Jeff Ellis: It's Impossible To Start A Fire If You Have No Desire To Burn

A Few Short Thoughts Concerning Orson Welles

I went and saw Me and Orson Welles earlier today.  It's a sweet, if rather breezy, film that is distinguished by Christian McKay's outstanding performance in the role of Orson Welles.  McKay, in his first major role, dominates with such confidence and style that it's somewhat surprising to realize that he's really only in a very small portion of the finished film.

The same, of course, can be said of Welles' legendary turn in The Third Man, a film that almost everyone thinks of as being a movie starring Orson Welles despite the fact that Welles is only on screen for 15 minutes..  Meanwhile the film's actual star, Joseph Cotten, appears in every scene.

In other words, McKay dominates Me and Orson Welles by giving a truly Wellesian performance.  It's hard to think of anything more difficult than bring to life an icon but McKay does just that.

In many ways, Orson Welles is the patron saint for frustrated artists everywhere.  His well-documented "bad" behavior gives us justification for our own habits.  His subsequent destruction by a film industry threatened by his genius gives us justification for our own paranoia.  And the fact that, more than anyone, Orson Welles changed the language of film gives us justification to continue creating even when the rest of the world seems to be more concerned with destroying.

Richard Todd, R.I.P.

Actor Richard Todd has died.  He was 90 years old.

The Irish-born Todd served in the British Army during World War II and twice took part in D-Day -- once as a soldier and once as an actor when the entire day was recreated and filmed as The Longest Day (1962).

A stage actor even before joining the army, Todd branched out into film following the end of war.  He made his film debut as a dying soldier in The Hasty Heart(1948) and, for that performance, he received an Oscar nomination for best actor. 

(The Hasty Heart is also notable for being one of future President Ronald Reagan's better films.)

Todd went on to have a somewhat sporadic film career, establishing himself as a dependable character actor and occasional leading man.  Rumor has it that he was Ian Fleming's first choice to play James Bond in Dr. No.  And while it is true that everyone from Roger Moore to David Niven to Hoagy Carmichael has been identified as being Fleming's first choice, it is easy to picture Todd in that role.

Todd spent the later part of his career on television and quite a few people of a certain age (myself included) remember him best as the oddly sympathetic buffoon Sanders in the classic 1982 Dr. Who serial Kinda.  An old school, stiff-upper lip military man, Sanders suffers from an alien-induced nervous breakdown and, over the course of the 4-episode serial, proceeds to transform into a little child in an old man's body.  It's a transformation that Todd captured perfectly and his performance -- and, admittedly, quite a few other things -- helped to make Kinda one of the defining stories of the far too brief Peter Davison era of Dr. Who.

Richard Todd, R.I.P.

My favorite time of year

My favorite season -- Oscar Season -- started up yesterday when the always enigmatic (and vaguely sordid) National Board of Review announced they're picks for the best of 2009.

Up in the Air (which I hope to see this upcoming Tuesday) was named best film.

For the record, of the eligible films that I've seen so far this year, my pick for the best would have to be Joel and Ethan Coen's A Serious Man with An Education, District 9, Inglorious Basterds, and Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans as very close runner-ups.

A full list of the NBR winners for 2009 can be found here.

As always, I will be posting my own personal Oscar picks in January.

Ninja Assassin

Earlier this week, I caught an "action" film entitled Ninja Assassin. 

November, of course, is not the month that traditionally sees a lot of action films being released in theaters and, after seeing Ninja Assassin, it's obvious why the film's distributor might want to hide it.  Ninja Assassin manages to duplicate the action of a Hong Kong film without any of the demented fun or quirky moments that are necessary to keep that action from growing repetitive and dull.

It's hard to think of any other film that has managed to make the idea of being a ninja seem so pointless.

The film's hero -- the titular ninja assassin -- is played by Rain.  Despite only having one name, Rain actually does occasionally display some genuine charisma on screen but, surprisingly, he really doesn't get to do much until the film's end. 

Indeed, the majority of the movie is taken up with a rather boring subplot in which a spunky young Europol agent investigates rumors that there are ninja assassins roaming the world assassinating people.  During these scenes, I wanted someone to just grab this agent and say, "Aren't you paying attention to the movie's title!?  Of course there's ninja assassins!"

