MovieMonday: Soul

This somewhat unusual Pixar movie is not like "Toy Story" or "Cars," but it will appeal to young watchers and draw in their parents as well.

"Soul" opens as the story of Joe Gardner (Jamie Foxx) the frustrated teacher of a middle-school band class whose students, all but one, don't care about music.  Joe is a jazz piano player who wants music to be his life.

Suddenly an opportunity opens, and  Joe proves his chops by jamming with famous saxophonist Dorothea Williams (Angela Bassett) and her jazz group.  He gets the new job of his dreams, but events intervene.   

In his enthusiasm, Joe falls into a sewer that lacks a manhole cover and wakes up as a small translucent being, presumably dying and on a moving pathway to eternity.  

"My life's just starting!" he yells.  "I'm not dying! I've got to get back!"

Joe manages to escape the walkway and finds himself among a group of similar-looking creatures who are not headed for the Great Beyond but instead are being prepared for the Great Before -- except one, 22 (Tina Fey), who has failed many tryouts and is pretty negative about the idea of life on earth.

Suddenly Joe and 22 awaken in Joe's hospital room, where 22 lives in Joe's body and Joe is a big fat kitty cat, again frustrated.  They leave the hospital and pursue a hilarious course through the city, each awkward but, over time, learning from each other. 

This is an unusual story, and it does result in kindness rewarded and lessons learned.  But it would be nothing without its real-feeling animated musical performances and its score, organized by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross and with Jon Batiste's jazz arrangements and compositions.  Here are samples from the soundtrack. 

Worth a look.

Other New Movies

Two other films opened this weekend.  They may attract more viewers, but not me.

I planned initially to watch the big seller,  Wonder Woman 1984. But then came the doubts -- a long, long 2.5 hours, more magical powers employed in difficult situations, another two-dimensional villain, another Kristin Wiig in another silly role and more.  I rather enjoyed the 2017 Warner/DC Wonder Woman, but the sequel seemed less appealing.

         Maybe it's more difficult to care about superhero stories when the number of everyday crimes is rising and everyday law enforcement is stepping back.  Maybe that's why a smaller movie about personal character sounded better.

The other film, News of the World, is from a 2016 novel that I thought was okay but not great.   In it, a quiet hero played by Tom Hanks commits to returning to her relatives a girl who had been held for several years by members of a Kiowa tribe who kidnapped her after killing her parents.  The story is of the road trip between the Tom Hanks character and the girl who has roots in two very different cultures.

           The book is okay, but as one who spent some time in Texas, I found it less interesting than the true story of Cynthia Ann Parker, who at the age of 10 was kidnapped by a Comanche raid that killed most of her family.  Many years later, after she had married a Comanche chief and had three children, she was miserable to be "rescued" and returned to the life of her childhood.  One of her sons, Quanah, survived as a man influential in both his parents' cultures. 

            Now that's a story.  

            

StoryMonday: A Christmas Carol

We seem to have a new film version of Dickens' "A Christmas Carol" every year.  This one, described as inventive and interesting, is said to be in theaters now, but I'm waiting for a Covid vaccination and have no recommendation to offer.

The origin story, a novella by Charles Dickens, was published in 1843.  It traditionally has been promoted as an antidote to overly commercial Christmas celebrations, but this year it may resonate slightly differently.

The story of course is about Ebenezer Scrooge, an old man who has spent his life building his wealth and who is visited on the night of December 24 by three spirits who show him how much he has missed and how much more he can do if he pays attention to the people in his life.

This is a family movie in two ways.  For children, it gratifies the wish for people to be nice to each other.  For everyone else who has made a mistake or two along the road, it affirms that change is possible and can be rewarding.

So if you have finished wrapping presents and have time on your hands just now, here are some ways to take in "A Christmas Carol."

For Children:

There are various cartoons of the story.   A Bugs Bunny one, if you can find it, and one with Daffy Duck (Bah humduck!)  There is the 1962 Mr Magoos Christmas Carol and, hiding somewhere else, the still-popular 1992 "Muppets Christmas Carol."

This can get out of hand, however.  There are Lego and Smurf productions, and I'm not sure I'd care to see Jim Carrey playing Jim Carrey Scrooge.

For a good introduction, this well-done 25-minute version from 1969 won an Oscar for best animated short.

