas hit it off, she makes video pomes and even considers some taboo cybersex with Thomas instead of having sex in person. Thomas also meets a woman named Eve who works as a prostitute through some kind of komputerized on-line agency. Eve behins to take up more of Thomas' attention as they talk more and more after he sees her crying through his visiophone. Renders has made a film that is really unique in look and he takes this cool idea and runs with it full steam ahead and it's a wonderfully inventive and different movie. It uses some animation (some naughty cybersex bits) and all kinds of digitalized tricks to liven up the images through the visiophone. The screen blips in and out, grows fuzzy and out of focus, uses odd, disjointed framing, photos pulse multiple images behind those who are talking to Thomas and all those vibrant colors and face tattoos. I bet some people would hate this kind of tekked up movie but not me, I found it oddly kind of warm hearted despite the coldness of future teknology and the lack of genuine human interaction. Thomas In Love is a strikingly different kind of sci-fi that should be checked out if you get the chance and this plays in other cities. Joshua: 4

Brother (2000, Japan/usa) NY--Village East

Takeshi "Beat" Kitano's lates sees him making a claim at breaking into the American market more as it is half in English and mostly set in Los Angelos. I'm a Kitano fan and think his Fireworks is one of the best films I've seen in the past few years but Brother is a bad movie and the last half of it is practically an unwatchable mess. I don't know what in the world went wrong here but boy was it a complete and utter disaster. Kitano plays Aniki, his usual quiet yakuza, with facial twitches and extremely violent personality. His crime family is taken over in Japan and he leaves for America to save face for his old partners who are attempting to assimilate into the new gang. He arrives in L.A. to find a half brother (Claude Maki) who is involved in petty drug dealing. In no time Aniki has killed off the competition and has started up his own new crew of American styled yakuza. Brother just devolves into a mindless and silly series of brutal killings that mean absolutely nothing as their is no emotional attachment to any of these guys. Kitano's wordless, Clint Eastwood silent tough guy lacks the personality he's captured in the past. Brother also is missing the interesting visual artsy flair and the bizarre, non-linear editing that have been a Kitano trademark in his past few films. Truly, Brother looked and felt like some kind of straight to video release you see late Friday night on Cinemax with its tedious violence and empty sentimentalism. I really despise seeing a movie from a writer/director I admire and then a sinking feeling slowly creeps in as to how what I'm watching is not working and turning into a failure. It's painful. This is exactly one of those times. Takeshi Kitano has thrown out a massive dud with Brother that's for certain. Joshua: 2

Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex, but Were Afraid to Ask (1972, usa)

Early Woody Allen comedy that sees him turn sex into farce by showing seven sketches based around questions such as what is sodomy?, why do some women have trouble reaching an orgasm? (which is in Italian), and are transvestites homosexuals? the sodomy story features one of my favorites with Gene Wilder as a doctor who falls in love with a sheep named Daisy and begins to have a hot and torrid affair with her (hence the sodomy). Allen's early comedies, such as Bananas and Sleeper, are just so silly and goofy and in many ways my favorite of his films in his long career. This is in that vein. It's not always funny as some of the jokes fall flat and Allen plays to the camera with a wink too much, but it's so giddy in its bits of goofy business that its fun for Woody fans like myself. Joshua: 3.5

INKLAB book reviews............INKLAB book reviews.........INKLAB book reviews.......

Footsucker (1995) by Geoff Nicholson

As the title may tell you, this novel by Nicholson is about the world of a foot fetishist who meets a woman with perfect feet and has his world turned upside down because of it. Footsucker is about the most out and out sexual book since I read The Fermata by Nicholson Baker (a great, dirty book about stopping time and sex!) a couple of years ago. The fact that there were large doses of strange sex got me through this as it is not very well written. In fact, it's one of the poorest written books I've read in a while. Nicholson always uses the end of a chapter as an opportunity to toss in a one line teaser of what comes next--a very annoying and cheap ploy by a writer. Footsucker is thinly construcked, poorly plotted and just isn't well done. But, I suppose, if you are into feet a lot (which I'm not) you might want to check this out because you'll like Footsucker due to the amount of sex in it. The book details every kind of facet of foot fetishism and I mean everything and it can get a tad repetitive if you aren't into feet. I mean, there's only so many ways to eroticize licking toes for non foot freaks before it gets old. But, I did keep reading so maybe I'm into feet more than I thought I was? (okay, I read and wrote this in early May, since I've read it I've noticed I spend a lot of time on the subway casually looking at women's feet! either this book infuenced me in that way or I had more of a foot thing than i thought--i still don't think that's the case. It just helps to pass the time on the subway and there are so many women who wear shoes in the summer with feet visible and up front. Another thing that surprises me is just how few feet I find attractive. Very few of them I would consider getting into in the ways that Nicholson does in Footsucker. Thought a little confession might make this a more positive review than what I wrote in May.)

Andy Kaufman Revealed! (1999) by Bob Zmuda/Matthew Scott Hansen

I don't want to repeat myself from earlier Andy Kaufman related rantings in Kinetoscope but I was and am a big fan of this madcap genius ever since I was in my teens and saw him on Saturday Night Live repeats. To me, he was an American original, who was fascinated by the audience and pushed their buttons at every chance he got. He liked it when they hated him (see pro wrestling or wrestling women or Tony Clifton identity) as when they loved him (Foreign Man as Elvis, taking them to eat milk and cookies, I love Grandma persona). I know quite a bit about Kaufman's stunts and antics and act so there were not a lot of surprise in this memoir by Kaufman co-hort Zmuda. There were details in some of the Clifton gags (Clifton was Kaufman's alter ego, a loud, drunken lounge singer prone to verbal abuse and mayhem) I didn't know--the hilarious appearance on the Dinah Shore show for example that I didn't know that much about. Plus some of the Kaufman and Zmuda real life gags were funny too. Lots of details and trademarks from Andy's life that are interesting if your a Kaufman geek like me. But, the only thing that bothered me about reading this was this is Bob Zmuda's version of some of this and you must take that with a grain of salt. A lot of the time Zmuda is trying to pump himself up too much or tries to take credit for a lot of the gags and while I don't doubt he had a hand in some of them, I'm just not sure it's as much as he says it is. If you are interested in Kaufman, watch one of the docs on his life, see Man on the Moon, watch the ABC special and then check this out to get some of the background info. A small part of me will never give up hope that Kaufman has pulled his greatest hoax: the faking of his own death. I know its very doubtful, but I can still hope and believe can't I? That's what being a fan of Kaufman is about anyway: the suspension of belief.