It's hard to escape the feeling that the main purpose of Ninja Assassin is to prepare the world for Ninja Assassin 2 and Ninja Assassin 3: Beyond Thunderdome.  Hopefully, these sequels will actually be about ninja assassins and will feature a little less plot and a lot more Rain.

John Hughes, R.I.P.

Screenwriter and directed John Hughes died today.  He was 59 years old.

How much did Hughes shape my generation's self-image?

So much so that we all remember our high school in being in Shermer, Illinois.

John Hughes, R.I.P.

(500) Days of Summer

I finally left the house today and went down to the Plano Angelika where I saw (500) Days of Summer, a surprisingly poignant romantic comedy.

While the film's story is rather familiar -- boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy tries to figure out why -- the story is told with a lot of very real charm.  As the boy and girl in question, Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Zooey Deschanel have a very real chemistry and Gordon-Levitt continues to show that he is one of the most underrated young actors working today.  In the films like last year's fiasco The Happening, I found Deschanel to be something of an acquired taste but she is perfectly cast in this film.  As an actress, Deschanel is blessed with the ability to remind us all of our first real love and that ability is shown off perfectly in this film.

At times, (500) Days comes dangerously close to getting a bit too cute for its own good.  One extended musical fantasy sequence threatens to destroy the movie's credibility but it is saved by the pure exuberance that Gordon-Levitt puts into his dance moves.  He makes us believe that his character would not only have this fantasy but actually makes us regret the realization that we wouldn't. 

Despite a few missteps (mostly early on when the film still seems to be struggling to establish a consistent tone), director Marc Webber makes a remarkably assured film debut with (500) Days.  He even manages to successfully make use of an off-screen narrator (which has proven to be the kiss of death for so many other indie film debuts).  On the basis of (500) Days of Summer, one cannot help but look forward to seeing what Webber give us in the future.

So Far, My Vacation Is Not Living Up To Its Potential

So far, my vacation from my "day job" has proven to be a bit of a bust.  I've been too tired to do much of anything and I haven't had my usual daily routine to give me any motivation to actually get out of bed.  As much as I hate that routine, it apparently does serve a purpose.

I did watch Lost Highway tonight.  That film remains as brilliant and annoying today as when I first saw it way back in 1996.

Hopefully, tomorrow will be a more active day.

Emmy Thoughts

The 2009 Emmy Nominations were announced two days ago.  Because of other commitments, I haven't gotten a chance to really think about and comment on them until now.

The Emmys have traditionally suffered in comparison to the Oscars.  They're not taken as seriously (which is interesting when you consider the quality of some of the films and performances that have been honored at recent Academy Award ceremonies).  A lot of this, of course, is because movies have one chance to be named Best Picture.  Actors have one chance to win an Oscar for a particular performance in particular film.  When L.A. Confidential lost to Titanic, it didn't get a chance to win the top award the next year.  Time (and film) moved on.  Whereas, with the Emmies, it sometimes seems that everyone gets another chance.  If a tv series loses an Emmy to another show, it only has to wait until the next television season.  Chances are that the series that previously bested it won't even be on the air anymore.  As such, the Emmys have gotten a reputation for, more or less, being the same thing year after year.

This really isn't quite fair because, in recent years, the Emmys have broken out of the trap of automatically nominating the same shows and actors year after year.  Yes, it is true that -- until these latest nominations -- James Spader seemed to have a bizarre lock on the Best Actor in a Drama trophy.  But, on the whole, the Emmys have shown a willingness to nominate outside of the usual suspects in recent years.  As much as I hate to use the term, the Emmy voters have been willing to nominate outside the box.

(Though, it should be noted, that often times these off-beat selections simply have to be content with a nomination.  As much as I hate to seem critical of James Spader -- who is an excellent actor -- his winning streak serves as proof of this.)

Here's a few thoughts as I look over the major nominees.