For All of Us

A film critic with a longer attention span than mine watched and evaluated dozens of Christmas Carol films, worst to best, if you would like to see more.  (My only quibble with his write-up is that it describes Dickens' book as "anti-capitalist" when I think the more appropriate term might be "anti-greed."  Marx's "Das Kapital" was published almost 25 years later.)

And you could always read the book itself.  Dickens' work remains approachable and is available in paper, on Kindle, on Nook and from the fine folks at Gutenberg.  There are also shorter children's stories, including " A Quarantine Christmas Carol" to reassure anxious young ones about pandemic interruptions in traditional festivities.

And then there are radio plays, including a 1965 drama starring the fine English actor Sir Ralph Richardson as Ebenezer Scrooge.

Another Christmas Carol that is quite good and also available on Youtube is the  Leeds' Northern Ballet Theatre performance from 1992, the only ballet version that I have encountered.

If, like me, you have read the book, watched several teleplays and films and seen more than one regional theatrical version, you might enjoy this film that speculates about how Charles Dickens came up with his story:  The Man Who Invented Christmas.

MovieMonday: The Big Lebowski

This 1998 film, which is pretty wacky, has achieved cult or near-cult status for several reasons, not least because its characters may say "fuck" more often than in any other movie.  (Someone actually made a count.)

This, and other charms, have given Lebowski an enduring popularity among filmgoers who enjoy watching people do dumb things or struggle in ridiculous situations.  And, honestly, the talky dialogue is often hilarious.

The movie was the seventh from from the Coen brothers, Ethan and Joel, following "Fargo," which won two Academy Awards (actress, original screenplay) and was filmed in the Upper Midwest.

I'm going to speculate here that the Coens decided to choose a sunnier setting for their next outing and came up with Malibu -- either that or they had retained the services of actor Jeff Bridges, who lives in Malibu, to play the lead role of the Dude, and all the pieces fell into place as they wrote their screenplay.

Where "Fargo" is a crime/comedy with a dark edges, Lebowski is a comedy/crime story with eccentric characters and a lot of property damage.

That latter sets the story in motion.  The Dude, a drifter who favors Black Russians that turn his mustache milky, is disturbed one day by two thugs who bang into his apartment, push his face into the toilet, pee on his rug and demand to know where the money is.

The Dude explains that he is the Dude, and while he seems to have the same official name as a rich guy in Pasadena, he does not have a wife named Bunny who is being held for ransom.  After the thugs leave, the Dude is very angry because, as he says repeatedly,  the fouled rug had "really tied the room together."

He gets into his battered car and drives to confront the big Lebowski at his mansion.  There, the Dude demands the replacement of his rug, which is not offered, but he hears later from the big L, who desires his assistance.  From there the plot is off to the races, and we learn, again and again, that things are not always as they seem. 

There are three hostile nihilists; a pornography king who employs enforcers; an avant artist Maude Lebowski (Julianne Moore), daughter of the non-Dude with her own enforcers;  a nasty but silent 15-year-old, and, just for the humor of it, a "brother shamus" who follows the Dude around and whom the Dude assumes is an Irish monk, presumably a Brother Seamus.

The local bowling alley is the Dude's hangout, where he and two teammates are in a finals tournament.  They are dim Donny (Steve Buscemi) and, more dramatically, Walter Sobchak (John Goodman) a Jewish convert and a hothead prone to overreactions that cause the Dude to step up as a calming influence, but without much success.  When asked to represent the Pasadena Lebowski's interests, the Dude takes Walter with him, which is not as helpful as might have been hoped, given Walter's oft-mentioned military experience.  

Besides Coen regulars Buscemi and Goodman, another one, John Turturro as Jesus (Geesus) Quintana, is there not to advance the plot but to promote, humorously and in his own way, his bowling team in its coming competition with the Dude/Donny/Walter squad.  

There are repeated riffs -- bad guys storming into the Dude's apartment (which really could use a deadbolt), more and more damage to his old car with its tape deck and Creedence tapes, and at least two Dude fantasy sequences occasioned by violence and spiked White Russians.

Since I'm speculating about how this story came together and since the plot isn't entirely coherent or even the point of the exercise, I will venture further and guess that another Malibu resident, Sam Elliott -- he of the distinguished mustache and gravelly voice -- was drafted to provide some semblance of narrative structure as the Stranger.