Hello. I'm on a real spree at the moment. 9 days in a row watching movies. Such a geek. So I'll have a couple of these this week as I'm sort of behind all of a sudden. Films reviewed: A.I. (2001), Sexy Beast (2001), The Closet (2000) and The Five Senses (1999).

A.I.: Artificial Intelligence (2001, usa)

Steven Spielberg's latest is a confusing mix of robot boy who wants to be loved then thriller then fairy tale set in a damaged future that turns into a schmaltzy bit of sentimentalism by the end ( a typical and all too common happening in Spielberg films). A.I. is incredibly made and shot, no questioning that, but this mix never quite gels into something that can rise above its middling base of interesting but flawed stature. Let's get the history of A.I. out of the way and move on. Stanley Kubrick tampered with making A.I. for at least a decade but decided to make Eyes Wide Shut instead and too bad for us. Not only do I think Kubrick would have made a better A.I., I wasn't particularly enamored by Eyes Wide Shut (the presence of Grinnin' Tom Cruise had something to do with that!). The word is Kubrick told Spielberg he should make A.I. and that's just what he did, rewriting it himself for the sole writing credit. Now, I'm not going to say this isn't 100% true, but Kubrick is dead and I believe Spielberg (one of Hollywood's great phonies and image molders) about as much as I believe something Charlie Manson would softly reveal to me (well, maybe more than ol' creepy crawly). Whew, that's out of the way. A.I. has a very clunky beginning with William Hurt giving a monologue about why a child robot should be built and how they are just the group to do it. This is a classic way Spielberg starts and ends his movies nowadays. He can't just tell a soddin' story, he has to start packaging it, explaining it to us in case we aren't swift enough to get his message (and in his mind we aren't or he wouldn't keep doing this). The Hurt character shows up later as a very annoying subplot that is completely forced and should have been excised. The robot boy is built (David, played by Haley Joel Osment) and delivered into a family whose own son slumbers in frozen cryogenic chamber until a cure can be found for him. David is the latest bit of teknology for robots and with the polluted earth comes childless marriages who need little robot kids to heal the painful fissures in their relationships. I don't care how needy and damaged the wife is (played by Aussie Frances O'Connor), I don't buy her near sudden devotion to a boy so perfect and unboylike. David is not lovable, but creepy, I don't care how cute Osment is made out to be, and his devotion to his "Mommy" is on the maniacally obsessive side. A.I. could have turned into some kind of futuristic, high budget, robotic Child's Play had David decided all must die who stand in the way of his spending quality time with Mommy. David's robotic rosy sheen wears off kind of and he's cast off into the big bad future world alone except for his "supertoy" Teddy, a walking, talking robotic teddy bear that was one of the cooler futuristic things in the movie. On the run, he meets robot lover Joe (Jude Law, in leather and rubber like make up) and the two form a bond that sees them on a dangerous adventure while David hunts for the Blue Fairy from Pinnochio so she can turn him into a real boy. A.I. just keeps careening forward, written and directed by a man who thinks every idea he puts on the screen is the right one: wrong. By the time the maudlin end finally comes I'm just relieved that Spielberg is finished laying it on thick and purely sappy. I did like the production design (especially Rouge City, the underwater NY and the sleek architecture and design of the future) and the movie had great photography but all the directions the film goes (especially the ending) ruins the positives. I don't think Spielberg could decide to make an icy, scary Kubrickian film or one of his gooey blockbusters he's known for. The result is he's stuck in the middle with a befuddled mixture of both and neither are all that great. Joshua: 3

Sexy Beast (2001, England) NY w/ Robert

As I said last time with The Killing, I love heist films! The Killing was an old style heist whereas Sexy Beast is thoroughly modern with its flash from first time director Jonathan Glazer. A perfect lean and taut 90 minutes, Sexy Beast is split into two with it being a dark comedy drama before merging into heist crime thriller. I really liked Sexy Beast! Gal (Ray Winstone) is a retired criminal in Spain with his wife Dee Dee. He spends his days turning his skin into tan brown leather next to the pool. All this may change with the arrival of Don Logan, who comes to talk Gal into pulling the job. Trust me, Don (played by Ben Kingsley) is not a man who is not used to hearing the word NO when he asks you a question. Kingsley, wiry, shaved head in all its glory, intense, erect and coiled tight like a snake, delivers one of the most entertainingly profane and vicious asshole performances in the past few years as Logan. He's such an unrepentant bad ass that he will just tear a person to shreds, with his British slang heavy verbal attack and not blink an eye. Kingsley is so devilish and wonderful as Don that I've already read talk it's Oscar nomination time again for the one time Ghandi. But Kingsley is not the only terrific performance as Winstone (Nil by Mouth, The War Zone) gives maybe a better performance as soft spoken retiree trying to stand up to the in your face Logan. Glazer comes from the music video world and it shows. Some people may hate that fact but it doesn't bother me if you make good movies that are interesting. Sexy Beast has a stylish, brooding, seething, overtly 21st century heist film feel about it but is not just style as it furnishes some substance as well with a lot of great moments of humor, violence and suspense. Another British director who came from the music video world and who is a fraud to me is Guy Ritchie (Snatch, Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels). I don't think much of the derivitive show off Ritchie as a filmmaker as he's all flash to me and he rings very phony. Sexy Beast and Glazer should get heaploads of more attention and accolades before Ritchie as it is such a better made film and Glazer is not all "See what I can do, how crazy I can be with the camera!" like Ritchie is. Glazer took a story here and bent it, let it bubble, corrosive below and above the surface with his actor's acting. Plus, the heist in Sexy Beast is really cool and unique. Forget A.I., forget other summer releases, Sexy Beast is the film people should be going to see as it is one of the better, new films I've seen in a while. Joshua: 4 Robert: 3