Best Series (Drama)

This year sees seven shows nominated for best drama.  Those nominees are Big Love, Breaking Bad, Damages, Dexter, House, Lost, and Mad Men.  There's not a single nominee that I can really find fault with though, out of this group, the only shows that I watch on regular basis are Dexter, House, and Lost.  Of those three, I'd probably give the Emmy to Lost.  This shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone who has read this blog in the past.  However, I can also easily understand why this previous season of Lost-- with all the time jumps and talk about free will and destiny --will probably annoy just as many viewers as it excites.  So, what do I think is going to win?  Hmm...let's say Big Lovebecause it gives Emmy voters a chance to feel like they've been exposed to dark underworld of religion.  Which TV drama do I wish had been nominated?  24, if just because it pisses off liberals.

Best Comedy (Series)

Again, we have seven nominees.  And those nominees are 30 Rock, Entourage, Family Guy, Flight of the Conchords, How I Met Your Mother, The Office, and Weeds.  Out of this list, I am most excited to see that nomination for Flight of the Conchords.  I would say that this nomination shows that the Emmy voters have finally become a truly cool group of people except for the fact that it is nominated alongside Family Guy.  Family Guy is the epitome of a show that gets by on pretending to be funny as opposed to actually being funny.  It's a show that essentially has taken every successful element of the Simpsons, King of the Hill, and South Park and has then proceeded to strip those elements of  everything that made them interesting in the first place.  It's dumb humor that not only pretends to be smart but, even worse, actually believes itself to be smart.  But enough of that.  Out of these shows, who would I give the Emmy too?  Well, again, the answer is obvious to anyone who has read this blog in the past.  I'm a huge Office fan and that's the show I would go with.  That said, I suspect that the actual award will actually go to 30 Rock if just because Emmy voters can watch it and say, "Hey, that's me!"

Best Actor (Drama)

I'm a bit disappointed to see that Keifer Sutherland didn't receive a nomination as he actually did some of his best work on the latest season of 24.  However, even more distressing is the fact that Bill Pullman's name appears nowhere on this list.  As the befuddled, likable, and kinda creepy head of Big Love'sfamily, Pullman is really the key to that show's success.  Unfortunately, for Pullman, his performance largely consists of providing a center for all the more far more flamboyant characters to orbit.  Like almost all good television performances, it's the type of work that frequently get overshadowed and ignored.

As for the actual nominees, they are:

Bryan Cranston for Breaking Bad

Michael C. Hall for Dexter

Hugh Laurie for House

Gabriel Byrne for In Treatment

Jon Hamm for Mad Men

Simon Baker for The Mentalist

Honestly, I have yet to actually make it through an entire episode of The Mentalist but I would take away Baker's nomination and give it to either Sutherland or especially Pullman if just on the basis of how much Baker's character annoyed me in the commercials leading up to The Mentalist's debut episode.  ("You love India but you've never been...Psychic?  No, just observant."  SHUT UP!) 

As for the winner, there's no question in mind.  Give it to Hugh Laurie or explain why not.

Best Actor (Comedy)

Our nominees are:

Alec Baldwin for 30 Rock

Tony Shalhoub for Monk

Jim Parsons for The Big Bang Theory

Steve Carrell for The Office

Charlie Sheen for Two and A Half Men

Jermaine Clement for Flight of the Conchords

Carrell's going to have to win the award at some point, just so Emmy observers can take bets on how many times he mentions Jon Stewart and Steve Colbert in his acceptance speech.  (Seriously, these three are into each other to an almost creepy degree.)  And, he certainly gave a good performance this season.  He fell in love, quit his job, tried to start a new company, fought with his boss.  There was a lot of pathos in his comedy and that plays well with voters everywhere.  So, maybe this will be his year though I have a feeling that Baldwin will end up winning again.  Just a feeling.

As for me, I'd give the award to Jermaine Clement just because I want to hear his acceptance speech.

Best Actress (Drama)

This is actually a bit close to a usual suspects list.  Not many surprises to be found and, to be honest, it's a bit of a dull list.  Our nominees:

Sally Field in Brothers & Sisters

Glenn Close in Damages

Mariska Hargitay for Law and Order: SVU

Holly Hunter in Saving Grace

Kyra Sedgwick in The Closer

Elisabeth Moss in Mad Men

And the winner is .... oh, how about Holly Hunter?

Myself, I'd give the award to Kyra Sedgwick for ably proving herself to be the American version of Helen Mirren.

Best Actress (Comedy)

Our nominees:

Tina Fey for 30 Rock

Christina Applegate for Samantha Who?