  

The Stetson-wearing Stranger introduces the story in an opening accompanied by a Sons of the Pioneers chorus of "Tumbling Tumbleweed" and as an actual tumbleweed -- no doubt imported as a prop -- rolls down a Malibu beach toward the Pacific Ocean.  Midway along and at the end of the film, The Stranger meets the Dude over sarsaparilla and beer, respectively, in the bar at the bowling alley.  

In their final conversation, the Stranger puts a question to the Dude:  "Do you have to use so many cuss words?"  The answer seems to be, why not?

"The Dude abides," the Dude says as he leaves to join his bowling team, leaving the Stranger to put the Dude and his story into perspective. 

Notes

-- The Dude is a fashion-casual fellow whose street attire not infrequently consists of pajama bottoms and a distinctive sweater, a Pendleton Westerly that reportedly came from Jeff Bridges' personal wardrobe.  

The Portland-based Pendleton Woolens company drew on Native American designs for the Westerly, which was sold from 1972  until sometime in the 1980s.  It was reintroduced sometime after 2010, presumably to appeal to Dude  enthusiasts. 

-- Sam Elliott appeared with Lil Nas X in a 2020 Super Bowl commercial that made use of Elliott's Western look and Nas' very popular "Old Town Road."    Good song.

A Christmas Playlist

Most of us have nice stereo systems and the ability to design our own playlists with songs playing from serial albums or randomly from several albums.  At chez Id, we do the latter with classics from several generations. 

Early in December, we start playing our holiday version, a family tradition.  If you're into such, I recommend these titles.

Lou Rawls

"Christmas is the Time" was first released in 1967, and many of the same songs were on subsequent holiday releases.  Rawls, who died in 2006, had a smooth, memorable voice and great accompaniments, including the guitar solo on the title track.

(An old jazzer friend recommended "Stormy Monday," the Rawls/Les McCann collaboration from 1962.  It's not Christmas music, but it is very cool.)

Andrea Bocelli

"My Christmas" also is a favorite.  Bocelli, the fabulous Italian tenor, has great pipes, and I sometimes wonder whether his collaborators don't tend to over-orchestrate his numbers.  That is not the case in this  duet with Mary J. Blige.  

Sarah McClachlan

Wintersong

"Wintersong" is the first of Sarah McLachlan's two holiday albums, and it seems to be the more popular one.   The songs, like this one, are rendered simply and in a low-key wistful tone that has its own appeal.

Ray Charles

"The Spirit of Christmas," released in 1967 by the fabulous Ray Charles and the Raettes, features about the only version of the The Little Drummer Boy that I can stand to hear.  Don't miss his version of "Baby, It's Cold Outside," with Betty Carter.  Like all his work, a fine piece of music.

Peter Kater
 

"For Christmas," pianist Kater's solo rendering of traditional music, has been popular since its release more than 30 years ago.   This all-piano album of traditional music, is well done.  Sing along or just enjoy the familiar tunes.

Earth Wind & Fire

 

Who doesn't want to have a little funk at this time of year?  "Holiday" was released in 2014 and, happily, includes December, a seasonal repositioning of its possibly most joyful song.

Willie Nelson

Yes, Willie is traditionally a country singer,  but this album (like "Starlight," which Texans used to call Willie's grandmother album) treats traditional favorites in Nelson's own style.   

Josh Groban

"Noel" employs simple accompaniments to feature Groban's fine voice, as on this French Petit Papa Noel.

Frank Sinatra

Old Blue Eyes released this classic during his swing period with Capitol Records, and it remains a seasonal pleasure.   (Another Sinatra classic from that period, is "Songs for Swingin' Lovers," with arrangements by Nelson Riddle.  Just saying.)

Michael Bublé

This album, aptly titled "Christmas" is also appealing.  This singer has a nice voice, and his phrasing is good.  I do like this horn-informed cover of the Elvis classic.

Note:

My enthusiasm for Mariah Carey's classic Christmas single, as performed by her, remains undiminished, as noted last year and in 2016.

