Understanding Island

I have opinions like everyone. I don't think I get any more passionate about my opinions than a normal person. But I do tend to judge others based off of my opinions, and probably do that more than a normal person. This is likely due to the fact that I can be rather arrogant about things, that I'm very sure of myself.
In my own defense, I will not lapse into true arrogance about something unless I've gone over it in my head a few times and come to the conclusion that I'm just right, damnit, more right than you at least.
But lots of times these arrogant judgments aren't fair, or they are simply hurtful. Even in some very rare instances they may actually be wrong. Gasp. Sometimes I introduce an objective opinion into a subjective field. Sometimes I judge someone/something when it's not needed or welcome. Sometimes my opinions might just innocently diverge from another's, in which case a judgment(1) is both unnecessary and unwelcome.
The reason I'm thinking about this now is that I was reading something I think yesterday and John Cusack was mentioned in terms of how everyone like him. Well, I can't stand John Cusack. I don't like really any of his movies (particularly the 80s ones that he might be most famous for), and I don't really like any of his roles. People seem to think that he would be a nice guy in real life based on his acting. Setting aside for a second that that's a pretty stupid assumption to make, I feel like he'd be insufferable based on the same thing. It seems my personal opinion just severely differs from that of the general population. I might be tempted to make a judgment about the general population because of this (and have done similar things in the past, to be sure), but really why? It's ok for me to hate John Cusack and for everyone else to love him. Lots of times, there may be a subliminal explanation for this divergence, but not always.
On a vaguely similar note, I had an argument with Sara a week or two ago about the movie I Heart Huckabees. It seems she is a big fan, and she made me watch it when it was randomly on TV. I was less than impressed. Actually, I thought it was pretentious garbage, and offered this opinion to Sara, who naturally took some offense.
I say "naturally" because, while it's perfectly ok--actually very healthy--to engage in dissenting conversation about one of the arts, it's usually(2) not ok to do so as arrogantly as I did in this case. I led off with the judgment and never really backed off to the opinion, and that's an important distinction to make in a lot of cases.

Anyway, in the spirit of all of this, I thought I'd come up with a small list of topics in which my strong opinion/belief/judgment differs strongly with most people. I do this as a way of highlighting that yes it is ok to have differing viewpoints and not have anyone be "wrong," but also as reinforcement to myself to be more forgiving and benevolent.
So here, in no particular order, are some things I (sometimes improbably) have a strong but very minority opinion about, and where there is nothing wrong with that.(C) I only make a note where necessary:
1. John Cusack
2. Coffee -- don't drink it, can't stand it.
3. Music -- I've talked about this before, and I guess I'm still not completely ready to give up the idea that my viewpoint isn't a little more enlightened than others, but I include it here in a spasm of benevolence. To recap: hearing other people talk about music is utterly noxious to me. I appreciate it only for its innateness.
4. Tabasco sauce -- I love spicy things, but think the flavor of this is repulsive.
5. Sketch comedy.
6. Doctors -- not impressed.
7. Champagne.
--I just now realized that all of these so far are things I don't like--
9. Tofu -- no, really, it's not too bad.
10. Facebook/Twitter -- no.
11. Guinness -- if this is in fact an acquired taste, then I am in complete ownership of it.



A. You can't tell because this thing automatically highlights spelling errors and therefore notified me of the problem, but right here I spelled that word wrong for the second time in the same paragraph. That's almost unforgivable.
B. I don't care, if you try to claim that Ron Howard is as good a director as someone like Kubrick, then yes I am fully permitted to humiliate you. There is a line below which vaguaries don't exist. But then, I don't usually waste time in engage people making such dumb claims, so maybe this is moot.
C. Here is a list of things where my minority opinion is correct and the popular one is just flat wrong, and yes there is something wrong with the populous:
1a. Ron Howard -- hack.
1b. Tom Hanks -- overrated, very. Also frequent collaborator with 1a, which is a black mark.
2. American Idol/Reality TV in general
3. Celebrity worship -- I would say "obviously," but the fact that I think I fall in the minority about this rather amazingly means maybe not so obvious.

Trigger

I got sucked into Brokeback Mountain last night, and felt the need to stick with it until the end. It was my first time watching it since seeing it once in the theater, and no I can't blame Sara because she was already asleep.
Three very clear things about the film:
1. It's very good. Heath Ledger is very good. If you know anything about my filmic sensibilities, then you know that I greatly admire the late scene where Ennis goes to Jack's parents' house. So subtle, so natural, so loaded with the unsaid, so good.
2. As sometimes happens with me and good acting performances that contain accents, I wish I could talk like Ennis all the time right now. I believe I have confessed to enjoying a nice Texas accent in the past. Heath's character is from Wyoming, but his accent has the same general western blue collar twang. The newscaster/Ohio/Indiana voice is probably the "voice" of America, but this western proletarian gruffness really hits the right notes for me.
3. That goddamned bloody shirt got me. I remembered it was coming and so my senses were a little primed. When Ennis got to the parents' house it became palpable. Then he went upstairs and I could feel my throat tighten, my face soften. He looked around, opened the window, went into the closet. I felt the strong need to swallow but it didn't help. Then he knelt down and handled the boots and finally he saw it in the back, the bloody blue shirt from their summer together. I fought the good fight as he noticed his own shirt tucked inside Jack's blue one, then my eyes had a mild sting and my vision sharpened as he hugged the shirts and broke down. All in all, I held it together pretty well, not letting much slip until some minutes later, after the film had ended and I finally succumbed to the animal urge in me to embrace Sara's sleeping body.
You see, two years ago I wouldn't have experienced this response to this or any similar film. I would have had a response, and it would have contained emotion, but it would have stopped short because the film was just a film at that point in my life, and not a connective medium to strong emotion that's constantly present in me.
I'm a pretty freaking fortunate man. Ennis's love story is a terribly tragic one; it binds him not to companionship but to loneliness. My experience is far more traditional but that doesn't make it any less magical or personal. Sometimes I can get lost in the fairy tale and take things for granted. That's why I am thankful that sometimes all it can take is a blood-stained blue shirt to make me remember how well I've got it.

Another for the "Well, No Shit" File

Today is a cover-the-reception-desk-at-work day. It's also a leave-early day, as I'm out at 4:15 to catch a flight to Chicago for a long weekend. Because of this, I knew I knew I'd have some time to maybe do a post, and almost jokingly I asked Sara what I should write about. She said "getting married." Ok.