The Closet (2001, France) NY--the Paris

The Closet is director Francis Veber's latest dose of French, mad cap comedy of manors. Daniel Auteuil (who seems to be in every French movie I see along with Gerard Depardieu--wait, Depardieu is also in the Closet!--do the French make movies without these two guys in them?) plays Francois, a dull accountant about to be fired from his job after 20 years with the company. He and a neighbor hatch a plot to keep his job: out himself with the idea that the company would be frightened of appearing anti-gay and be sued by Francois. He's not gay but doesn't want to lose the job so the plan is put into action. Needless to say, co-workers look at the dull Francois anew as he sees this as an opportunity to break out of the confines that held him in reserve, mainly an ex-wife he still pines for without her giving a damn. There were some funny moments in The Closet but not as many as Veber's last movie, the dark comedy The Dinner Game. That movie had a lot more depth and edge/bite to its characters. The Closet, while I admire it for trying to push buttons with its un-p.c. pc satire, tends to be kind of repetive with the bulk of its comedy and bits of business. Although I sure liked seeing the usually dour Auteuil and Depardieu get kind of goofy and silly in a movie for a change. I saw this on July 4th and after it was over I walked into Central Park and sat reading and people watching in the shade. All I need is a book and a spot in the shade in Central Park and I'll kill some hours. All the city's noise is gone a few feet into the park, it's wonderful. Joshua: 3.5

The Five Senses (1999, Canada)

Contemplative drama from writer/director Jeremy Podeswa that ties in aspects of the five senses into its story. Multiple characters and stories intermingle and overlap, all of which explore the senses in usually quiet and somber ways. Mary-Louise Parker and Molly Parker (no relation) lead the cast, Mary-Louise as a fancy cake maker whose cakes don't taste great and whose Italian lover shows up from Milan, Molly is a teacher whose daughter has disappeared. Sprinkle in a man going deaf, a teenage girl who is a voyeur, a bi-sexual man who is smelling all his former lovers to see if they still bear the scent of love and a masseuse whose husband died two years previous and is the mother of the teen voyeur. All cross paths at one time or another. I liked the Five Senses a lot and thought the photography was well done and the film has an intimate artiness to it I enjoyed. The Five Senses is a very well done little film about something that affect us all every single day yet we don't think that much about our senses because they are so everpresent. Joshua: 4

Okay, next time it will be all Asian movies with two from Taiwanese director Tsai Ming-Liang (Rebels of the Neon God, The Hole) and one from Hai Chung Man (Anna Magdalena).

Films reviewed: Eureka (2000), Startup.Com (2001), Sweet and Lowdown (1999).

Eureka (2000, Japan)

I'm writing this a few days after seeing Shinji Aoyama's film Eureka and the film is really sticking to me as I find myself thinking about it unexpectantly. That is a kind of high compliment when a film works its way into a person's mind as he is laying in bed or riding the subway. Eureka is a hard film to capsulize because of its odd structure and non-rhythm that breaks up the notions of easy to define subject matter. Let's just say the film is about the psychological trauma in the aftermath of a mass killing spree that only a brother, sister and bus driver survive. All three have their lives irrevocably altered due to the event and then form a bond in the dysfunctional rubble of their world. Koji Yakusho plays the bus driver and I've seen him in a few other films (most recently in the Eel) and think a lot of his understated style of acting. Yakusho has to carry the bulk of the emotional weight of Eureka because the two kids, except for brief bits of telepathy between each other, do not speak at all. Eureka is one of those films where not a whole lot of tangible action is taking place as the camera lingers over scenes with hardly anything happening for minutes at a time, but it is these moments of non-action when Eureka delivers its most powerful scenes. It is these moments where the quiet desperation and misery of these characters can be felt full force and then get into the crevices of the viewer's heart. At one point the trio (plus an oddball cousin who almost seems to come careening from a different movie) embark on a road trip in a converted bus. Although free of the confining house, they are still encapsulated in their constructed mental cages and no amount of sight seeing will burst them free. The look of Eureka is a beautiful, shimmering black and white except for a single shot near the end (of which I'm not too fond of). There is also a kind of subplot regarding a serial killer that I wish had been removed from the story as it just weighs the film with unneeded excess. Eureka would have truly elevated itself into wonderful terrain had this part of the film been left out. Still, even that can not ruin the haunting power of this nearly 4 hour Japanese film about such things as the internal trauma of violence and the companionship between survivors when deep personal bonds are formed int eh aftermath of such events. JOSHUA: 4

Startup.com (2001, USA)

I arrived kind of close to starting time for this interesting American documentary to find it sold out but luckilly a woman had an extra seat and I bought her ticket. I entered the narrow theatre to find very few empty seats. Finally spied one against the wall and crossed the row of standing people to sit down and then discover why no one was sitting in this seat: the guy in front of me was about 6 foot 10! I was fine when I leaned a little to the left but he kept popping his neck and playing with his hair, which distracted me and forced me to lean to my right. I spent a decent amount of time leaning during Startup.com, a very up to the minute movie on what it is to be on the boom and the bust of the internet dot-com explosion. The doc follows the idea of two guys in their late 20s, who have known one another since junior high school, and who start govworks.com, a site dedicated to eradicating slow red tape bureaucracy by facilitating ways to pay parking tickets and other things online. Govworks.com naturally raises a bunch of capital (over 50 million) and has rapid, explosive growth (listen to me talk business, ha!), with over 200 employees at one point. But if you know anything about the world of the dot-com (and you know i'm a real expert), you know the rise will be followed by a plummet and govworks.com is no different than the bulk of these dot-com companies. The fascinating area of Startup.com was as things become difficult within the company to see how this friendship would hold up amid the backstabbing, egos run amok, millions of dollars, legal counsel and other things that make the relationship rife with tension. Startup.com is very low tech, shot on dv that often loses focus and clearity in darker scenes and the sound is sometimes a bit muffled, but these things don't bother me all that much but might someone else. Sometimes the business talk goes over my head as I'm pretty clueless when it comes to "business talk". I find Startup.com kind of humorous, darkly so, because even during the soaring moments of the company, you know a free fall is going to come and will this relationship last is the big question. Or will greed and the business mindset of the dollar above all else win out over these friendships? Interesting and worth seeing documentary. JOSHUA: 3.5

Sweet and Lowdown (1999, USA)

