Food for thought
Movies seen spring/summer 2009.
Originally written: December 2009
Julie and Julia
2012
Dean Spanley
Big NIght
Ratatouille
I try to keep ahead of the trends, surf the latest cultural phenomenon, test the waters so that my fellow APAns know whether they are safe. But in a prominent recent case I have abrogated my responsibility: the Stephanie Meyers' vampire/werewolf novels (and their filmic adaptations) are a step too far even more an intrepid follower of fashion. I am no great fan of vampire stories, and I couldn't hack Anne Rice (the previous generation's Stephanie Meyers) so I have no interest in the sort of primitive text that has its major appeal in the same demographic that has elevated the Spice Girls and the Backstreet Boys to prominence. Life is too short - and the film reviews too damning.
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The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences was created to promote movies. While it often big-notes itself by talking about its archiving and restoration of movies, or by mentoring programs to encourage talent, or by its many works of charity, its chief role, and its main reason for continuation, is the handing out annual awards for excellence, the Oscars. These peer awards have been perennially subject to scandal, arising from the stranglehold that studios have had over them or by the wicked amount of promotion by people like Harvey Weinstein, and have generally recognised the bland at the expense of the daring and interesting, they have succeeded in their primary role: getting movie news on the front page. The Academy, in addition to the annual awards for acting, directing, editing, music and technical excellence, has handed out honorary awards, recognising lifetime achievement, often to actors or directors who the voters have wrongly neglected - from Charlie Chaplin in 1928 through Groucho Marx and Howard Hawks to Akira Kurosawa and Deborah Kerr to Peter O'Toole and Robert Altman. The one trouble has been that these honorary awards, and the presentation of the Jean Hershholt Humanitarian Award or the Irving Thalberg for producers is that they have stopped any Oscar telecast dead in its tracks while a long montage of the awardee's films are shown and then the alter kucker rambled on with memories of Hollywood in the good old days. In November, the Academy handed out its honorary awards at a separate event. And they got the names right as well: Roger Corman, the schlock producer of countless genre pictures, whose B-picture merchandise was never going to be of sufficient prestige to be nominated; cinematographer Gordon Willis, whose camera work (for the first two Godfather movies, a plethora of Woody Allen classics, especially Zelig, and Klute, amongst many others) was wrongfully neglected; and Lauren Bacall, an actress with a distinguished c.v. and no peer recognition until a late nomination for playing Barbra's mum. The early award of the honoraries should streamline the Oscar broadcast come late February.
The conceit of Julie and Julia is worthy of an award, and the fact that it works so well is unexpected. The McGuffin is that a contemporary woman decides to cook her way through Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking and blog the results. The film follows both Childs' discovery of French cooking, and the writing of the book, and Julie Powell's misadventures in replicating the recipes. The parallel time streams should make it a difficult cinematic idea, but it works surprisingly well, reinforcing both the plot and the thematic elements. This success owes much to the two eponymous characters. Meryl Streep, an actress who seems to be much better when she eschews the overly dramatic and brings the humorous, is excellent as the older Julia and the ever reliable Amy Adams matches her as the younger Julie, working by day on a help line for 9/11 survivors and cooking by night. Julia Childs was never really as influential in Australia as she was in the US. Here we had Margaret Fulton and Charmaine Solomon, Graham Kerr and Ian Parmenter, but in the States, Ms Childs was the food porn queen. It has been interesting to look at a few YouTube clips from her PBS shows from the 1960s after seeing the film. Streep captures her enthusiasm and breathless style to a "T". From the start her character is set by the actress' performance, which is well matched by Stanley Tucci (no stranger to food porn movies, see Big Night, below, and no stranger to sharing the stage with La Streep, see The Devil Wears Pravda), the Julia end of the duo is brilliantly realised. The real danger was that the modern, less dramatic, elements of Julie's replication of the recipes would fail to match the dynamic 1950s Parisian scenes, leaving us waiting for Streep and Tucci to re-enter. Admittedly there are times, particularly when Chris Messina as Julie's tedious husband is about, when you await the re-entry of Julia, but Amy Adams stays these desires and the food preparation itself is almost a third main character in the film. The meals Julie prepares look good, and you begin to understand the way in which her self-imposed mission is affecting her in the same way that Julia's discovery of Cordon Bleu and her mission to spread the word to the States impacts on her. Sounds all very heavy but, largely because of the actors, it is anything but. Nora Ephron, who co-wrote (with Julie Powell) and directed, is not noted for the depth of her films, but there is an exception here. A couple of characters that stick with you and some ideas - not just for the menu.