1. For reasons that will become clear, I believe that the one thing a man should keep secret from his woman (above your ATM pin or any other important financial passwords) is the password to his Netflix account.
2. Over the last two nights, I spent a total of 134 minutes watching the Sex and the City movie.
3. Ommitted for effect.
4. If you've watched a movie and are having a hard time deciding if it was any good, let me offer this tip: start it up somewhere randomly in the middle and make your judgement soon after; you don't need to watch more than the first 4-5 minutes. Make sure you start it up cold, meaning without any memory or residual emotion leftover from your first viewing. When you do this, you are getting only the quality of the film and you're most likely not getting a big climactic scene (that would have been closely edited by the filmmakers). You're also totally divorced from the emotional build-up, so the natural tendency of even the worst movies to suck you into the story is gone. (A feature film is like a book in that the simple time investment to complete it implants an automatic austerity to it. A thiry minute TV show that's of equal production value to a two-hour movie will never feel as good as a movie. Even two hours worth of TV shows would not be the same. After you've read even a mediocre book, there is always a period of time immediately afterward where you are smitten with the book and would be inclined to inordinately praise it. So too with movies, and that's why you need to strip away that bond.)
5. You noticed before I said I saw Sex and the City spaced over two nights. Sara gets sleepy early and so we only got through just under an hour on night one. She was angry with me for the first 20 minutes because I couldn't stop picking on the movie's shortcomings, but I started following the story and quieted down eventually.
6. Sex and the City is a horrible, horrible movie.
7. On night two, we started it back up where we left off and yowzer once again I couldn't stop make comments about how bad it was.
8. There wasn't anything different about the first five minutes we watched on night two (maybe minutes 55-59 of the movie) and the last five minutes from night one (minutes 50-54), but it was painfully easy to find fault with the former while glossing over the shortcomings of the latter. The emotional flow of the movie had been interrupted and the movie was left open for me to see it for what it was.
9. This effect might be in some ways similar to why it's often difficult for an actor to do live theater work, compared to films. In a theater, the actor has to do his own work in sustaining that emotional bond, while in film, any number of editing or directorial choices will cover an actor's deficiencies.
10. It almost feels frivilous to comment specifically, but Sex and the City is really bad. I will admit that I've watched several episodes of the TV show, sometimes enjoying them, sometimes even respecting their relative quality. The movie, however, is terrble. Almost every actor just phoned it in, though not so much as the writers. You would think that a writer constrained to 30 minute storylines would love the opportunity to add real depth to his characters when given two-plus hours to play with. Not so here. If anything, the characters are flatter and less interesting. Again, it's probably a waste of time to criticize this stuff as the movie was clearly made with its only purpose being to lure women into the theater. As with lots of our contemporary culture, mission accomplished commercially, mission big fat fail substantively. I guess it just offends me when someone who has the option to make something at least passably competent with what wouldn't even be any additional effort, but chooses instead to fill the cracks with shit. I don't really like the term "sell-out" as a slander because usually it's used hypocritically, but pretty much everyone involved in this movie sold out. Good for them, as long as they knew that's what they were doing.
11. Someone does indeed get married in the movie, in case you couldn't stand the garbage and turned it off before getting to the end.
12. On a brighter and barely relevant note, I read somewhere recently that Chris Noth's character on Law & Order is being replaced and the character is to be played by Jeff Goldblum.

I thought Milk was nothing really special. Naturally, a nice job by Sean Penn (actually Emile Hirsch might have been his equal, though in a much smaller role) and the filmmakers generally but nothing resonated and it felt like I've seen this type of film and especially this type of acting job before. The intensity and call-to-arms nature of the story (Sara: "I am going to make you be a gay rights activist") propels it to a definitely good film, but I can't say you really need to spend $12.50 to see this unless you are really looking forward to it (which is what I am for Revolutionary Road, thanks to seeing its preview prior to Milk).

Now, what I've really come to write about today is sports. Specifically, college football, which would seem a timely subject as its national championship game is to be played tonight.
It's taken 28 years for me to be able to say this, but I really am done with the bowl system. I get virtually nothing out of the bowls anymore. Ohio State just played a close, exciting game against Texas a few days ago, and I never really felt like what I was watching mattered. I haven't watched very many other bowl games this year, because they don't matter either. And even if they did, how seriously should we take them if the teams competing have gone usually at least 5 weeks since last playing, after having spent the previous 3 months playing games no more than two weeks apart.
It doesn't make a whole lot of sense. The whole bowl system is a ridiculously out-of-date relic, and the fact that everyone forces today's college football into a structure built 50, 60, 70-plus years ago is absurd. Roads we use today are much bigger and smoother than those used in 1925. The technology of cars and the complexity of the advanced transportation systems demanded it. In 1940 it was a big deal for a Big Ten and its fan base to win a bid to the Rose Bowl. It gave midwesterners a chance to travel to warm southern California, and it gave warm southern California an injection of tourism that it may not have always enjoyed. From the team's perspective, it allowed two very disparate but powerful football regions to pit their best teams against one another in glorified exhibition games (remember the long layoff between games, then multiply that by great magnitudes to reflect that teams didn't practice as ubiquitously as they do now). Remember now that the sport itself was still rather young back then and so the notion of exhibition games was not at all silly. They needed to get their product out in front of people however possible, and so grandly scheduled (New Year's Day) games featuring presumably the best teams was good for business.
Does any of that last paragraph sound remotely relevant to college football today? No. Teams travel across the country multiple times per year anyway. They don't truly get the time off between late November and January 1 either, so the 5+ week gap between games is contrived. I don't need to tell you that air travel is now commonplace so people will travel to warm southern California, sometimes just on a whim, and certainly whether their favorite team is going there or not. TV has given the sport a spotlight every weekend through the season, and the aforementioned big inter-sectional matchups through the fall command at least as much attention as bowl games ever did.
Assuming you follow reason you agree with me now, that there is no need for bowl games to exist in 2009 as they once did. So then what's the point? The way I see it, the only thing bowls really achieve today is to stand in the way of a playoff, something that would both make sense and have consequence.
I won't get into the endless debate about the pros and cons of a playoff, especially the financial aspect of the argument, but I will say that, from a competitive standpoint, a playoff is really the only solution. If you are one who feels that it would diminish the importance of the regular season (something I disagree with, and something I feel could easily be mitigated by structuring the playoff properly), then just choose your champion at the end of the regular season. Or, if you absolutely must, run the BCS like they do now and select just two teams to play for the title. But don't do it in conjunction with any bowl, and don't do it 5 weeks later. Remember that the current setup technically is a playoff, simply a two-team playoff. Everything else is consolation. Consolation that loses value and interest every year. This year, I think it lost me. Tradition for its own sake is preposterous.

