The Italian (2005)

Though the title might suggest otherwise, The Italian is a Russian film, and is filled with all of the characteristic bleakness of Mother Russia. I was enthusiastic about seeing this film after reading a synopsis of it, but was disappointed.

The Italian is set in an orphanage in Russia, where the children are packed in like sardines and bullies rule. We meet 6-year-old Vanya, who is about to be adopted by a couple from Italy. During the two-month waiting period until Vanya is legally adopted, he becomes obsessed with finding his birth mother. Vanya is compelled to do this by the fact that a birth mother arrived at the orphanage to take the son she abandoned several years ago home. She is cruelly turned away after learning that her son was adopted by another couple, and she then commits suicide. Vanya cannot bear the thought of his own birth mother facing the same fate, and decides to find her at any cost.

Though the movie was only 90 minutes long, it felt much, much longer. I attribute this to the horribly depressing state of things at the orphanage, and in Russia in general. I have only seen one other Russian film, “The Irony of Fate, or Enjoy Your Bath,” which is Russia’s “It’s a Wonderful Life,” and even that movie, which was about the holiday season, was exhaustingly depressing. I am so glad that my ancestors left Russia, and I didn’t have to grow up there. It seems like a miserable place where there is no point of living.

But, I digress. What was remarkable and thought provoking about the film was that even in this bleak world, even though Vanya was abandoned as a baby and has suffered abuse at the orphanage, he has an amazing capacity for love. He so desperately loves the mother who abandoned him, who he never even met, that he must find her at all costs.

There are many characters that all seem like they could be real people, motivated by greed or lust or power, or who are just beyond hope.

Though I usually don’t have any trouble with subtitles, I did find these intrusive and at times difficult to follow. There are sometimes several different conversations going on at the same time, some that are just in the background, and they are all subtitled in together, which made it confusing.

I also really disliked the way the resolution of the film was presented. It happened in the last 10 seconds of the movie, and was only described in a voiceover with subtitles. Had the two loud, annoying ladies in my theater not figured it out loudly during the ending credits, I don’t think I would have caught what happened.

Shrek the Third (2007)

I saw this movie to relax my mind at the end of a hard, long day. And it did just the trick. It was nice to see a movie with a familiar feel, setting and characters, that didn’t require any real thought on the part of the audience. It was pure mind-numbingness.

Shrek the Third (or Donkey’s Revenge, as I like to think of it) followed the usual Shrek plot outline. As always, Shrek has to overcome his problems relating to people in order for everyone to have a happy, fairy tale ending. And everyone does! In this installation, Shrek and Fiona are filling in as king and queen of Far, Far Away. Shrek journeys with Donkey and Puss in Boots to find Arthur, a teenager who, except for Shrek and Fiona, is the only rightful heir of the kingdom. Shrek has already decided that he doesn’t want to be king, and just wants to go back to his swamp, so he goes on this quest to find Arthur. Meanwhile, Fiona finds out that she is pregnant, and Prince Charming gathers all the villains from a myriad of fairy tales to attack the kingdom, so that he can become king of Far, Far Away. Fiona gathers the usually dainty fairy tale damsels in distress (Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Snow White) to defend the kingdom in that crazy, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon style of hers. Needless to say, everything works out in the end.

It’s always delightful to me when I watch a cartoon, be it a pen and paper cartoon, or a computer animated film, and I forget that it’s a cartoon. Shrek 3 definitely accomplished this. There was a fantastic and really impressive bit of CGI when Prince Charming tosses his hair, and you can see all the little hairs blowing in the wind. It was neat.

The Year of the Dog (2007)

Starring former Saturday Night Live cast member Molly Shannon, The Year of the Dog was a sad and poignant movie. Shannon plays an old maid, a 40-something woman who has given up on dating and getting married. She is a seemingly independent woman; she owns a home and a car, and works as a secretary at a company near her home in California. And when she’s not at work, Shannon’s character, Peggy, spends all of her time with her totally adorable Beagle, Pencil. We barely have time to get attached to Pencil, as he dies about five minutes into the movie.

The rest of the film is about how she copes with her loss, and it is a major downward spiral into emotional instability. Firstly, most of the people in Peggy’s life seem to have toxic personalities and are very unsupportive. She has friends at work, and a relationship with her brother and his wife and children. Her “friends” at work seem self-centered, and instead of relating to Peggy about her loss, or at least giving her time to grieve, they try to distract her by encouraging her to go out and find a man, go see a funny movie, and basically forget all about her poor little dog who died only that morning.