Very good Woody Allen movie that should be seen by all Sean Penn fans as he gives a terrific performance as Emmett Ray, the second best guitarist in the world. Ray is a self obsessed womanizer (one time pimp, although he calls it managing) who puts everything in his world behind his own pleasure and satisfaction. Ray likes to drink, gamble, spend money, chase women and play guitar, not specifically in that order. His idea of romance is taking a lady to the dump and shooting rats with her. Ah yes, he's a world class wooer. Also, he likes taking them to the train yards to watch passing trains (this sort of makes sense to me!). His lifestyle may change when he meets mute laundress Hattie (Samantha Morton of Jesus' Son), a sweet and giving woman to Ray's low down ways. The film is shot with documentary talking heads discussing Ray and then flashing back to various vignettes in Ray's life of adventure and misdeed. Allen does a great job blending the mid '30s period with the score too. Sweet and Lowdown is funny, sad and oddly touching by the end and should please Allen fans everywhere. And Sean Penn, what can you say? The man is a great, great actor. JOSHUA: 4

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The Head Game (2000) by Roger Kahn

Roger Kahn is one of the greatest baseball writers to have ever written about the sport and his latest is a real gem of a book that I breezed through (some readers may not know that i'm a big baseball history nut. true). It's sort of an overview of baseball through the minds of some of the best pitchers the game has ever known. Starts in early baseball with people like Ol' Hoss Radbourne and Cy Young and goes into the '80s with Bruce Sutter. Head Game also delves into the evelution of pitch invention with talk on curves, changes, fadeaways, sliders and spitters to name a few. I particularly enjoyed a lively chapter on Don Drysdale regarding pitching inside, the bean ball and the warfare state of mind needed to compete and win. Sal "the Barber" Maglie is also covered regarding the brushback and why it should always be used. Kahn writes so well that he's a credit to both baseball history and literature. His Boys of Summer is one of the great all time books on the sport. The Head Game is not so epic but it is still worth reading for someone who loves baseball, especially now that I'm more and more dismayed by these modern ballplayers and all the wrongdoings in pro ball nowadays. This ain't real baseball!

The Wall of the Sky, The Wall of the Eye (1996) by Jonathan Lethem

Quick one here. For the few who pay attention or know my reading habits know I'm not a big short story reader. Every so often I read one in the New Yorker or somewhere, but rarely do I read a collection. This book is one of those rare times. Lethem is considered kind of a sci fi writer although he's branching out of the genre (recently w/ the novel Motherless Brooklyn) and this book is less sci fi and more in the line of just weird and strange little stories. "the Happy Man" invents what Hell might be like for us all after we die. "Vanilla Dunk" tells what the NBA might be like in the future, when players wear exoskeletons programmed with the skills of past players and combines sports with ideas of race. The last story, "Sleepy People", follows a woman as she discovers a sleep person who is out like a light for days and days on end on her front porch. This is the 2nd book by Lethem I've read this year (Amnesia Moon I reviewed a few months ago) and like his writing as it is a strange ride.





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With this installment of Kinetoscope I will answer the question: Are you ever too old to go theatre hopping in a multiplex? My trusty partner in crime Rob and I attempt to swindle the amc 25 from a few bucks by going to more than one movie, read below to find out the outcome. Movies reviewed: Blow (2000), The Dish (2000), Amores Perros (2000) and Ghost Dog (2000).

Blow (2001, USA) 4-13 NY with Robert Schrader

Blow is the appropriate title for this film. But blow as in suck is the way I think of this very below average movie. Didn't care for this at all. It tells the story of George Jung (Johnny Depp), who was a major cocaine trafficer in the '70s and '80s. An obvious problem with the film that jumps out at you is the extremely flimsy aspect of the story. There is absoletely no depth to anyone--even Jung--as we get nothing but surface from start to end. I thought Blow would give details at how Jung established his network of moving drugs in and across the country--I was wrong. Blow makes it look incredibly easy to make millions of dollars through drug deals at this time. Why weren't more people doing it if it was this easy to make 30 million dollars cash and tax free? Another part of the film I didn't like was the beginning with Jung as a kid with the usual voice over narration. The child scenes were supposed to provide some kind of motivation as to why Jung was so driven to hit the big time in the trafficing world because he states he never wants to be poor. Well, no kidding, who does!? What a waste of time those scenes are. Also, they are filmed with a bright, hyper color that sets it apart from the rest of the film as "nostalgic" that just makes it look silly and forced. Rachel Griffiths plays Jung's mother and for most of the film she looks the same age as Depp. The best thing about Blow was the bearded Max Perlich---one of my long time favorites. This is the 4th drug type of film for Max as he was in Drugstore Cowboy, Rush, Georgia before Blow. What other bad things can I say about Blow? How about it's a bad version of Traffic and at 2:15, it is way way too long. How about the goofy ending. How about the awful haircut that Depp wears throughout? Blow tries to be hip and cool but comes off as a real failure. I can't understand how this is getting good reviews. Joshua: 2 Robert: 2.5

The Dish (2000, Australia) 4-13 NY w/ Robert

Are Rob and I too old to go to a multiplex with the intent to rip off? Evidently not, as we see two for the price of one. It couldn't have been easier and at $10 a pop, I'm planning on a return trip for more free movies. The studios OWE it to me for forcing me to sit through their crap films like Blow. After seeing Blow, the Aussie film The Dish was a real welcome to sit through. The Dish is a pleasing, warm hearted little movie set in 1969 at a huge satellite dish that NASA needs to help capture signals for the Apollo 11 moon landing. The small town is full of eccentrics, no surprise there, who are real proud of their satellite dish. Most of the film takes place at the dish itself as Sam Neill, two other Aussies and a straightlaced no nonsense guy from NASA deal with expected and unexpected events. The Dis is a bit sappy at times but it is so darn charming and winning that I'll forgive it. It's also so simple and to the heart and seeing it after Blow makes me realize just how phony and full of it Blow is (can you get the hint how I didn't like that movie? maybe my 2 was too high a score?). The Dish taps into the innocence of the late '60s when something like walking on the moon is the most riveting event in the world. That kind of innocence probably won't be coming back to us. The Dish just makes you feel good about being a human being, no matter how syruppy, and that's (sometimes) a good thing. Joshua: 3.5 Robert: 3.5