Julia Louis-Dreyfus for The New Adventures of Old Christine

Sarah Silverman for The Sarah Silverman Program

Mary-Louise Parker for Weeds

Toni Collette for The United States of Tara

Personally, I hope Collette wins if just because it will cause a lot of people to say, "What show is she on?" at the same time.  Indeed, it speaks well for the Emmys that this category is almost equally divided between actresses on "traditional" sitcoms (Applegate and Louis-Dreyfus) and those on more quirky (and more unconventional) shows.  While I think either Parker or Silverman deserves the award, I imagine that the winner will be Fey as she is the only actress on the list to appear on a show that is both traditional and quirky.

And now, let's move on to the supporting nominees.  This is where things get fun since the supporting actors are usually the main reason why we choose to watch one show over another.

Best Supporting Actor (Drama)

William Shatner for Boston Legal

Christian Clemenson for Boston Legal

Aaron Paul for Breaking Bad

Michael Emerson for Lost

John Slattery for Mad Men

William Hurt for Damages

Out of this list, I'd probably go with either Emerson or Slattery.  If I really had to choose, it would be Emerson is just because I've only occasionally caught Mad Men whereas I saw every episode of Lost last season.

Speaking of Lost, it's a bit of disappointment (though not a shock) to see that it only scored one acting nomination.  If anyone from the show deserved a nomination this season, it was Josh Holloway whose criminally underrated performance as Sawyer really proved to the heart and soul of the show.

Speaking of criminally underrated, Carlos Bernard has never gotten the credit he deserves for his performance as Tony Almeida on 24.  If he deserved a nomination for any season, it was this one.

Who will win?  Shatner for being Bill Shatner?  Let's hope not.  I'm going to flip a coin and go with John Slattery.

Best Supporting Actress (Drama)

Rose Byrne for Damages

Hope Davis for In Treatment

Chandra Wilson for Grey's Anatomy

Sandra Oh for Grey's Anatomy

Dianne Weist for In Treatment

Cherry Jones for 24

Honestly, as much as I enjoyed 24 this season, I never really bought Cherry Jones as the president of the United States.  Indeed, I felt she was perhaps the weakest President since Wayne Palmer.

None of these nominees really inspire me, to be honest.  Indeed, the Grey's Anatomy nominees seem to be the equivalent of the Boston Legal nominees.  But a winner must be selected!  So, the Emmy goes to ... Elizabeth Mitchell for Lost.  How good was her performance?  So good that she doesn't even need a nomination to take the award.

Best Supporting Actor (Comedy)

Kevin Dillon for Entourage

Tracy Morgan for 30 Rock

Neil Patrick Harris for How I Met Your Mother

Rainn Wilson for The Office

Jon Cryer for Two And A Half Men

Jack MacBryar for 30 Rock

Let me make one thing clear.  Rainn Wilson is a genius.  Every week, he manages to make Dwight Shrute not only insane but oddly poignant as well.  However, at times, so much praise is given to Wilson that equally deserving performances are overlooked.  Case in point: John Krasinski and especially Ed Helms.  I could easily give the award to any three of these performers.

I have a feeling Neil Patrick Harris might win this year.  Why?  Everyone seems to love Neil Patrick Harris and, quite frankly, he deserves an Emmy for managing to overcome being typecast as Doogie Howser, M.D.

(Remember that episode where Doogie first had sex?  *Shudder*)

Best Supporting Actress (Comedy)

Our nominees are:

Kristin Chenoweth for Pushing Daisies

Kristen Wiig for Saturday Night Live

Amy Poelher for Saturday Night Live

Jane Krakowski for 30 Rock

Vanessa Williams for Ugly Betty

Elizabeth Perkins for Weeds

And the winner is ... Mindy Kalling for The Office!  For the exact same reason that Elizabeth Mitchell won Best Supporting Actress (Drama).

 

American Omen

Straight off the presses:

Obama Teleprompter Breaks

For some reason, as I read this story, I found myself thinking about David Warner in The Omen.

Karl Malden, R.I.P.

Actor Karl Malden has died.  He was 97 years old.

For members of my generation, our first real exposure to Karl Malden came when he was president of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences and, as a result, always got to deliver the show-stopping "mission statement" at a handful of Oscar ceremonies.  Even in that somewhat colorless role, he always came across as a genuinely decent, blue collar guy.  If nothing else, he was certainly a good deal less pompous than Arthur Hiller.

