วันพุธที่ 11 พฤศจิกายน พ.ศ. 2552

movie of the day (nov 11, 2009)


1. Because I Said So + + + + + + + +

Story Highlights:
• "Because I Said So" unamusing romantic comedy
• Diane Keaton is meddling mother trying to marry off daughter
• Movie has terrible script and overly broad performances

By Tom Charity
Special to CNN

(CNN) -- "What do women want?" Mel Gibson demanded, a few seasons back.

Apparently -- at least as far as Hollywood is concerned -- they want trite romantic comedies like this one, contemporary fairytales where every little princess will eventually find her perfect prince, even if she has to kiss a few frogs along the way.

Written by Karen Leigh Hopkins and Jessie Nelson, "Because I Said So" begins ceremoniously at a couple of weddings. With Maggie (Lauren Graham) and Mae (Piper Perabo) duly married off, uber-mom Daphne (Diane Keaton) can finally devote all her attentions to silly Milly (Mandy Moore), who's a worry, what with her auto-destructive dating record and a nervous habit of giggling inanely whenever a man is within chatting distance.

She may have three daughters, but for the purposes of the movie Daphne is a cautionary singleton (dad went AWOL in some unspecified period of ancient history and stays that way). The last thing she wants is for any girl of hers to end up the same way: alone and turning 60.

So no matter that Milly appears to be running her own company (a catering firm with a big line in wedding cakes), and forget for a minute that Mandy Moore is, what? All of 22 years old? It is Daphne's mission to usher her to wedded bliss before the fade-out.

Taking matchmaking into her own hands, she places the world's longest personals ad on her daughter's behalf, and interviews the surprisingly numerous but "laughably" unsuitable respondents at a swanky hotel dining room.

Johnny (Gabriel Macht) watches this process play out from the bandstand (he's a musician), and coolly cribs Milly's number. But Daphne has her heart set on Jason (Tom Everett Scott), a disconcertingly charming, handsome and successful architect.

Wasted
You see where this is going. The film stakes its credibility on pitching for Johnny, the bohemian single parent with a fondness for waistcoats, tattoos and an adorably voluble brat in tow ("You've got a vagina," is the youngster's running gag). But it never begins to question Daphne's contention that there is no hope of happiness outside the family union. Needless to say, there's a fella waiting in the wings for her too.

Acting in a reality vacuum, Diane Keaton defaults to a manic grin and waves her hands about a lot (when she's really gone, she waves her feet about too). Something's gotta give, indeed, and you wonder if a kindly director might suggest a Valium before she does herself serious injury. Director Michael Lehmann, on the other hand, throws a cream cake in her face.

In one scene, poor Mandy Moore has to strip off her slip in the middle of the street then make-cute with a balloon stuck to her statically charged rear end. Maybe Katharine Hepburn could have carried that off, but Mandy just looks exposed.

In another intimate moment, she has to explain the big O to her uncomprehending mom. "It's ... toe curling," she gushes, curling her toes and waving her hands about.

In truth, if only she could stop dropping things, the personably innocuous Moore would seem a better bet for the architect.

Sidelined as the big sis, "Gilmore Girls' " Lauren Graham shows enough spunk to make you wish the movie was about her instead.

We all know that feminism never really happened (not in movies like this, anyway), but what makes this capitulation so depressing is that Lehmann made his name with a couple of genuinely funny and subversive satires, "Heathers" and "Meet the Applegates."

The system hasn't just tamed him, he may as well be a pod person -- or a chameleon, like the South American invertebrates who adopt all too easily to suburban consumerism in "Applegates."

Recycling every cliche in the rom-com handbook, it's clear from the very first that Lehmann has sacrificed his characters on the altar of sappy endings. What a waste -- for everybody.

Album Tracklist:
1. Black Horse and a Cherry Tree - KT Tunstall
2. It's All Right - Curtis Mayfield/The Impressions
3. Mama Said - The Shirelles
4. That's All Right - Rick Nelson
5. World Spins Madly On - The Weepies
6. Want Ads - The Honey Cone
7. Feel Like Making Love - Marlena Shaw
8. I Met Him On A Sunday - The Shirelles
9. Yes, My Darling Daughter - Sandie Shaw
10. Momma Told Me - Crystal Waters
11. The Moment - Terra Naomi
12. More Than a Friend - All Too Much
13. Love - Matt White
14. One Man Band - Pete Snell
15. Yes, My Darling Daughter - Sandie Shaw



2. Mr. Magoriums Wonder Emporium + + + + + + + + +

Consensus: Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium's title is much more fun that the film itself, as the colorful visuals and talented players can't make up for a bland story.

Dustin Hoffman reportedly wanted to play Willy Wonka, but that role went to Johnny Depp. Not to be outdone, Hoffman is the Wonka-like star of "Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium," a family film fantasia in which he plays a 243-year-old toy store owner who doesn't look a day over 65.

Making his directorial debut, the writer-director Zach Helm, who wrote "Stranger Than Fiction," has come up with a plot that, although ostensibly an original, seems consciously derived from scores of previous children's fables from "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" to "Charlotte's Web" to "The Wizard of Oz." Because Helm makes no bones about his derivativeness, we are free to pick out the influences.

Of course, the greatest children's entertainments invent entirely new worlds, and this "Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium" does not suffice. One can take the cynical attitude that the kids seeing this film won't know about the books and movies Helm is lifting. But their parents will. Still, there's a pleasing modesty to this movie: It's practically an homage to its betters.

Mr. Edward Magorium started his toy-store business in the 1700s, and many of the toys in his emporium seem to date from that era. The goggle-eyed children who throng the store impart their wonderment to the toys, which acquire an animating life of their own – antique music boxes and brightly colored balls zoom about, Lincoln Logs and LEGOs assemble themselves. The store itself is a living, breathing organism, and when Magorium casually announces to his mousy manager, Molly Mahoney (Natalie Portman), that he is "leaving the world," the walls of the store shrink and buckle and blacken. (The production design by Thérèse DePrez is extraordinary.)