Amores Perros (2000, Mexico) 4-14 NY with Beth

Okay, if The Dish makes you feel upbeat about living then this film from Mexico and director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu will make you feel soiled and in need of a long hot shower with lots of scrubbing. Amores Perros (Love's A Bitch) is the first film I've ever seen with a disclaimer BEFORE the credits informing us that no animal was hurt during filming. You see, dogs figure mightily in Amores Perros, and mostly it is cringe inducing, eye averting stuff. I'm no sissy with the film violence but seeing bloody, limp dogs over and over was a bit much (almost) for me. The film goes a little too far with the dog stuff actually. The film is a triptych of stories that sort of interweave into one another and converge at a violent, horrific car wreck. The first story is about Octavio, his feelings for his brothers wife and his fighting his giant dog to get money. I don't care what the disclamer says, I've been around dogs my entire life, big dogs who have fought one another. I've jumped into the fray w/ teeth lashing and know what a dog fight looks like, and the dog fights in this sure looked real. This is Mexico after all, do they have some sort of animal watchdog group looking over movies? I have my doubts. Anyway, everything in this story is pushed to a jittery, frenetic pace, aided by lots of handheld camera and the emotional powder kegs of betrayal and violence between the dogs and the two brothers. Betrayal is an interlocking theme used in all three stories as someone is getting betrayed and in two of them it is brothers doing the back stabbing. Story two is based around a man and his model girlfriend he liaves his wife and kids for. They move into a beautiful apartment with a hole in the floor that spells trouble for their dog Richie (I told you, dogs walk a dangerous line in this movie and for a dog lover like me, that's hard to watch. now, had it been cats it would have turned into a comedy! that's a joke by the way.). These people don't seem to care for one another but there are stressful events in their lives. Story 3 is centered around a homeless man who is also a contract killer and has some kind of damaged relationship with an unknown daughter who haunts him. Amores Perros is one of the bleakest films I've seen in a while. It's also one of the most intense, gritty depictions of living on the fringe of society (or like the second story, in the upper class where all is beautiful yet horror lurks very near). At times the film veers too closely to melodrama but it's so no holds barred in its negativity that I'll forgive it that. Boy, this is one hopeless film but it has a feral, unhinged rawness that I really enjoyed. Amores Perros was up for best foreign film at this years oscars and I can see why it didn't win. But there is often beauty and power in the squalid and Amores Perros delivers a few screaming howls from some dark recess of our existence. You can't really say this is a lot of fun, with all the dogs in various strata of disrepair, betrayals and in your face intensity, but good (great) movies are often filled with ugliness and we are better people for having watched them. Not for the overly sensitive but highly recommended. Joshua: 4 Beth: ?

Ghost Dog: the Way of the Samurai (2000, USA) 4-16 Astoria

Ghost Dog is a very cool movie from that lexicon of cool Jim Jarmusch. Blending Eastern philosophy, hip hop gangsta culture and the mob, it is an interesting mixture and largely exists as a mantra of unending style. The always good Forest Whitaker plays the roof dwelling contract killer who leads a solitary life by ancient codes of the samurai. He performs a hit for some low level mobsters who then want to kill him. Ghost Dog works best when these genres collide and the conventions of samurai vs. mafia collide against one another while scored with the hip hop beats of The RZA. There's not an overabundance of story as Ghost Dog is seen doing his bizness of killing or quoting phrases of Eastern philosophy. But he's one smooth mo-fo killer and I haven't seen such cool hit man killing since La Femme Nikita. We also get some funny, off-kilter moments from the cartoon obsessed mafioso and their out of money organization that seems to be on its last legs (possibly due to the killing machine of Ghost Dog). Like most Jarmusch films, Ghost Dog is very pretty and the overall effect of this film is just flat out cool. Joshua: 4

Joshua.............sends his hellos out to the internet space........

Hello. My mom flew in yesterday and brought with her a travelling bag full of bbq from our restaurant back home. I didn't eat all day to work up a nice hunger and then gorged myself on ribs, beef, smoked hot link and beans that evening. Ah, I didn't realize how much I missed our food until my fingers were wet with sauce and I had it smeared across my chin! And best of all, to-day at lunch, more of it!

Movies reviewed: Cool Hand Luke (1967), The Anniversary Party (2001), Legally Blonde (2001) + a couple of book reviews at the end because I'm a couple of dozen books behind for the year and was planning on reviewing everything I read in 2001.

Cool Hand Luke (1967, usa)

Coincidence: I started a new book yesterday called Newjack in which Ted Conover becomes a guard at Sing Sing for a year and writes about his experiences. Early on he discusses the way guards have been presented as sadists in movies and talked specifically about Cool Hand Luke. Paul Newman (Luke) gets a two year hitch in some backwater Southern prison for vandalizing parking meters. This place isn't for wimps as it is chain gang time working in ditches, tarring blacktop and the like in the raw heat of the day. Luke becomes sort of a leader among the other inmates (who include a surprisingly good George Kennedy, who I know mostly from those '70s disaster films he did, and Harry Dean Stanton and Dennis Hopper) and will endure the wrath and pain of "the box" and other physical and mental abuses. I actually thought there would be more cruelty in Cool Hand Luke from what I knew about it beforehand (the famous line "What we have here is a failure to communicate" is drawled out in this movie) but the first hour+ is kind of comical with, you could almost use the oxymoron, prison hijinks. That's an odd phrase. This is good with Newman giving a great performance, what's new there? Joshua: 4

The Anniversary Party (2001, usa)