Hell and High Water
It's the end of the world as we know it ... and it's a movie ... can Roland Emmerich be far behind? Having tried, and failed, to wipe out the world by means of nasty space aliens (Independence Day) and catastrophic climate change (The Day After Tomorrow), Emmerich has now combined apocalyptic Mayan prophecy with an overactive solar object to create the big daddy of disaster movies, 2012. He has brought them all together in a movie that is less then the sum of its parts, but those parts include earthquakes, volcanoes, tidal waves, hurricanes, secret science projects, brave scientists, likable presidents, unlikable political operatives and a plethora of hair-breadth escapes that stretch your credulity to breaking point. The film takes a long time to get going as Emmerich establishes his disaster scenario over a number of years: the end of the Mayan calendar is augmented by a super-heating of the earth's core and the US must lead the world in a hare-brained scheme to save humanity. Chiwetel Ejiofor is the central scientist in this aspect of the scenario and Oliver Platt the president's chief of staff. The fact that Danny Glover is the president reinforces the lesson learned from Morgan Freeman: if you want to save the world, don't elect a black president of the US. The narrative centres on Jackson Curtis (John Cusack), a writer, whose book on the Atlantis shuttle mission failed to sell, and his estranged family, including an ex-wife (Amanda Peet), her plastic surgeon boyfriend and two younglings. During a proposed camping trip to Yellowstone, Curtis learns about the end of the world and something of the plan to save the world from a nutty conspiracy theorist (Woody Harrelson doing his best to out-randy-quaid Randy Quaid). This sets off a series of mad dashes and narrow escapes as Curtis tries to save his family: in a limo through the destruction of LA, in a small plane to Yellowstone, in a campervan there and once again in the small plane, escaping the super-volcanic national park, in a larger plane escaping the end of Las Vegas, and in the bowels of the super secret project to escape the waters flooding the upper reaches of the world. It's hard to argue with the effectiveness of the disastrous background: each of the calamities is related in startling detail and with brilliant sfx. Leaving aside the scenery chewing required by Platt and Harrelson in their different but pre-ordained roles, the acting from the multi-national cast is damned good. Cusack and Peet are particularly good anchors as the main focus of our attention as the world goes kapow. In the alternative plot, involving the wider issues, Ejiofor and Thandie Newton, as the first daughter, are equally as good. The trouble is that, as the clichés build up, and as the borrowings from earlier disaster movies multiply, and as the escapes become less and less credible, the movie begins to assume an unwanted and counter-productive humor. The snigger at the escape from LA becomes a guffaw by the time we leave Yellowstone, and a loss of willing suspension of disbelief as we exit Las Vegas. The coincidence that drives us to the denouement was far too predictable but also elicited unwanted chuckles. The climactic scenes were as predictable as they were dramatic - leaving aside the surprising fact that Oliver Platt was not thrown overboard. Great to look at but ultimately very silly indeed. We laughed but that was not the film-makers' intent. [By way of background and as a further comment on the Strange Land, it is interesting to note that NASA, and other science orgs, have felt it necessary to publish the fact that the 2012 scenarios are fiction, not fact. They point out the absence of unfriendly objects, such as a rogue planet called Nibiru, likely to crash into us; there is a Mayan calendar that ends on December 21, 2012 but it is not the last Mayan calendar; there is no planetary alignment in 2012; there are no solar flare peaks expected in 2012; the earth is unlikely to shift is axis; etc. The fact that they feel it necessary to tell the US that the world will not be ending in a couple of years is revealing.]