Film (and Theater!) Review

That's right, I said a theater review, absolutely foreign territory for me.
But first, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, the movie I saw with Sara on my first-ever Christmas Day away from any family and in NYC. First, the 6:00 showing sold out completely and only through dumb luck did I bump into a guy willing to unload two tickets for $20 (that's a $5 discount) because his friend "got sick." So that won me the privilege of not waiting in the ticket line but waiting at the end of a massive entrance line. Evidently lots and lots of people wanted to see this film. We were only going because it was playing at the closest theater at the right time.
I read a book a few years ago called The Confessions of Max Tivoli, which features as its protagonist a man born to an old body who then gets younger as he ages. Perhaps for this reason I wasn't as enthralled by the story as I may otherwise have been, seeing as how that is a very interesting and specific plot. But I was very underwhelmed by this film. The people involved are all proficient enough and the film is attractive enough, but in my opinion it's definitely not worth its 165 minutes and whatever it cost to make. The reason for this is the story and the inattention to detail.
Maybe the producers thought that the simple aging story was fascinating enough and chose not to accentuate it. Maybe they were worried about adding to the length. Maybe they just failed miserably. In the above referenced book, a central struggle is that of the character pining after a woman his age but not his appearance. There is the constant disconnect between a young soul inside an old body (and later, to a lesser extent, an old soul in a young body). This is emotionally compelling. In the film, the character seems usually to be born simply an old man in both soul and body. When he falls in love with the girl, we don't appreciate any of the tragedy of his condition. Instead the whole film seems to be a mere succession of events that ends up being almost boring. Also, in the book, since the character lives backward, he is necessarily aware of exactly when he will die, which gives much space for the author to consider the devastating human effect such knowledge causes. The film never mentions this and actually is forced to spend almost no time covering the end of Benjamin's life because they've already decided that he will recede into infancy and therefore have no ability to complexly think about his own existence.
The other serious issue I had with the film was it very loose attention to details, specifically plot details. I've already mentioned that the film starts with a baby with a frail old man's body. They don't consistently show us whether his soul is old or young. We see him desiring to play with kids and zealously listening to a bedtime story, but he's otherwise always playing the part of an old man unfazed by the world around him (you can almost conspiratorily wonder whether the filmmakers realized their "young" Benjamin was too blandly old and so forced in a couple of anecdotes). Getting back to my point, since the baby grows like a normal person, only reversing in appearance, you would then expect the small baby that looks like an old man to end his life as a near-fully-grown old man that looks like a baby. Instead, what we get is a progressively younger Benjamin who decreases in size back to an infant. This might seem hard to follow or like a small detail, but it bothered me and it's not the only example. There were somewhat liberal references to Benjamin's age and/or the date, so simple math would allow you to fill in the gaps. More often than not, they didn't match up. Again, I know this film is just a fantasy tale, and you're supposed to give allowances, but these transgressions were too much for me.
Before I finish telling about how I didn't like this film and how it's only average at best, I will mention that there is a very nice emotional scene at the end when Cate Blanchett is holding the dying baby Benjamin and she says how he gave her knowing look. Those moments of connected emotion were unfortunately far too rare.

Now, the moment you've been waiting for: the review of "Pal Joey" (I'm not even sure if I'm supposed to quote or italicize that), my first ever Broadway show (yeah, I succeeded in living in this city for 5.5 years without seeing one). Actually, I don't have much of an idea what I'm talking about regarding theater, and my response to the show was similarly sparse, so I won't say much. Sorry.
For some reason, I wasn't completely prepared for how long it was. Start to finish, including the intermission, it was 2.5 hours. The chairs appeared cushioned enough (you don't sit in a reclinable movie-theater style chair at these theaters, but instead a simple stationary chair), but were far too close together and ended up being the source of quite a bit of discomfort. The show itself wasn't boring, but still I was counting down the songs during act two on account of the chairs. The theater was also extremely hot and almost foggy. I'm not sure where the mustiness came from but it was another unexpectedly uncomfortable twist.
As for the show itself, I think it would not be classified with your stereotypical Broadway shows, because it had a somewhat compelling story that moved forward more through plot than through song. None of the songs were very memorable for me, though few were painful either. I was able to bear them without struggle, though during the intermission, I made a point of counting the upcoming songs in the program so I knew how to pace myself through act two's 12 numbers (act one contained 13 songs).
Not being a lavish song-and-dance show, the dances didn't really inspire much comment. They were certainly entertaining. Actually, that's a good simple word to use about the whole production: entertaining. I guess that's as high a compliment as a Broadway show usually requires. Also, I'm not sure if it was due to the subject matter of "Pal Joey" or if it's common to all Broadway, but I was pleasantly surprised by the amount of dancer ogling that is possible, and at nicely consistent intervals.
I agree with Sara's assessment of the actors: Stockard Channing is a fine stage performer but her singing is distractingly sub-par. There was one song where she was forced to alternate verses with another actor, and her inabilites were put on unfortunate display. The male lead was actually a late fill-in because the "name" guy (oddly I can't remember his name) was forced to leave at the last minute. He was extremely competent on all fronts. From my perch in the rear mezzanine, he appeared young too, so maybe he'll get around a bit in the future. The third large part was played by Martha Plimpton, whom most people my age know primarily for her work in Goonies. She was right in her element here, which is a definite compliment as her part was that of a nightclub singer, so any inadequacies would be terribly glaring.
To wrap this up: no, I don't think I'd return by my own motivation to Broadway for a musical after having seen this one. I have other motivations now though, and the sheer joy Sara derived from this experience, coupled with what I can best describe as ambivalently pleasant acceptance of the medium, will surely lead to more appearances.

Still, for my gameness, she owes me a little now. (Which is odd, because she claimed that I owed her a movie after the discomfort that attended her viewing of The Wrestler, which was my pick and something she would never have seen alone. (Disclaimer--she thought The Wrestler was great too, just a little to hard to watch.) So she was going to get to choose any movie for us to jointly see in the theater regardless of my tastes and I'd be forced to go, except her everlasting girl-ness took over and she decided to force me to watch two movies on TV instead. I lost about 2 hours from my life in this deal, but gained $25. No, my life is not worth more than $12.50/hr, so I call this a win. Anyway, the two movies ended up being White Christmas, which I didn't even watch all of, and Love, Actually. I won't waste too many keystrokes on it, but I just want to say what a truly horrible movie the latter is. I was fully expecting chick-flick crap, but this thing was so bad I was laughing at it. It was so bad I googled the people involved in making it and can you believe my astonishment to learn that its writer/director is fairly well-respected. Unbelievable.)