What a mess! The Anniversary Party is one of the most contrived, self indulgent disasters I've seen in a long while. And those out there who know how I love Jennifer Jason Leigh know how hard it is for me to write disparaging comments regarding her, but when the movie is this underwhelming, that makes it a lot easier. Leigh, who co-wrote, co-directed and co-stars with Alan Cumming, is directly in line for the blame for this flame-out of an actor's ego fest gone wrong. Leigh, obviously inspired by the dogma movies (she was in one as an actor, The King is Alive) grabbed a dv camera, found a big house in L.A. large enough to serve as the set and gathered a bunch of her friends to star in the movie. Sally (Leigh) and Joe (Cumming) are a married couple who've gotten back together just in time for their 6th anniversary. All the friends show up with their various neurotic tendencies among others. Alcohol and drugs are consumed, tensions rise and fall, every actor and quirks: Phoebe Cates, Kevin Kline, Jennifer Beals, John C. Reilly, Gwyneth Paltrow and Jane Adams among others. Alcohol and drugs are consumed, tensions rise and fall, every actor gets a scene or two to show off their skills in scenes that seem to exist just for that purpose as dysfunction abounds. I did enjoy some of the insider references to both Hollywood and Leigh's career as the aging actress who is who is trapped in this doomed relationship with a writer who is directing his first movie. The Anniversary Party is just so utterly false and phony and rings artificial and untrue on every level. Joshua: 2

Legally Blonde (2001, usa)

I did NOT pay to see Legally Blonde. After The Anniversary Party ended, I crossed the hall and walked casually into this theatre and saw another not very good movie. Two bad movies for the price of one. Legally Blonde is an unfunny and ridiculously silly little movie starring Reese Witherspoon (and her chin) as Elle, this pink lovin' Californian sorority queen who is dumped by her pretty boy beau who is off to Harvard Law and then the Senate before he hits 30. He needs a blueblood and not some endlessly perky Delta Nu. What does Elle do? She goes out, studies the LSAT for a week, makes a video with her curvy bosom stuffed into a bikini and wham, she's going to Harvard. Forget that this is so unrealistic that the story is the most humorous thing going for it. In movies such as this, believable plot isn't the first priority, laughs are, and Legally Blonde fails on both areas. Legally Blonde just isn't funny. It's a less intelligent, less well done knock off of Clueless. Legally Blonde knows it's not the greatest as it had more cute dog shots (a chihuahua named Bruiser) than any movie I've seen in a long time. When any movie goes for dogs and cats to get laughs you know you are in trouble. Now, when a second dog (!) arrives for more screen time and I see it's a bulldog named Rufus, I got all behind seeing more of Rufus! A bulldog is one of the most beautiful and charasmatic of breeds yet what good is there in a cutesy chihuahua (ha, Shane!). Selma Blair, who I like, had a role as Elle's rival and there was some ultra nerdy guy who was funny but this piece of mindless fluff is targeted for a completely different audience than me: the teenage girl. Joshua: 2

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English Passengers (2000) by Matthew Kneale

Kneale's Booker Prize nominated novel is a biting, multifaceted account of sailing to Tasmainia to find the Garden of Eden and at the same time is about the extinction of the aborigine at the hands of British colonists. The book is set between 1820 and 1860 and is basically a scathing attack on all things British (Kneale himself is British so it's a bit of self hating going on). From the English Reverend Wilson, who is pious and full of himself, to Dr. Potter, who uses the trip to back up his skewed ideas of racial superiority (surprise, he places English Saxons at the top of the racial heap), to the English in the colony, all come out looking rather bad. The English need to be taken to task in my opinion so I enjoyed reading about smug folks getting their much deserved come uppance. At times Kneale utilizes too many characters to tell the story as I could have done without a few of the people who pop into the story for a few pages and then disappear. I think the story would have flowed much better had he depended on just the major characters rather than employing new people all the time. My favorite aspect of the story was not the abirigine angle at all but the Manx ship and crew, led by Captain Illiam Quillian Kewley, from the Isle of Man. Kewley and his men are smugglers who spend a lot of their time trying to hide and then sell contraband and keep the silly English out of their way. There were a few very funny moments connected to these Manxmen and their misadventures that almost belonged in a completely separate novel. Kneale really gets into the superior than thou frame of mind that surely existed among such English at this time and 180 years later they come off as silly fools. I really loved the sea stuff and the rest of English Passengers was good enough to make this an above average, darkly comic, complex historical novel with a lot of threads running through it. (This review was written in early April after I read the book. Since then I saw Kneale give a reading and he gave one of the most pleasant readings I've ever seen. I actually had read a book of his in the late '80s called Whore Banquets but didn't realize it until he was announced--the book was not published in the u.s. and I read it when I was in London--and as he was signing my copy of English Passengers I told him I'd read Whore Banquets and he said, "So, you're one of the two dozen then!")

The Gates of the Alamo (2000) by Stephen Harrigan

I got this last year for a birthday present (hello Scott!) and was a little leery of it. I'm a proud Okie, born, raised and someday dead, and naturally, like all self respecting Okies should, hold anything connected to texas at arm's length. Those ego driven texans are always shouting their unique brand of superiority to other states and thought this book was possibly just another exorcise in "rah-rah God bless texas and the saintly men of the Alamo" kind of book. I have a real love for 19th century western lore so decided to give the book a chance. Glad I did because it was not really all glowing in terms of the famous men such as Bowie (comes off a bit of a drunk and land thief), Houston (a cowardly, vain man) and Travis (also in love with himself). These men are barely even in the story and when they are they just intwine with one of the main characters of the novel. Three fictional characters comprise the bulk of the narrative: Mary Mott, a widower who runs an inn along the gulf coast, who teenage son Terrell and the botonist Edmond McGowan. All three are swept into the turmoil of the Alamo whether they want to be there or not. Gates of the Alamo also follows a variety of characters on the Mexican side of the battle with officers, soldiers and even Santa Anna making an appearance. At almost 600 pages, we don't even get to the Alamo til around page 350 or so and that means this book is not really about that one event. It's about the relationships, on both sides of the Rio Grand, as events lead people on adventures and face to face with their own mortality through war or the harshness of this area at this time. Harrigan's prose tends to be a little too flowery at times and the battle scenes can get a little repetitive (he has an obseesion with exposed intestines being gutted with a bayonet! but all in all this is a long book that i liked because of the various perspectives and for the fact it wasn't just an chance for everyone to holler out "Remember the Alamo!" over and over.

Movies reviewed: With A Friend Like Harry (2000), The Way of the Gun (2000) and Moulin Rouge (2001). Also might have a book part at the end w/ James Ellroy's The Black Dahlia.

