Category Archives: Movies

Happy as a lark, or is that a pig in mud?

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I’m what you might call a happy-go-lucky sort.

Hold it. That sounds like I’m frolicking in the fields where the deer and the antelope play. Let’s tone that down a bit. How about just plain old happy. And I am happy. But I didn’t used to be; I suspect being unhappy with one’s lot in life is not atypical – I see it all the time, and it’s a shame.

So tell me, Miss Happy Pants, how did you go from unhappy to happy?

Two pivotal events – one of them a movie scene and the other a picture in my mind. The first of those I will describe in some detail on the off chance one of you is a Pauline Kael wannabe and knows what movie I’m talking about. Because I have no clue. Here goes: the scene. Two boys are standing under a leafy tree in front of their high school. One boy is our hero, and he plays the nice, boy-next-door type. Like a John Cusack, think 1990s. The other boy, the hero’s sidekick and best friend, is a nerdy, somewhat overweight, non-chick magnet. Think a young Jonah Hill. These two boys are talking when out the front door comes the school Queen Bee with her entourage. As she walks past the sidekick, she knocks his arm and his books go flying. She walks on, giggling with her girlfriends. The hero says something I can’t remember but I’m pretty sure was something demeaning about the Queen Bee, prompting the sidekick to say, and I paraphrase, “You watch. Before she gets to the bus, she’s going to turn around and walk back here and apologize, then she’s going to invite me to the prom.” To which the hero says, and I paraphrase, “Good luck with that! Not in a million years.” To which the sidekick says, “It’s my life, my movie; why would I make it sad and depressing?” Of course, the girl never looks back and there is no prom invitation, and most people would say he’s living in a fantasy world.

I, on the other hand, said, “Exactly! This is my life. I’m the writer, star, director and producer of this movie, so let’s make it a happy one.

Again, the whole point of me capturing that magical moment in film history is I am always searching for the name of the movie, if for no other reason than it’s good to cite your sources. But also, the idea of my life as my movie caught me at a moment when I was listening, and it got me thinking, mostly that a course correction of such magnitude was easier said than done. This was going to take a plan. (Me and my plans.)

Simple life, simple plan: Picture this: A big plate, piled high with your life. A scoop for family, a scoop for job, for money, for friends – everything, the good, the bad, the ugly. Rule #1 (me and my rules): Identify one of the scoops on your plate that’s making you unhappy. Either fix it or get rid of it. Rinse and repeat. Rule #2. Don’t add any new bad things to your plate. Follow those two rules and eventually, every scoop on your plate will be a happy one. It took a lot of years to get my plate where it’s filled only with happy bits, but it was worth it – life is good.

And no, there will be no actual movie of my life to view on demand. I’d be so afraid the musical director might choose Bobby McFerrin’s “Don’t Worry Be Happy” as the soundtrack. Voluntarily adding that song to my life, well … see Rule #2 above.

Instead, this morning, in harmony, the Everly Brothers …

You can call me Bobby

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Unaccustomed as I am to writing movie reviews, let’s give it a shot and see where it lands.

I’ve been wanting to see “the Bob movie” since it opened in theaters on Christmas Day. We had every intention of seeing it the minute it came out – forget about Christmas dinner and all the razzamatazz and go see the Bob movie instead.

What seemed so easy in the planning failed in the execution. For reasons having to do with life getting in the way, no Bob movie materialized for us on December 25th, and there was no Bob movie for the next three weeks. But on the twenty-first day of Christmas (my true love gave to me…) the stars aligned, and last Tuesday, my friend and I stood in line to get our tickets. Not much of a line really, only eight of us in the theater for the 5 o’clock showing.

In any event, when I reached the front of the line, I asked of the concession stand person, “One for the Bob movie.” I’ve been calling it that for three weeks, and it just slipped out. She was quick to correct me: “A Complete Unknown.”

And that’s right where the movie starts, with Bob Dylan arriving in New York City for the first time, a complete unknown. Soon after, Bob visits an ailing Woody Guthrie in the hospital and, prompted for a song, sings Song for Woody. Pete Seeger is also there, and the two veterans both shed a tear, or if they didn’t, I sure did. Both recognized talent when they saw it, and welcomed him with open arms as the newest member of the flock, that flock of folk singers/activists hanging out in Greenwich Village. Bob fit right in, writing a new civil rights anthem seemingly every ten minutes (that would be movie minutes). Everything was working out fine for everyone right up until the folkies claimed him as their own when all he ever wanted to do was fly free. And we all know how that ended in 1965 when Bob went electric at the Newport Folk Festival.

From the day the 19-year-old Dylan arrived in New York until the day he plugged in in the summer of ’65 fills the screen for 141 minutes. Big kudos to director James Mangold (who directed Walk the Line, the Johnny Cash biopic) for allowing Bob’s songs to be sung in their entirety instead of the snippets we usually get that leave us begging for more. No begging necessary here. And kudos to Timothée Chalamet for capturing Bob’s voice in spot-on fashion. The ensemble cast all sang their own songs – including Ed Norton as Pete Seeger and the talented Monica Barbaro as Joan Baez. But it’s Bob we’ve come to hear, and Chalamet makes it seem so easy. Any fan of Bob’s would know it isn’t.

The cast of characters who spun in Bob’s orbit during those early years pop in and out of the movie – Albert Grossman, Alan Lomax, John Hammond, Brownie McGee, Bobby Neuwirth – but it’s Johnny Cash who steals the best scene in the movie. Elle Fanning as Sylvie Russo gets my Oscar nod for her performance as the waiflike, naive, delightfully charming Suze Rotolo, Bob’s girlfriend. She sees him for what he is, and we understand her pain when she leaves Bob far more than we understand his. The movie never attempts to dig deep into what makes Bob Bob, what makes him tick. For those who see Bob as an enigma, “A Complete Unknown” will not dispel you of that notion.

The movie features plenty of scenes with Bob roaring down the road on his Triumph Bonneville T100, so much so that I anticipated the accident that was yet to come. But it wasn’t meant to happen in this movie. Maybe a sequel? Some music from Big Pink?

It’s hard to pick just one when it comes to Bob Dylan …

movie night – Becoming Jane

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Talk about a great movie weekend — a three-fer. I’ve fallen into a British theme of late – that’s what comes from getting most of my movie viewing done courtesy of Netflix, where, when you click on a movie to add it to your list, immediately a new screen wafts into view, one of those “If you liked that movie, you might like some of these…and if you click one one of those because you think you need to see that one too, then another screen wafts into view, and me, I can spend an afternoon wasted in Netflix land. So many movies, so little time. Continue reading →

movie night – Goodnight, Mister Tom

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I’ve seen some good movies lately, and I’ve run into a problem. I simply can’t remember them. I think it’s my brain getting smaller. Although I have another theory: My head is so full of English grammar that there’s no room for anything else – all that grammar is taking up most of my hard drive; I have no space for movies and books – they just take up too much space. So I compensate by taking notes, on the theory that if I write it down, I don’t have to remember it, freeing up space for more grammar. Continue reading →