Film Reviews

For a Christmas special, I'm bringing a long-dormant film review. I've seen two in theaters lately: Slumdog Millionaire and The Wrestler. I'll start with the former.
SM is a fun movie to watch. It's got just the right amount of comedy (regular enough so that the last laugh is still fresh in your mind when the next one hits, but not so much that you feel like you're just watching a "comedy") and just the right amount of suspense (so you are always wanting to know what's happening next, as in a good page-turning book). It almost goes too far in the schmaltzy department, and as I saw it, there were some acting deficiencies, but in some ways, that's the point.
This movie is very Indian-centric, from the very numerous and specific details of poor Indian life to the heavily accented speakers, to the liberal use of what must be Indian slang. As such, it can't help but to deal with Western assumptions regarding the well-known Bollywood movies. As with the ending, when all the characters spontaneously launched into an aggressively choreographed dance number, at times the director Danny Boyle chose to directly embrace the Indian movie-stereotype. I think this was a smart choice, as it had the effect of recalling the artistically bankrupt Bollywood films as an easy way to make clear that SM is anything but.
The story of Slumdog Millionaire is perfect, basically. Use the structure of a foreign version of "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?" as a frame for flashbacks telling the story of a person's life, all while borrowing the constant escalation of suspense that's endemic of the show. Even during the movie I caught myself thinking, "Jeez this is a great idea for a storyline." And there's not much more to say about it: a great idea is a great idea.
Unfortunately, the actors responsible for bringing the great story to life didn't quite equal their material, with one very notable exception. First, I want to make clear that this was a very nicely done movie, so the acting being a detriment isn't as harsh as it would be if we were talking about a Martin Lawrence movie. Nonetheless, the lead male actor, in a role that was ripe for the taking, was pretty underwhelming. Passable and often likable, but underwhelming. I can't even say as much about the adult lead female role or the adult brother, both of whom were very close to being distractingly eptless.
Now, let's get to the exception: Anil Kapoor, Bollywood veteran. He plays the Regis Philbin role as game show host and dominates every scene just exactly as much as you'd want him to. Midway through the movie, I found my laughing just at his intoxicatingly flamboyant pronunciation of the word "millionaire," as well as silently hoping he'd be in every scene. I'll call it a Roberto Benigni performance, after Benigni's comic but appropriate dominance of Down By Law. He doesn't distract from the story or the other characters, but he steals every scene. I was impressed. Even if Mr Kapoor is no Brando, he is sure a professional actor.
Bottom line on this movie: well-done, time well spent. It won't probably win any awards but it doesn't need to.

Now, after taking longer than I expected with that, let me get to the reason I decided to write today: The Wrestler. It's been 3 days now since I've seen it, and it's effect on me is actually still growing. Leaving the theater, I felt moved by it: physically and emotionally, but its overall impact as a piece of art hadn't fully sunk in. It's that brilliantly subtle (and let me say for the record that "brilliantly subtle" is something for which I have a weakness). I'm going to go ahead and say that in these past three days, The Wrestler has for me transformed from simply "good 2008 film," to "hopefully an Oscar-winning film," to simply "great film regardless of year."
If you're going to see this film, please do yourself a favor and spend thirty minutes googling its star, Mickey Rourke. His personal story and the story within the film are impossibly tied together. I can't imagine having a full appreciation for his work here without knowing much beforehand about him.
So how about Mickey Rourke? I've done myself the favor of steering mostly clear of this stuff, but he's been getting some good press lately. Of course, it's easy for people to get carried away with that, so you never know. I purposefully chose not to too closely analyze Rourke while watching, so I would get a better feel for the film as a whole and not have any preconceived notions about what I was seeing or not seeing with him. Well, let me report that after some consideration, he's as good as advertised.
Not all great acting performances were created alike. Some are like Daniel Day-Lewis in There Will Be Blood. Others are like Marlon Brando in Last Tango in Paris. Mickey Rourke here is definitely not at all like the former, though perhaps not quite so much like the latter. He obviously carries this film but he doesn't knock you over the head about it. He's subtle. He's real. He's exactly what's required to be perfect for The Wrestler.
The scene where he's working at the deli for the first time--and enjoying it (there is another, more ominous one)-- is so good and so simple and so perfect that it almost tricked me into thinking it was just an average effort in just an average scene. (Does that even make sense? I don't know. I'll lazily say you just have to see it to understand.) The scene when he's playing Nintendo with the kid, the ones early on where he's getting ready for a match, the ones with his daughter that were almost begging to be overacted, and the wonderful speech before his last match--practically every scene is the best scene. That's exactly why it's easy to simply appreciate the performance in real time but wonder at it as it sinks in afterward.
I can't help but wonder what it was like on the set of this film, with Rourke lumbering around being amazing. Was it lighthearted and fun, so as to cut the emotional tension of the film, or was it incredibly intense, so as not to disrupt the possibly Method techniques of the star or the definitely meta dynamics of same? If you're the director do you treat Rourke like a pitcher working on a no-hitter (silence and distance), or like a guy who just hit a walk-off homer (enthusiasm and loud positive reinforcement). Whatever Darren Aronofsky did, it worked.
The most interesting thing about this acting job is: where could Mickey Rourke possibly go from here? does he start getting intense parts again? (Cause you know he could never honestly do anything at all light at this point.) Or should he just suffer a tragic death or retirement, so this role can be raised up and our memory of it never tampered? (I say no. The possibilities are too endlessly interesting that I selfishly want to see what happens.)
Back to the film as a whole now. It's lazy and cliche to say it's shot in a documentary-style, but if I were to say that, you would know exactly what to expect. The fact is that it is not shot that way; it is clearly a staged production. It's the lighting (lack thereof) and the settings (Jersey shitlands) that make it so gritty. I think this is a good time to mention that these were choices made by Aronofsky that--like whatever his approach to Rourke was--worked beautifully for this film. They don't result in pretty cinematography or fancy directorial stamps, and they don't probably result in lavish accolades, but they go a long way to making a great film. So good work to him. (Disclaimer: I am a sucker for a lot of those big director moves and camerawork. It's nice to take time acknowledge that it doesn't have to be that way to be effective.)
The last thing I'd like to mention is the ending. (Spoilers, obviously.) A film like this one needed to have a good ending. We got a nice snapshot of a time in the character's life, so the story didn't necessarily need to be wrapped up neatly or anything, but the film itself needed to go out on a high note. As with the other things I've talked about, here The Wrestler was superb.
The film is about a man struggling to move on with his life, about a wrestler trying to learn that it's ok not to be a wrestler anymore, to accept that his essence is directly harmful to himself. (This is interesting of course, and lends itself perfectly to a film.) Randy the Ram has some success in this endeavor: strangely enjoying his deli clerk job, making progress with his dancer-lady, finally connecting with his daughter, doing coke and banging a young ho (he, kidding on that last one); but of course he cracks and is forced to heed the siren call of himself. He's a wrestler. He's a failure. He's a deadbeat. If his heart explodes, then so be it, cause if he can't be hmself then what sense is there in being.
When he steps in the ring at the end, post-heart attack, the sense of doom is palpable. This is why his speech just prior is so incredible and oddly triumphant. And all the horrible things we've been forced to see inside the ring leading up to this final match set the stage wonderfully. That there is no real brutality is of no consequence, because we are constantly expecting it. It's almost hold-your-breath uncomfortable.
I think a lot of people will view the ending as sad, when Randy appears in the onset of another heart attack but still climbs the top ropes and launches himself off in his trademark "Ram Jam," but I feel very differently. As I hinted before, I think it's great that Randy has tried to change himself, but ultimately realized he is who he is. To quote my most favorite movie of the last several years: "You can't change what's coming." If he's going to go out, he's going out on his own terms doing what he loves to do. Standing on the top ropes hearing the cheers of the crowd, he very literally and figuratively went out on top. Good for him. And good for The Wrestler. A perfect ending to a great film.

