by Christina Waters | Jan 27, 2013 | Home, Movies |
Set aside the debate about whether or not this film endorses the use of torture as an enhanced interrogation tool. There are other issues plaguing this film by director Kathryn Bigelow, and they primarily involve the curiously empty—or at least vaguely characterized—center of the action, a fledgling CIA operative named Maya (Jessica Chastain).
I loved and admired Bigelow’s The Hurt Locker, a taut, bravura war film that packed an authentic emotional punch. And while I was mostly caught up in Zero Dark Thirty (the echo of many Vietnam vets’ favorite slang for “early,” as in “we had to get up at O dark thirty”), and riveted by its expert visual and verbal architecture—I didn’t love it. And I have puzzled since then over why I didn’t love it. Then it came to me: Jessica Chastain! Wrong. Utterly wrong! Too pretty, too fragile, too unbelievable—especially the voice, a voice lacking in anything like authority. A high-pitched voice in a masculine power context is clearly a cry for condescension.
My concern with this bracing story of the roughly ten-year “hunt” for Osama bin Laden has to do with the choice of lead actress — a choice, however, that might ruin the film’s believability in order to make a more subtle political point.
As Bigelow’s film dramatizes (more…)
by Christina Waters | Jan 26, 2013 | Home |
Musicals affect me something like dry martinis. The more I consume, the weaker my inhibitions become. In the end, against my critical instincts and even my good sense, I succumb. I cave in. I cry. Which is what I did starting with the very first note of “I Dreamed a Dream,” all the way to the death of Jean Valjean—a death saturated in religious iconography, grieving children, and fairytale closure. An end, in short, worthy of anything by Verdi.
In fact it’s probably a good idea to stow away any preconceptions you have about stage musicals—the kind that involve dialogue, a big musical number, and more dialogue. If you think of director Tom Hooper’s ambitious screen version of Les Misérables (loosely based upon the multi-volume epic by Victor Hugo) as something of an opera, you’ll gain enough emotional traction to use up half a box of Kleenex before the credits roll.
By now everyone with a computer or TV knows that Oscar-winner Hooper (The King’s Speech) decided to venture into dicey territory and have his actors actually perform their own singing. On screen.
No dubbed voice-over, no professional singers creating the vocals in studios and then layering their voices atop the screen performances. Nope. There was Hugh Jackman singing with passionate conviction in a range much higher than his comfort zone. And Anne Hathaway, weeping, trembling and raging her way (more…)
by Christina Waters | Jan 26, 2013 | Home, Wine |
How nice of winemaker Jim Schultze to provide an elegant Burgundian-style Pinot Noir, bearing the Windy Oaks label and made from Santa Cruz Mountains grapes, for under $30.
The 2010 Terra Narro ($27.99 @ Shoppers) is a sensational companion for salmon or pork, and offers up perfume of bay leaves, mint and smoke riding an appealing raspberry foundation. Just enough tannins to provide structure, this is a highly approachable 14% alcohol creation. The long, slow finish gets better the second day.
by Christina Waters | Jan 14, 2013 | Home |
Now I get it. Now I see what all the Bradley Cooper fuss is about. As the sensitive, sexy, bi-polar misfit centerpiece of David O. Russell’s new film—Silver Linings Playbook—Cooper manages to register sweetness, rage, and screwball genius, sometimes all at once. He is hugely wonderful as the tortured recovering wild man, the electrified silver lining if you will, of Russell’s homage to barely-controlled domestic chaos and anger management “issues.”
Matched mano a mano by Jennifer —The Hunger Games—Lawrence, Cooper’s character Pat is fresh out of a mental hospital and moving back into his parent’s home in South Philadelphia when we meet him.
Thanks to an unidentified act of violence, Pat has lost everything. Gone are his home, his job, and his wife about whom he retains delusional fantasies of a reunion. But he does have the support of his mom (Jacki Weaver) and obsessive Eagles fan father (Robert de Niro, in his finest performance in years). The fringe of this brisk, very funny, often heartbreaking film is littered with Dad’s bookie buddies, a much-loathed brother, an OCD friend (more…)
by Christina Waters | Jan 11, 2013 | Home |
Cold weather, warm flavors. If you sip something at O’mei’s front bar these days, you might be tempted by a new slew of tiny Asian tapas. We like the little bites involving bacon and potatoes, even a comforting cube of omelet.
This particular dish offers peppers, squash and bacon. Perfect with a glass of Ahlgren Semillon.
by Christina Waters | Dec 29, 2012 | Home |
Despite all of his politically-correct instincts—the ones that usually sabotage his work—Steven Spielberg’s skill carries the day here. Lincoln is the masterpiece of his mid-career, and the triumph of filmmaking genius over bleeding heart didacticism.
As usual the maestro has trouble starting a film—in this case a woefully improbable duo of young black recruits meets up with the president in the aftermath of battle and proceed to badger him about civil rights. And as usual, Spielberg provides the multiple endings of a perennially insecure beau, afraid we won’t like the first ending, or the second, so he tacks on yet another. These are only irritations, however, and not fatal enough flaws to ruin Lincoln‘s quickly established momentum. Once established, that momentum proves to be bracing, tender, explosive, humorous, and emotionally devastating.
Through Lincoln we are unequivocally plunged into the living tissue of the mid-19th century—here the credit must be shared by Spielberg’s longtime visual collaborators, cinematographer Janusz Kaminski and production designer Rick Carter. The muddy streets of the nation’s capital, the dark, heavy-curtained interiors of Victorian America illuminated by oil lamp and candlelight, the incredibly diverse and outlandish hair, beard, and mustache fashions of the day—all easily insert us into the world experienced by the weary leader of a weary nation that had already lost 600,000 lives in bloody combat.
Casting is key, as is Tony Kushner’s smart and dextrous script (sure to be one of many Oscars for the film). Lincoln is powered by outstanding performances (more…)