Earlier this month, the Wall Street Journal took notice as well:  How Mariah Carey Built "All I Want for Christmas Is You" into a Holiday Juggernaut

MovieMonday: Mank

This movie is mostly about another movie -- "Citizen Kane" -- that many regard as the finest film ever.  That earlier movie is mostly associated with Orson Welles, who starred, directed, produced and co-wrote it.

"Mank" is about the other writer, Herman Mankiewicz (Gary Oldman).

(I watched "Citizen Kane" again before seeing this new film.  There is a very short plot summary here.)

The film opens as Mank, one leg in a huge cast after a car accident, is taken to a house in the Mojave Desert east of Los Angeles.  He is there to recuperate and, under orders from Orson Welles, to produce a Kane screenplay in 90 days.  Actually, 60 days.   

Mank is a complex fellow -- one of the  writers who left New York for less lofty but higher-paying film assignments in Los Angeles.  He's good when he's on point, but his alcoholism makes his work erratic.  A California associate, John Houseman (Sam Troughton), has been assigned to bird-dog the writing effort.

Mank's script will be about Charles Foster Kane, a rich young man who buys a newspaper, then many other newspapers and who aims for political glory, only to lose all that he values and then die, old and alone in a massive pleasure dome, ala Kubla Khan of the Samuel Tayler Coleridge poem.

"Citizen Kane" resembles a then-living American, William Randolph Hearst (Charles Dance), founder of a newspaper empire who has his own "pleasure dome," San Simeon, high above the California coastline.  Hearst has taken an interest in filmmaking to promote the career of his blonde mistress, Marion Davies (Amanda Seyfried.) Hearst died 10 years after "Citizen Kane" was released and probably did not appreciate the characterization.  Marion Davies was said to resent her portrayal.

Mank's moments are intercut with scenes from his earlier experiences in California.  The film is made in black and white, and the cut-in scenes are rendered, script-style, like this:  "INT: San Simeon -- night"

On Mank's first visit to San Simeon, he is told, "George Bernard Shaw was right -- it's what God might have built if he had the money."  In that scene, Hearst establishes himself as tight-lipped and peremptory, but Davies and Mank begin to form a friendship.

Mank also visits the MGM offices, where he watches a "writers' room" working on a script and then sees chief Louis B. Mayer (Arliss Howard) tell an all-hands gathering that the studio must cut all wages by 50 percent until the new president, FDR, reopens Depression-closed banks. 

He also talks with other writers when the Writers Guild (like other labor unions) are being formed.  They are knowledgeable about the looming Nazi threat and sympathetic to a more collective government, with Mank saying, "Socialism is where everybody shares the wealth, and Communism is where everybody shares the poverty."    

During that period, California was a business-oriented Republican stronghold.  But one renegade named Upton Sinclair (Bill Nye) had become a problem.  Sinclair, the muckraking journalist and socialist, registered Democrat and ran in 1934 for the office of  California governor.  Mank observed the film industry's apparently staged campaign of faked stories from everyday voters favoring the Republican candidate, who did in fact win the election.  

The movie is directed by David Fincher  -- "The Social Network," "Gone Girl," "Fight Club"-- and is done well.   The acting is excellent, but the script drops literary references like crazy, apparently to establish Mank's intellectual erudition.  (He calls Hearst "Cervantes" and Louis Mayer "Sancho," not flatteringly; and he likens Davies repeatedly to "Dulcinea," in references, duh, to Don Quixote.  There are many others.)

Orson Welles (Tom Burke) is almost entirely absent.  He and Mank talk over the phone and then argue at the end over whether Mank will get any credit for the screenplay.  On the other hand, Welles' name has been associated almost exclusively with the original film since its release in 1941.

Note

Early in this movie, Mank is advised to "Tell the story you know."  

In fact, the script for this film about a screenwriter was written by the director's late father, Jack Fincher, a screenwriter himself.

This happens again and again in all forms of art.

How many self-portraits do we have of famous painters?  Photographer Cindy Sherman has made a career of photographing herself in different costumes and roles.  

Televisions shows about people who make television shows started (I think) with  "The Dick Van Dyke Show" and continued to "30 Rock."  

"Chorus Line" and "Chicago" and "Singin' in the Rain" are musicals are about musical plays.  

Thomas Wolfe's "You Can't Go Home Again" is just one of many novels by and about novelists.  

Readers with other examples are invited to share them in comments.