1. "God is great, you know. God is great. That's I been telling them."
"Yeah, every day, that's what they say. God is great."
"Uh-huh, God is great, every day."
-The entirety of the words heard just now during a one-floor ride on the freight elevator here at 90 Park Ave, exchanged between the elevator operator and a postal employee doing his morning rounds.
You just can't get away from it.

2. This morning on the elevator TV the news page displayed three bullet-point items. First one: "Sen Kennedy still in hospital recovering from seizure." Second one: "China plans three minutes of mourning today." The third one was of course superfluous.

3. Sara wanted me to watch "Angels in America" with her and so I did. It's six hours long, so my doing so does represent some kind of a commitment (though I did once read an 1100-page book at Jocelyn's behest, so this sort emasculation is not without precedent).
Hopefully this is not a sign of ignorance, but I was a little distracted by how gay it was early on. As it progressed, it was perfectly natural, but at the beginning it just seemed like too much. Of course I didn't know that homosexuality was the central theme, so it only made sense that nearly every character was either openly or closeted gay. Nonetheless, it took an hour or more to get used to it (as I am a fan of realism in movies).
It's a well-done movie (can you call it a film if it's made specifically for TV, in this case HBO?) based on a play that forced me to actively wonder how it might have been staged and whether or not the transformation to screen was effective. In the end I decided yes it was good but not great in this regard. The aspect that was spectacular was the acting, but then I guess it's to be expected when Al Pacino and Meryl Streep play large roles. The former is perfect for his part as he gets to do his Pacino intensity thing but he was also effectively kept in check unlike many of his more recent performances where he's just a silly representation of a charater as opposed to simply a character. I particularly enjoyed his speech patterns and general delivery (I think I might be becoming a speech/delivery fetishist regarding movies; this is also one of the main reasons I loved my boy Javier Bardem so much). Streep is also pretty much classic Streep: calm and not always the center of attention but pretty much always the best person on screen and the reason every scene she's in works so well. In this as in many of her roles, she's somewhat underappreciated unless you're looking for her.
The real reason the acting was so amazing though was not the top two names but all the rest. Everyone does very well. It's such a comprehensive display of good acting that I'm forced to give the director and the writer some credit for it. In fact, the only actor I didn't like a lot was Mary-Louis Parker, whom I think a lot of people liked. Maybe the guy who played her husband was just above-average as well, but that would be nit-picking.
Jeffrey Wright in his two roles was awesome. He played a gay queen in the most substantive one and was never ever overplaying it: that is impressive. That role was maybe the most important one in the whole movie and he was amazing. I've got to save some specific praise for a guy I'd never seen before named Justin Kirk who played what I think is the one main central character, if one exists in this movie. First thing I will say is this: I guess it's only been less than five years since this debuted, but I'm somewhat amazed that I haven't heard or seen much else from him in the interim. He played probably the most flamboyant character but like Wright he did it with a measured brilliance. As the movie progressed, I found myself wanting more and more scenes with his character, which I think is saying something considering both the talent he was surrounded by and the sheer length of the movie. I could be wrong, cause this is the only role I've ever seen him do, but if I were making a movie, no matter the subject, I think I'd find a way to get him in it, and that's about the best thing you can say for an actor.

4. In talking to her about the movie, of course encompassing the topic of homosexuality, Sara expressed to me her strong distaste for the way people use derogatory terms--even in jest and privately amongst a few friends--such as fag or retard or the like. Now, this is a definite talking point because the way I interact with people quite often is to say or do things that might knock the person off-balance a bit or make him feel uncomfortable. This can sometimes be achieved through a well-placed taboo word. I never do this in company that would be offended by it, and I'm quite sure (you can't ever be completely sure in our culture) that I don't actually harbor any predjudices or hatreds for minority groups, so I've never felt regretful about using these terms in such a way. Also, I'm actively aware of the power and the ugliness of these words (that's why I've used them for their full effect), so I feel a little more qualified than some ignorant cuss to use them every so often. However, as Sara effectively pointed out, even if somehow used respectfully or comically or privately, a word like fag is still a largely inappropriate word. It only has its power because it's derogatory and necessarily tied to it's insensitive genesis, so even using it as a jarring point in an attempted humorous way still must call to mind the ugly nature of the word, therefore of course reinforcing and perpetuating the ugliness. This is a big thing to realize.
But the biggest argument against my using these words is that, no matter how sensitive and sympathetic I may be to actual stigmatized groups of people, and no matter how certain I am that my usage of filthy words isn't directly injurious to anyone, it's really not up to me to decide whether a word is offensive or not. Since I'm not a homosexual and have never been subjected to the negative emotional impact of the word faggot, I am in no position to decide when it's ok to say it and when it's not. I thought about this for a while and concluded that it's really just that simple. And I can't now really find a way to justify using words like that, so I've resolved to stop doing it. But since it's almost second-nature to use them, albeit sparingly, I've asked Sara to mention it to me when I do slip up. So perhaps you will start to notice this in my speaking going forward. It will not be an accident. I'm curious to see how it goes.