(Malden later contributed to one of the biggest Oscar controversies in recent years when he spearheaded the effort to award name dropper Elia Kazan an honorary award.)

Malden, however, had a long career an actor.  For much of his career, he was the urban everyman, an often-overlooked, hardworking figure who, more or often than not, ended up becoming a figure of moral authority simply based on the fact that you could simply look at Malden's face and tell that he had spent every day of his life making an honest living.  Indeed, it was this innate sense of decency that made it all the more devastating when his weak-willed Mitch in A Streetcar Named Desire finally ended up rejecting Vivian Leigh's Blanche.  This sense of decency actually tempted one to overlook the fact that his crusading priest in On the Waterfront is essentially used to justify "naming names."  Just try to imagine sitting through Patton without Karl Malden's practical-minded Omar Bradley there to balance out the megalomania of George C. Scott's Patton.

Malden was such a reliable actor that he was also quite often a rather underrated actor.  Though it happened very rarely, occasionally he was cast against type and allowed to show that he had a good deal more range than one might suspect.  A prime example of this came in Marlon Brando's sole directorial effort, the western One-Eyed Jacks where Malden was a chilling and believable bad guy. Legend has it that the film's original director -- the legendary Stanley Kubrick -- walked off the film because he felt that Malden's casting was a mistake and that Brando (who also played the film's lead role) would easily dominate Malden.  (Reportedly, Kubrick hoped to cast Spencer Tracy in the villainous role.)  In the end, however, it was Malden's performance that dominated the final film and Brando who often seemed to be miscast.  

Allow me to mention one final underrated Malden performance.  As an unabashed fan of the old school Italian giallo, this one is a personal favorite of mine. In Dario Argento's 3rd film, The Cat O' Nine Tales, Malden is cast as a blind, retired journalist who -- along with James Fransiscus -- is drawn into a rather complex murder mystery.  It is, admittedly, a rather cutesy role but Malden plays it with just the right balance of genuine pathos and enigmatic menace.  Indeed, by the end of the film, the audience can't help but feel rather ambiguous toward Malden's nominal hero.  The film's finale -- in which Malden, incorrectly believing that his granddaughter has been murdered, ruthlessly kills the bad guy just to then hear his granddaughter's anguished scream of "Papa!" -- is a lot more effective than it has any right to be and this is largely because of Malden's performance.

Like many of the great film character actors of the 40s and 50s, Malden eventually ended up turning to television.  His most famous role was as the lead detective in The Streets of San Francisco.  I must confess that, during the rare times that reruns turned up in syndication, I have never been able to sit through an entire episode of The Streets of San Francisco.  This is through no fault of Malden's.  It's just that the show is as resolutely a symbol of its time as the various CSIspin-offs are today.   As a result, the show has not aged well.  Everything from the theme music to the announcer informing us that the show is "A Quinn Martin Production" has taken on an element of camp.  Everything except for Karl Malden.

A few years back, I read an interview with Malden in which he was asked about his role on the Streets of San Francisco.  Malden reflected on the irony of the fact that this by-the-book cop show starred two of the most resolutely liberal actors in Hollywood.  The reason why I remembered Malden's comment is because it was delivered without apology.  He neither apologized for being liberal nor did he apologize for giving a sympathetic portrayal of a conservative.  In these partisan times, there's something comforting about discovering that there actually were accomplished, professional people who were capable of being politically-minded without succumbing to stridency.

(Malden was, for his entire career, an outspoken Democrat.  Though, it should be noted, he was a member of the Democratic Party that gave us Eugene McCarthy and Hubert Humphrey and not the Democratic Party that has since produced Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama.)

For me, Malden's best television role was in the true-crime miniseries, Fatal Vision.  Playing the antagonistic father-in-law of convicted murderer Jeffrey McDonald (played, in a truly chilling performance, by Gary Cole), Malden once again embodied something that was both uniquely American and uniquely blue collar.  To his efforts to convict that man who killed his daughter, Malden brought a compelling determination and a palpable pathos that distinguished both this movie in specific and Karl Malden's career in general.

Karl Malden, R.I.P.