Historical Shaggy Dog Story
Dean Spanley was recommended by a number of different sources. Set in Edwardian England, and based on a Lord Dunsany novella, the light story follows the gradual discovery of the past life of the title character and the impact that has on the lives of three other men who meet him. The point of view is in the hands of Henslow Fisk (Jeremy Northam), the remaining son of a widower father (Peter O'Toole), whose eldest son was killed in the Boer War. Henslow's attempts to entertain his father, or alter aspects his tightly scheduled life, meet with the derision of a closed mind, set in its accustomed ways. But a visit to hear an eccentric swami speak of reincarnation leads the Fisks to discover the eponymous clergyman (Sam Neill), and also a self-styled facilitator (Bryan Brown). When Fisk Jr entertains the Dean he discovers Spanley's liking of Imperial Tokaji (the tipple of the Hapsburg royal family) and his tendency to revisit a past life when under its influence. This leads Henslow to arrange further dinners, which the intrigued facilitator Wrather also attends, and finally a climactic dinner at which the father is also present. This last dinner leads to revelations that were only partly anticipated, plays an important part in the development of the Fisk family and supplies a satisfactory ending to the tale. Directed by NZer Toa Fraser, this is a good cast, well used, with a strong script and a sense of the absurd. It remains logical within its own assumptions, and follows them through to a good ending. It says something about the closed mind and how it might be opened. Surprisingly it never received a theatre release in the US but it is recommended by me, too.
Food porn Italian style
Big Night is a fun movie we caught up with on video. Co-writer, co-director and co-star Stanley Tucci is the centre of this movie, giving him the background in a cookery movie well before Julie and Julia (above). With his brother, Primo (Tony Shalhoub), Secondo (Tucci) runs a small Italian trattoria in New York in the early 1960s. Primo wants to cook food traditionally, but the potential customers prefer the americanised Italian food offered by Pascal (Ian Holm), in another restaurant just down the block. Pascal offers the brothers a chance to make a success of their business by cooking a bang-up meal for musician Louis Prima, while he is in town. The occasion becomes the big night of the title, as Primo prepares the food and Secondo juggles the people, including two women with whom he is sleeping. There are a number of interesting cameos amongst those invited to the big night, Minnie Driver, Isabella Rossellini, Alison Janney and co-director Campbell Scott among them, but Primo's cooking is the real star, as he prepares antipasto, chicken consommé, risotto, a pasta timpano and, for mains, Cornish hen, poached salmon and roast suckling pig. The movie is quite touching in its analysis of the conflict between passion and practicality, exemplified by Primo's devotion to food and Pascal's business sense. Secondo is a adrift, caught in between the two. The best thing about it is that it doesn't try to resolve the dilemma but leaves the audience with food for thought. The final scene in which, in a single shot, Secondo prepares and makes a perfect omelette sums up the movie's tine and message.
Food porn Pixar style
Finally caught up with the one Pixar animation that I had missed on first release, Ratatouille. In keeping with the themes for this month, the film involves cooking and is set in Paris. Remy is a rat with a refined nose. Separated from his family, he washes up in the restaurant of the late Gusteau, now run by the less talented Skinner (Ian Holm, once again in the kitchen in an antagonistic role). There he helps the young garbage boy, Linguini, move into food preparation. Assisted also by the only female cook in the kitchen, Colette (Janeane Garafalo), Linguini is soon the talk of the culinary world and attracts the attention of Anton Ego (Peter O'Toole), the nastiest of food critics. The film is another successful Pixar animation, a fun mix of surface story to keep the kids entertained and a deeper, more sophisticated humor that will appeal to their parents. The mix of human and rodent is more unusual for the animators but, like the intersection of toys and kids in the Toy Story series, the rats talk to each other and the humans talk to each other but, with the exception of the ghost of Gusteau (Brad Garrett) in dialog with Remy, the two species cannot talk to each other. Remy has to manipulate Linguini by other means. Brad Bird, the creator of The Incredibles, is also the writer/director here, and he does a great job in creating the setting and the characters. Pixar are peerless in the quality of their productions and in the consistency of the humor and style. This is another very successful cartoon, and one to be recommended to parents and kids.
[Note: Information about the movies mentioned, including cast and crew lists and all sorts of trivia, is available at the Internet Movie Database (IMDb).]