1. Participated in the spectacle that is the Tribeca Film Festival. Actually, I just went and saw a new movie that's on the festival list because I got free tickets from a co-worker. There was no pomp, no celebrities, nothing whatsoever that would make me a cooler human being. Since you're wondering, the movie I saw was a documentary called Secrecy, which is naturally about government policies regarding classified information. It was a decent film, of good quality as you'd expect with a festival selection, but nothing exceedinly interesting in my opinion. In fact, they only touched on what I thought was the truly interesting angle: the fact that we're living in the "information age" and therefore everyone has more info than ever before and so the whole practice and gathering of classified intelligence would seem to be somewhat arcane and the huge struggle to hide what's nearly impossible to hide even more arcane. Instead they chose to pursue the GWBush is horrible/the government is a dirty secretive body/we have a right to know crap. It's all fine to uncover some illicit govermental moves to hide some facts, but I've seen all that before. It's called Frontline and it's on every week for free on PBS. I gave it a 3 out of 5 on the audience scorecard.
2. I had my first pop in maybe 2-3 years while watching the movie. It wasn't as monumental an occasion as it could have been as 1) it was only a diet, and 2) it was a fountain drink so not as aggressively carbonated. It was actually somewhat pleasant.
3. Along the lines of my New Yorker thought from last time, I stopped and thought about it just now when writing the word "pop." I've gotten infected with "soda" so much that "pop" doesn't come naturally anymore, and even when it does it somehow sounds odd in my head.
4. Dave thinks I'm not a good writer anymore. This is probably true. At least I'm not as spontaneous or perhaps as madly interesting as I was. It's because I'm happy. Or content. These are wonderful things to be, but for my own artistic purposes, not really conducive to exultant creation. Because I'm almost always happy, I don't have those lonely or horribly agitated or otherwise expansive emotional range that I used to. So my prose doesn't have as much range either. Or at least that's how I can explain it.
5. I'm always happy because of Sara. So Sara, shame on you for your one negative influence on my life. I'm not sure just yet how serious that sentence is. Not very, but maybe a tiny bit. I'll think about it.

It's been a long time so briefly at the top here I'll give you a free film review. High Plains Drifter, Clint Eastwood's second movie as a director, is a mid-seventies western starring Clint as the "Stranger," a character that is so obviously copied from his Sergio Leone roles that it's actually jarring not to see his mexican poncho. All the other trademarks are there: black flat-brimmed hat, skinny cigar, general mute stoicism. Aside from the simple joy of watching Clint do this familiar dance, I was quite disappointed in this film. It seemed to go out of its way to incorporate all the lame conventions of the western without adding anything. In fact, I didn't even finish it cause I realized an hour into it that it wasn't really necessary. This might have been fun for people who like westerns back in 1973, but I can't really recommend watching it for any kind of value. In 2030, would someone who generally enjoys romantic comedies ever go back and watch You've Got Mail for any good reason?

I've got a more formed opinion now of There Will Be Blood, of which I watched the first 90 minutes of again the other day. There are three things about it that are utterly extraordinary: Daniel Day-Lewis, the music, and the beautiful camera movements within virtually every scene that isn't simply static. DDay pretty much speaks for himself and unless you've been subjected to cold-war era psych treatments, his power emanates right from the first time you see him. To speak more (or really at all) on his performance is superfluous.
The music too was intensely enchanting even throughout my first viewing of the film, but I'd like to say that perhaps not enough has been made about how truly amazing it is because upon a second tour I found it often to outshine the verbal story it's woven into. I know the guy from Radiohead did it; let's hope he stays in the movie business cause he's a natural genius for it.
Finally, the camera action. This is something that I noticed initially but felt like maybe I didn't appreciate it as much as I should have, and so paid particular attention to the way Mr PT Anderson was technically delivering his images to us. I'd like to report that he did it phenomenally. through extensive movie-watching, I've come to realize that something I fundamentally love is an intelligent use of editing, or more specifically a conservative use of cuts combined with well-thought-out uses of pans and zooms between shots. Go watch some of the classics of Kurosawa for a visual course in what I'm talking about. Anderson seems to have done his homework in this regard, to the extent that several times throughout I found myself thinking about Kurosawa. He seems always to start on a general wide scene shot and drift forward or laterally across the scene so we can take everything in before finally settling on what will ultimately be important in the scene. Think of a shot where he surveys the land and the camps near the Little Boston well before finally bringing the derrick itself into the frame and zooming in, where Plainview is usually involved in the true action of the scene. Another specific example is when Eli is walking down to confront Plainview about where his church's money is. Instead of simply letting Eli walk into Plainview's frame, we follw from Eli's perspective as he walks along a pipeline and a vast lake of oil finally walking into where Plainview had been talking to some assistants. All the information that we see as Eli walks is important and stimulating. To top off this particular example, we get a beautifully framed shot with three men forming a perfect Kurosawsa-esque triangle, whose gap is of course filled by the entering Eli. This is the stuff that most people might not notice but most definitely adds to the overall experience of the film. If you are like me and do notice, then it moves everything to another level. My only nitpick is that none of this style seems very ambitious, innovative, or creative, so while it's certainly fine work, it falls quite short of being anything truly brilliant. Nonetheless, this is more argumentative and should not get in the way of your noticing the wonderful quality of this aspect of the film. So do enjoy.
(I'd like to finish off the last hour of the film again before passing a complete judgement (even though I'm quite sure the last hour will only serve to intensify my opinion), but the main problem I still have with There Will Be Blood is the character of Eli and/or perhaps also the actor Paul Dano. There is something quite seriously not right with this performance. I haven't yet determined who's at fault here: the writer for screwing up the dynamic of the character, Dano for screwing up the role, the casting director for hiring Dano in the first place, or Anderson the director for simply leading him to all the wrong decisions in playing the part. I suppose I can see how it might be desirable to have someone projecting extreme calm in the face of DDay's/Plainview's intensity, but in my opinion something is forced and awkward about Eli/Dano. It's uncomfortable, which I suppose would be preferrable if the film were an allegory, but of course I don't see that it is. It seems like someone made that decision somewhere along the line but then everyone just went too far with it. The entirely of this film is grandiose and intense and just simply large--all things that should be considered not only positive but essential to its quality; however, too much of the character of Eli is merely theatrical. (Again, I'll wait until I've watched it again, but this for me is exactly the underlying problem with the ending, that all of the sudden the foundation was absent from epic story, leaving only the bombastics.)