With A Friend Like Harry (2000, France) 6-8 NY with Robert

Enjoyable dark little film from France and director Dominik Moll that is both a sly, macabre thriller and a nasty satire of family life and obsessional friendship. With A Friend Like Harry opens and ends with two polar views of marriage and family living, one a Hellish, stifling suffocation and the other a fuzzy, comfortable glow. What happens between the two is not recommended for those stuck in the mire of raising kids as the sole interest in your life. Michel meets an old friend from high school (Sergi Lopez) at a gas station bathroom and the friend invites himself into Michel's family life. Things will never be the same as Harry is a guy with all kinds of under the surface issues and strange, dangerous ways to him. He gets Michel to start thinking of writing more of his high school sci-fi opus "The Flying Monkeys" (there are humorous conversations and a great fantasy bit connected to the Flying Monkeys) and changing his life from the routine it is in. But don't cross Harry or you could find yourself, or the loved ones around you, in a heap of trouble. I liked all the understated, droll comedy in With A Friend Like Harry and seeing it makes me think that if this would have been an American film, it would have been ruined by absurd showdowns of violence. I prefer the way Moll and co. kept their film: curious, odd and queitly dark all the way to the root. Joshua: 4 Robert Scrader: 4

The Way of the Gun (2000, USA) 6-9 Astoria

Hum-drum and lackluster film that misfires continuously from writer/director Christopher McQuarrie (wrote the screenplay to The Usual Suspects). I watched this because I was kind of in the mood for violence and remembered this having supposedly stylized shootouts and an interesting cast, of which is true and saves this from getting an even lower score than what I give it. I didn't expect to have the film so littered with so many bad lines of dialogue, unbelievable and silly plot twists/aspects and down right cliches from past films. McQuarrie takes a story of two outlaw types (Benicio Del Toro and Ryan Phillippe) on the road, tosses in a very pregnant kidnapee (Juliette Lewis), an assortment of "bagmen" (led by James Caan), stone faced security guards (Taye Diggs and Nicky Katz) and spins it all together in this absurd concoction. There is not one ounce of originality on display here as McQuarrie and others think they are making the coolest and hippest film of the year. They didn't. The Way of the Gun is one of the most lifeless, useless and biggest wastes of my time watching movies in a long while. I didn't like this movie! Joshua: 2

Moulin Rouge (2001, USA) 6-10 NY

Baz Luhrmann has made one of the most interesting of the summer's blockbuster/Hollywood type of releases. I can't say I liked everything about this over the top, audacious, whirling dervish kaleidoscope of a film. It's definately flawed and takes a few wrong turns but I'm still going to give a strong recommendation to see this blitzkrieg of a movie. I'm not really into musicals so I was hesitant to see Moulin Rouge but it's hard to call this a traditional musical as the songs are truncated bursts and the dancing is filmed and edited with such a frenetic zeal of angles that it's often just a blur of leg, skirt, face, hands, fee, hose. And the songs? They run the gamut of every sort of pop culture mark in the past few decades from The Beatles to Madonna to David Bowie to The Police and so on and so on. I bet Kurt Cobain didn't expect to have "Smells Like Teen Spirit" used like this when he wrote it! Whole songs are not used most of the time, it's just a verse from this song and a line from another all joined into one melody. At times, this was kind of distracting as I found myself trying to place the song and where I knew it from. The setting: Paris, 1900, among a group of bohemians trying to finance a show ("Spectacular! Spectacular!), they approach the star courtesan Satine (Nicole Kidman). Christian (Ewan McGregor), a poor writer among the group falls in love with the beautiful Satine and she him, until she realizes he's not a duke but a poor writer. A nasty, mean spirited duke competes for Satine's attention as well. Will love win out over money? That is the story and it's pretty flimsy at that with not much depth to anyone, including the two leads. But the prime interest in Moulin Rouge is not character depth but to kick a heap of non-stop splendor in your eyes and ears. It's no accident their show is called Spectacular! Spectacular! as Moulin Rouge is 95% spectacle itself. This movie is one of the most artificial and manipulated movies I've ever seen with crazy graphics, all these komputer aided hyper zooms across Paris and into windows, textures and tints from film to digitization. Moulin Rouge is an orgy of visuals and a sensory overload from beginning to end, it just doesn't let up. It shows that komputers and effects of the 21st century can be utilized for things other than Jerry Bruckheimer explosion fests for the lowest common denominator. If I'm going to see komputer aided movies, I'll take one like this anyday over seeing explosions from 15 different angles. I think Moulin Rouge is a film people will either love or hate and I mostly loved it for it's bravura and guts. I mean, any movie that can have Ozzy singing as a fairy and the great Jim Broadbent cooing "Like A Virgin" definately has something going for it. Moulin Rouge is an uninterrupted burst of histrionic, eye popping, dazzling, quasi pretentious and thrilling image after another with a patch quilt of songs from the cultural landscape of the past and is one of the most daring and outrageously stylish films of the year. Joshua: 4



++++++++++++++++++++++++++INKLAB book review++++++++++++

The Black Dahlia (1987) by James Ellroy

Are you tough enough to handle James Ellroy? He is the leanest, meanest, grimiest, most sordid, most vicious crime writer alive and has written some of the most riveting and intense explosions of literature in the late 20th century. His epic crime novel American Tabloid is one of the zenith marks of the genre and will kick your teeth in with its non-stop staccato attack! The Black Dahlia finds Ellroy in fine form as he tells about "the Black Dahlia" murder investigation in Los Angeles in the 1940s. This murder is one of the most infamous in U.S. history and around it Ellroy has crafted his story. Bucky Bleichert takes up most of the narrative as a tough as nails, one time boxer, take no shit L.A. cop who partners up with Big Lee Blanchard, falls in love with Lee's girl (who has a troubled past too---hey, this is Ellroy, everyone is messed up!) and then both cops become obsessed with Elizabeth Short (aka the Black Dahlia). This is a brutal book that the squemish of sissified (!) best avoid, but if you want to take a howling, raging look into the darkness of the human mind/soul, then get this book. I love the cop stuff and at times it is almost too sordid and graphic (and in need of a shower to wash the grime away), but it is still a powerful bit of business. Ellroy writes with short bursts and by the end of it you feel spent, as if you were in the ring, soiled by the events of the Black Dahlia, and repeatedly punched in the ribcage. Maybe I'm overdoing it? This is the real deal.