Magorium has outlasted his final pair of shoes and so, believing his life is at an end, prepares to pass away. Molly, a would-be classical pianist, doesn't believe she has the right inner wonderment to take over the store. You can see where this is going: Magorium will hand down his homespun wisdom to her and she will find the right magic.

All this would be more effective if Portman was a more magical actress. She's actually better in this film than she has been in quite a while – I'm still recovering from her zombie-like turns in the "Star Wars" prequels – but she pushes too hard. It's possible she's too cerebral a performer to be convincingly carried away by whimsy.

Fortunately, the other actors are wonderfully silly. Hoffman's Mr. Magorium is a fantastic creation. With his frizzy nimbus of white hair and his collection of quirky suits and loud ties, Magorium is like a walking, talking cartoon character. Hoffman gives the toy master a halting, sing-song delivery – he sounds a bit like Ratso Rizzo crossed with "Rain Man." He conjures up a whole galaxy of befuddled vaudevillians, most especially Ed Wynn and Bert Lahr.

In some ways, Hoffman is operating on a more exalted plane than Helm. It's a transcendent performance in a not-quite transcendent movie. When Magorium spends his last day doing things he's never experiencing before, like using a pay phone, the sequence, instead of being a classic, falls flat.

Jason Bateman plays an accountant who is called into the store by Magorium to set things right, and his transformation from twit to dreamer is seamless. As the friendless but precocious 9-year-old Eric, Zach Mills has a wonderfully animated face and saucer eyes. Although it's unrealistic that such a sporty kid would be a loner, it makes sense that he would feel more comfortable with adults. He's the perfect counterpart to Magorium, and the true inheritor of his legacy. Eric is young-old; Magorium is old-young. At its best, the movie makes you feel like a kindred spirit. Grade: B+


Rated G.




3.Love in the Time of Cholera + + + + + + + + +

From Library Journal:
While delivering a message to her father, Florentino Ariza spots the barely pubescent Fermina Daza and immediately falls in love. What follows is the story of a passion that extends over 50 years, as Fermina is courted solely by letter, decisively rejects her suitor when he first speaks, and then joins the urbane Dr. Juvenal Urbino, much above her station, in a marriage initially loveless but ultimately remarkable in its strength. Florentino remains faithful in his fashion; paralleling the tale of the marriage is that of his numerous liaisons, all ultimately without the depth of love he again declares at Urbino's death. In substance and style not as fantastical, as mythologizing, as the previous works, this is a compelling exploration of the myths we make of love. Highly recommended. Barbara Hoffert, "Library Journal"

THE MANY ASPECTS OF LOVE:
By A Customer

Love in the Time of Cholera takes place circa 1880-1930 in an unnamed Caribbean seaport city. The three main characters form a triangle of love, with the hypotneuse being the quintessential romantic, Florentino Ariza, a man whose life is dedicated to love in all its aspects.
As a young apprentice telegrapher, Florentino Ariza falls hopelessly in love with the haughty teenager, Fermina Daza. Although the two barely meet, they manage to carry on a passionate affair via letters and telegrams, until one day, Fermina Daza, realizing that Florentino Ariza is more "shadow than substance," rejects him and marries the wealthy dandy, Dr. Juvenal Urbino instead.

Florentino Ariza, who has sworn to love Fermina Daza forever, is, of course, stricken to the core, but Fermina's marriage is nothing he can't handle. As one century closes and another begins, Florentino Ariza rises through the ranks of the River Company of the Caribbean and sets off on a series of 622 erotic adventures, both "long term liaisons and countless fleeting adventures," all of which he chronicled and all the while nurturing a fervent belief that his ultimate destiny was with Fermina Daza.

Fifty-one years, nine months and four days after Fermina's wedding, on Pentecost Sunday, fate intervenes and Fermina becomes a free woman once again when Dr. Juvenal Urbino dies attempting to retrieve his wayward parrot from a mango tree. Seeing his chance at last, Florentino Ariza visits Fermina Daza after the funeral and declares, "I have waited for this opportunity for more than half a century, to repeat to you once again my vow of eternal fidelity and everlasting love." Fermina's reaction is not quite what Florentino was hoping for. She orders him out of the house with the words, "And don't show your face again for the years of life that are left to you...I hope there are very few of them."

Fermina Daza, however, hasn't quite gotten Florentino Ariza out of her system and the story ends, symbolically, with a river journey into eternity.

It's hard to believe that Gabriel Garcia Marquez has written a book that is better than One Hundred Years of Solitude, but with Love in the Time of Cholera, he has done just that. Not quite magical realism, it is still magic of the highest order and it is pure Garcia Marquez. An exquisite writer, Garcia Marquez tells his tales with passion, control and unblinking humor with just the right amount of the fabulous woven in.

Unlike some of his slightly claustrophobic works, this novel has an almost epic quality and Garcia Marquez handles the shifts in time and character perfectly; from the opening lines you know you're in the hands of a master. The book is flawless: Not one word is out of place, not one sentence is awkward. Lesser authors might slip into the maudlin when writing an entire book on the many aspects of love, but Garcia Marquez never gives us less than crystalline insight into what it really means to live, to love and to live a life of love. The last chapter alone is a masterpiece no one who's loved, or loved and lost, will ever forget.

As the book closes, we sail down the river with Garcia Marquez at the helm, safe in the knowledge that he is a navigator of the highest order, one who can pilot the river of love unerringly. He certainly does just that in this shining, sometimes funny and always uplifting book of flawless perfection.



09:59PM TH

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