Some other things I've been thinking about:

1. What is a New Yorker? This is more a question for a first-year resident, but for whatever reason I've found myself considering it in the last couple weeks. My automatic reaction to this meditation is that I'm still not a "New Yorker." But is that true? I'm finishing up my fifth full year living in the city, and since I can't imagine moving out of my awesome apartment after just one year, I'm guaranteed to spend not just a sixth year here but also at least half of a seventh. That's quite a commitment to a place. I've got a somewhat tenured job here that has given me a rapibly growing 401k and a not-insignificant mutual fund. I've got an almost encyclopedic knowledge of the transportation system and the geography, both street- and ground-level. I've voted in local elections, choosing candidates ranging from our current mayor to the founder of the Rent Is Too Damn High Party. I've lived in three apartments in three somewhat different neighborhoods. I've seen businesses open and close and maybe I'm being presumptuous but I think at this point I can even accurately predict success or failure when a new one arrives. I've even adopted a local pro sports team (the Mets) and believe it or not, but when I find out someone like Charlie Villanueva is from the city, a curiously civic or pride-filled (perhaps also preposterous because there are 8million of us here) emotion causes me to root for him. So I guess what I'm trying to say--even though I can't stand some of the local accents, and I am still often amazed at the concentration of Irish and Jews here, and I can't bring myself to actually fold my pizza--is that maybe I've crossed the New Yorker threshhold.

2. Another line that I think I've crossed is a certain relationship line. I'm not experienced enough with this stuff to know exactly where I'm at or what's happened but I know that I was given a phone number by a rather attractive Asian girl this past weekend, and that this seemingly nondescript event made me think for two reasons. First, though I don't remember (I don't remember because it wasn't important enough to file the memories, not because I was too drunk to know what was going on) having any kind of flirty contact with this girl, apparently I was communicative enough for her to have the confidence to proffer a wholly unsolicited number. Basically, I've slipped into contented relationship mode so much that I don't even notice when an attractive chick is flirting with me, or even vice versa. The second, and personally deeper, issue is that when I realized what had happened, my reaction was not to be satisfied with myself or become arrogant or in any way emboldened, as would be the natural effect for most men. Instead, it occurred to me how happy I am where I am and how I've taken for granted the whole flirt/phone number/maybe-I'll-call-maybe-not/is-it-worth-it process of meeting people or escalating something or simply hooking up with a ho. I've taken for granted that I don't need to enter into this process and that I've already got the end result of such process, and I've got it as positively as I could imagine. So, while admittedly it can be a little exciting dipping into the lady pool, and there is a particular excitement that's possibly only at the very outset that of course I'm unable to truly recapture at this point, but it's much more pleasant to know that I don't really have to bother with all the crap that inevitably will follow. In fact, (though I'm even trying to overstate it) it would be hard to overstate the positive effect of this.

3. I don't know where it came from or how long it will last, but in the last two days I've strangely encountered a renewed desire to become a runner again. I don't know if--after immersing yourself in it as deeply as I did for several years--a person can really ever stop being a runner, but I do know that I haven't really felt like a "runner" for quite a while now. "A person who runs" is a better label. From time to time, I get serious pangs of determination relating to physical improvement. These can usually be sated through a few quality runs and a recommitment to regular gym visits. But this time it feels like a true and focused motivation for running. Though I don't know how disciplined it is, it's an excellent feeling and I'd like to see how long it will last. Rather, I'd like to see how long I can make it last. Proactivity.

4. I might make another longer post about this, but a man, acting without any consideration for other people, quite likely personally cost me at least $5,000 yesterday. That is a lot of money, enough to easily displace the displeasure I still have toward Chris Douglas-Roberts for failing to make uncontested 15foot shots and therefore costing me approximately $600. A couple missed free throws and spectacularly poorly timed act have likely conspired to make April 2008 the great month of missed financial opportunity.

5. On a lighter note, I've finally discoverd the joys of Fox Soccer Channel. I expect my Saturday and Sunday mornings/early afternoons will never be the same.

Oscars

I've got to admit now that I'm pretty excited about the Academy Awards tomorrow night. For some reason, it seems like enjoying an awards show is a kind of guilty pleasure; hence the admission. I don't know though. I always like watching them cause I like movies and generally they get at least a couple decent films in the running for big awards (though they are often lost in the swarm of shit that gets nominated seemingly only to pet the egos of big traditional Hollywood crap).
The main reason I'm particularly excited about these Oscars though, is that I've got a horse in the race, so to speak. No Country for Old Men is my favorite new theatrical release maybe ever. (Remember now that I'm just 27 years old and have been culturally sensitive for only maybe 10 of those years, so we're only talking about a best-of-the-last-decade level of excellence.) I've stated many times--though only a few in this space--how fond I am of this film, but only recently have I divined the real truth of the matter regarding this fondness: that my love respect for it has gone beyond a simple artistic reverence into a more personal and opinionated love. What I mean is that my passionate fondness for this film has rendered me incapable of discussing it in any comparative or unbiased manner. The reason this is relevant is that No Country for Old Men happens to be competing directly against another holistically similar film: There Will Be Blood; and additionally that many of my friends have stronger positive feelings about this latter film. For a time, I exerted small amounts of energy exclaiming my taste for my favorite vs. the (in my opinion) the comparative shortcomings of the other. Now I've accepted that artistic quality is unfortunately something I simply cannot soundly consider when examining these two fine films. I'll tell you now again that I think that There Will Be Blood--while certainly a powerful experience highlighted by an even more powerful performance by Mr Daniel Day-Lewis--simply has its imperfections, while No Country for Old Men is amazing for its lack of them. (This statement is one that I deem to be factual, not opinionated.)
I don't have the list in front of me at the moment (which, since I'm obviously sitting at a net-ready computer right now, is code for: I'm too lazy), but I'm fairly sure that each film is nominated for eight awards, and further that they are in direct competition in seven of those eight categories. You can't help but sense the man-vs-man nature of this; and, as a sports/competition/gambling lover, I am eating it up with a big fat spoon. So, looking at everything from this perspective, you've got to share in my enthusiasm for the show: it's like anticipating a big game or especially a big boxing fight.
I don't know now if this has helped to spur your own excitement for the LA love-fest to ensue tomorrow night (mostly cause I'm into my third pint glass rum & coke), but hopefully it has. No Country for Old Men is my Buckeyes, my Steelers, my Pirates (well, maybe not my pathetic Pirates). I'm rooting it on just as I would any of the others.