Okay, next time I will have reviews of Sexy Beast with a nasty turn by Ghandi himself, Ben Kingsley and Japanese bad boy Takashi Miike's Dead or Alive.

Live performance reviews by Joshua...

Okay, here's some more rock n roll reviews, tidbits, stories for you that some may find more entertaining than others. Bands: The Sadies, Pernice Brothers, Blue Mountain, Grandaddy, Autechre.

The Sadies/Pernice Brothers/Blue Mountain 4/21 Bowery Ballroom w/ Rob

Kind of caught this triple bill at last minute after enjoying Indian food with Rob on 6th street, which is known as curry row because it is lined with Indian restaurants on both sides of the street. I'd read a fair amount on The Sadies but had never heard anything by the Toronto band led by brothers Travis and Dallas Good. I know the pair from the Neko Case records I own, but not their own stuff. The Sadies were really good (no intended pun joke!), the best band of the three by leaps and bounds. The Sadies play a genre busting style of music incorporating spaghetti western surf and twang, old school country and western and rock n roll tinged bluegrass. I'll buy the latest Sadies record and see if it is as good as this live show of theirs. I liked the dusty twang songs but the 3 or 4 that utilized Travis on fiddle were the highlight of the show. Travis plays such a hard and forceful fiddle that the horsehair of the bow was hanging in damaged shreds by the time he was done. O my, good stuff. The Sadies closed their set with a rousing, garage gospel hardcore country version of "Higher Power" and Rob and I were both won over and are now Sadies fans. Plus it's a good band name being I have a floppy eared bassett hound home in Oklahoma named Sadie. Next up was the Pernice Brothers. I'm not familer w/ them but did own a couple of records by their old project, the Scud Mountain Boys. Unfortunately no Scud songs were played as the set consisted mostly of lackluster pop songs that didn't do a whole lot for me. The guy, Joe I think, just has too thin a voice and the songs often were too MOR for me. Blue Mountain took the stage and this trio played almost two opposite sets. Starting with acoustic they played countryish songs with a traditional bend and harmonies from husband and wife tandem. But when they switched to electric guitar, I thought I was sent in a time machine with all the '70s power chords and solos I was hearing. The universal symbal for rock n roll, devil horns (invented by Ronnie James Dio for all you metal trivia buffs out there!), were raised high and often by the beer drinking scruffy folks left in the audience. I can't believe I used to love that '70s rock but hell-fire, I was about 11 at the time. Blue Mountain sure reminded me of when I had my '70s music phase and on this one night it was fun. It was great to hear the word y'all over and over from the band. These people say y'all and it sounds natural and real to hear it. I say y'all up here in NY and each time I do I sort of think how it sounds to these yankees, but I will not change my vocabulary for anyone or anyplace. It's a great word: y'all. Say it with me: Y'all!

Grandaddy 4-27 Irving Plaza

First time at the Irving Plaza for a show, wood ceilings, softly glowing chandoliers, large entryway w/ stairs, giant screen projecting Bjork videos onto it. This was an all ager (16+) and it is always a shock to be surrounded by 16 year olds as the rock n roll baton is passed to those almost half my age. My mortality is shoved in my face at events such as this. Grandaddy are from Modesto, CA and look more like carpenters than rock band with their collection of beards and normalcy fashion sense. Jason Lyttle, replete with sweatband and Elton John-esque glasses, lost behind a stack of vintage synths, is singer and leader of Grandaddy. Lyttle, I believe, likes to write these songs that seem to be obsessed with the idea of humanness vs. technology. Grandaddy (Lyttle) has images of machines, nature and the happy/unhappy place of man in the society swamped by nature (human) and technology (non-human) in most of his songs. Grandaddy use a lot of old technology, vintage synths--I counted about 8 or 9 on stage--to promote this slightly anti-technology vision. Boy, do I like the synths as they combine with noisy bursts of guitars to form a skewed pop backbone. For every pop nugget such as "Summer Here Kids" there are two or three slowish techno/nature fusion songs such as "Beautiful Ground", "So You'll Aim Toward the Sky" or "2000 Man". I'm into this kind of idea sifting regarding man's happiness or unhappiness while being buried in our increasingly machine centered society and wish Grandaddy would take these ideas even further. But the band does other kinds of songs too with an odd version of "You are My Sunshine" and a jangly, awashed in synth version of George Jones' "He Stopped Loving Her Today" classic. The band also used videos projected behind them that concentrated on the huge windmills located in parts of California, horses, cows, water, komputers that further the nature vs. technology twin duality the band espouses. Enjoyable band with interesting style and viewpoint that more people should know of.

Autechre 5-5 Bowery Ballroom

I guess I'm slightly old fashioned as when I see a gig I expect to see real singing and playing. Apply that notion of realness to a rock show involving electronic bands and I wouldn't mind seeing a synth played or fiddled with every so often. Not in this digital age. Why play anything when it is acceptable and so much easier to store your music in a couple of komputers and then blandly stand in front of said Macs clicking here and there until you get the song you want from your files. Sadly, such was the case with all three acts on this bill of electronic "bands". I showed up expecting to dance down but this night was mostly trance style electronic music. First tip off was when I entered the large ballroom to find no one dancing but a lot of people just laying on the floor or slumped against the wall, possibly aided by some kind of chemical, who is to say? Act #1 was over very quickly, act #2 (as I said, a faceless, nameless guy behind a bank of komputers) was trying to hurt people's hearing with waves of screeching electro static and feedback. I'm not letting some komputer tech geek damage my hearing so I went downstairs to the bar area until this ridiculous mess was over. I've NEVER worn ear plugs in my life and will get into it loudly at the drop of a hat, but I'm not into noise for the sole purpose of damaging my hearing, by data stored in a machine, no thanks. I went back upstairs for the Autechre show and was disappointed by them. I won a couple of their analogue heavy, mostly beatless, atmospheric records and the band on record is much different than the band live on this night. They were very beat heavy and stripped from most melody, I was expecting a more human, a warmer set and not all this precise, avant garde bpm and pulses of digital data from their komputers. Too bad.

Have a lot of shows coming up in mid to late June I'll see: Blood Oranges and the Schrams, Magnetic Fields, Red House Painters and Air to name a few.