Film Review(s)

So let's see, I've seen a few movies since my last review. For one thing, I saw There Will Be Blood, and I have some definite opinions on it, including some that would be interesting because they aren't fully in line with what you may have heard in most of the mainstream. I must have been busy shortly after seeing it; I don't know why else I wouldn't have written about it. Here is the small list of movies I've seen since November 20th (seems very long ago), with brief thoughts: The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (very very good, quite interesting film by Julian Schnabel. I liked this one a lot, largely because I feel that Schnabel's experimental (for a vaguely mainstream film) techniques are fascinating and not in this instance at all intrusive.), Sanjuro (another Kurosawa/Mifune samurai movie, sequel to Yojimbo (one of my favorites of the genre), nice little movie, not much to say about it except for someone like me, who likes Japanese film and particularly this type, it's very pleasant to watch if not classic material.), Before Night Falls (Schnabel/Javier Bardem biopic that was good but not great, somewhat oddly told story that was off-putting to me at times but with many redeeming qualities including my new favorite Mr Bardem), and Chinatown (I'd seen this one before but it was on TV so I went with it again; reminiscent of Casablanca in how outside of its context it can lose a little luster as an all-timer; interestingly not one of Jack Nicholson's best performances but maybe his best movie; I love a well-done noir; finally I'd read that DDay Lewis's character in There Will Be Blood owes lots to John Huston's in this, so I paid close attention to that and it turns out to be true, though probably not to the extent that those would have you believe who might try to discredit DDay's excellent job with his character.).
So those are my recent ones. Perhaps I will try to share some thoughts on There Will Be Blood going into the Oscars. As a teaser I'll tell you now that I don't think it's as good as most people, though the more I think about it the more I might come to the realization that it's just because I'm judging it too harshly in the shadow of No Country For Old Men, a film which I think is spectacular, moreso every day that passes. In fact, these two films have me more excited for this years Oscars than any since I was enamored with Saving Private Ryan as only a historically-inclined high school kid can be. Like anyone, I like watching the awards being given out and like some I do put some small weight behind the results but I think too many times I've been slapped with reality when a clearly inferior product defeats a superb one (obvious current example--Diving Bell wasn't even nominated by its own country for the Best Foreign Film award, even though I think it should be up for the overall Best Picture prize), so it's hard to take the actual results too seriously. In a lot of ways, I find the nominees more interesting than the winners as I ascribe to what must be a widely held notion, that you can't use words like "best" when comparing art, but I do feel that you can reasonably parse out a year's worth of film into smaller groups of excellence. And of course I do feel that when a truly special film comes along, I can have a specific rooting interest regarding it winning or losing.

Anyhow, right now all this has been a long prologue to what will be a short main body of this post: my review of the movie I saw last night with my fawning girlfriend (she's smitten with the movie, not me, not in this instance at least), Across the Universe. It's a somewhat abstract musical released last year set to the songs of the Beatles. Opinion time: it's good, for a musical, which means it's decidely average, for a film. As with any musical, the acting is subpar but that's to be expected because they need to be able to sing. Now, I'm far from a musical expert, but I found that the main character has an amazing voice that's ridiculously suited to singing Paul McCartney songs, so much so that when he tries to sing Lennon or Harrison songs it doesn't sound very good. Most of the other singers are good but no one else as notable as the lead. I don't want to nitpick this film cause it's first priority is not toward simple film-ness but to musical-ness, but the story was weak. Put another way, many scenes seemed very contrived and the propulsion of plot through the too-long 133 minutes was far too often forced, though many of the cuts from scene to scene were very well done, stylistically and thematically. Again, I'd like to profess some ignorance regarding the musical genre but I suspect something they all have in common is difficulty maintaining a smooth plot; they are likely more successful when considered episodically. This film is no different, as--taken separately--almost all the scenes are very well done, always interestingly creative and sometimes visually rather breathtaking experiences. If you approach this film in that way, you will not be let down. And, speaking subjectively, two hours of your life that is spent accompanied by Beatles songs is a pleasant two hours indeed. (It's heavy on the White Album songs too, another plus in this reviewer's opinion.)

Film Review: Stranger Than Paradise

Stranger Than Paradise (1984), Jim Jarmusch.
Not going to say much here cause frankly I don't have much to say. It was quite good though, and I enjoyed it; certainly worth the scant 89 minutes of its runtime. I even laughed out loud a couple times (especially when the old aunt says "son of a bitch"), but I didn't like it as much nor do I think it's as good as the other Jarmusch film I've seen recently, Down By Law. For one thing, Tom Waits and Roberto Benigni are not in this one, though Richard Edson does a good job. If such a thing as a scene-stealer exists, it's Edson here. And he's quite a bit better than either John Lurie or the girl.
Still, I did enjoy this film and I can say that it is good. I can imagine that the French must have loved this movie, because it very strongly reminded me of an old French film, such as a Godard: black and white, spare scenes, few actors, mundane but beautifully realistic dialogue subjects. Actually, one thing that is very notable about this film is the almost perfect utility of every scene. They are extremely efficient in that nothing superfluous ever happens. No exposition, no fluff, no fading in and out of the emotion of the scene. It just gets to the point and cuts to the next one. This is very impressive for such a dialogue-heavy film. Very impressive, and very instructive from a writing perspective.

Film Review: No Country for Old Men

No Country for Old Men, 2007, Coen Brothers. Fine film. Reminiscent of Fargo in the good ways: not a funny film but many instances of humor, superb dialogue, engaging and eccentric villian, and of course a wise but humble cop tying it all together. Also, I'm told by a gentleman with the good fortune not to be seated in the front row that the photography was excellent, particularly in the first 30 minutes. From my poor vantage point, I can't confirm this but I strongly suspect it's correct.
Now let me tell you why I can give a complete, aggressive, and untempered recommedation of this film. There are two reasons actually, and I'll give you the short one first: Javier Bardem. I have no idea what constitutes an Oscar-type performance and I don't know if he will be in the conversation but that doesn't really matter because he was extremely good in this film. His character, and the way he played it--all the way down to his enunciation (which I found intoxicating)--are enough on their own to recommend this film.
Second, and this is more personal, but the guiding theme and philosophies jibe very well with how I view the world. Shit's going to happen whether you want it to or not. It's even going to happen whether you choose to do anything about it or not. You could call it "destiny" but that doesn't seem quite right; "inevitability" is better. I'm not going to give much anecdotal evidence here because I wouldn't want to spoil anything cause it's fairly new to theaters still, but suffice it to say it's there.
Also, in an odd way, I think that the theme of the title is in good harmony with my snuffing-it-at-60 plan. No Country for Old Men. What's the point of playing out the string? What do you like? You like to be alive, not just alive. Tommy Lee Jones verbalizes this well at the conclusion of the film, and while some people no doubt leave the theater with a feeling of unfullfilment because of the lack of a clear resolution, for me it was just the opposite: enrichment and satisfaction.
At least for me, this film both requires (not from the front row) and demands, not just a first, but a second viewing.