Trying to move on, Peggy goes on a horrific date with her neighbor, played superbly by John C. Reilly. The man’s house is decorated with deer and moose heads mounted on the wall, and as a child he even shot his own dog accidentally during a hunting trip. Peggy then adopts a new dog, a huge German Shepard who was abused and has behavioral problems. She starts falling in love and becoming heavily influenced by the dog’s trainer, who is vegan, and gay (though she heartbreakingly doesn’t find out about the latter until later in the film). Peggy decides to become a vegan, starts volunteering for the ASPCA and learning about non-profit organizations that rescue farm animals from being slaughtered. This is where Peggy starts going crazy. After being romantically rejected by her dog trainer, she realizes that she has always been disappointed by people, and relates to animals much better than people. And it’s sad. Don’t get me wrong; I love animals, especially dogs. I have never had a dog, but I love it when you pass them on the street, and they smile at you, or you can tell that they’re feeling sad. They have feelings just like people, and give so much love.

So Peggy starts stealing money from the company she works for to donate to organizations like PETA. She has a harder and harder time relating to people, her new dog mauls another dog and is euthanized, she is fired from her job for stealing, and she adopts 15 dogs from the pound to rescue them from being killed. Her house becomes a disaster area, and there is Peggy, lost in the chaos, but loving the company and love her house full of rambunctious dogs gives her.

In the end, after attempting to murder her neighbor, who she believes killed Pencil by leaving slug poisoning out, Peggy joins a group that protests animal cruelty, and we see her on a bus, headed towards her future.

Though her character was an extreme example, I think many of us fear becoming “the crazy cat lady,” or being old and alone, and not being able to relate to people.

There was a lovely overdubbed monologue at the end of the film, where Peggy talks about love. How some people love other people, some people love power, or money, or material things. But how she loves animals, and knows it’s her calling to save as many as she can. I didn’t cry at the end of the movie. But I did cry in the car on the way home, thinking about love, and wondering, at the end of a relationship, or when someone you love dies, where does the love go? It’s still inside of you, aching to come out, to be expressed, even if the person, or dog you love is gone. So maybe all of us become a little bit like Peggy. We try to find some other way to express that love, to put it back into the world, where it can do some good.

Springtime for Spitzer, or Thunderballs 2007: The 107th New York Legislative Correspondents Association show

It was so much fun to see the Legislative Correspondents Association show this weekend in Albany, which was a James Bond-themed satire of state politics and national events. It is amazing to me all the work the performers put into the show. They’re not being paid. They’re just doing it for fun. And the good time they’re having really comes across to the audience.

The show centered around the premise of New York Senate Majority Leader Joe Bruno and Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver plotting to laser remove what’s left of Governor Eliot Spitzer’s hair, in hopes that it will force Spitzer to do their bidding.

The show was performed twice. The Friday night performance was a lot of fun. There were many young people in the audience. I believe many of them were legislative aides, or friends and family members of the performers. People felt free to laugh at jokes about the governor and the myriad of political figures who were mocked.

Saturday night was a black-tie dinner event. Spitzer and Bruno were in attendance, along with several state senators and assembly members. And frankly, it was a lot harder to laugh about Spitzer’s know-it-all attitude when he was sitting, literally, two feet behind me. I kept turning around to take sneak peeks at him, and he seemed to be laughing and taking it all in stride. And after Phil Bayly’s impressive performance of “Thunderballs,” a song about Spitzer’s, well, you can figure it out, I heard the governor comment that at least the song was complimentary.

There were three rebuttals after the Saturday night performance, all delightful in their own way. Sen. Malcolm Smith and several other politicos performed “ZOPA Cabana.” From the best I can gather, ZOPA stands for zone of potential agreement. It’s a political term describing when legislators step over party lines in order to get funding for a particular issue. And Spitzer showed a very charming little film, which can be viewed at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uJ8W19E4O54. But the guy who really brought down the house was Chris Callaghan, who performed a medley of satirical songs about him losing the comptroller election, a portion of which can be viewed at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ry0NuyoFl2c.

The show could not have come together without all the hard work of the members and alumni of the LCA, especially show chair Melissa Mansfield, who made a great Paula Abdul and dairy princess Kirsten Gillibrand.

I wanted to share the lyrics with you for one of my favorite songs in the show, “Kiss Eliot’s Behind,” which is sung to the tune of “This Little Light of Mine.”

"Come on folks it time, to kiss Eliot’s behind. You may think he’s slime, but kiss Eliot’s behind. Let’s all get in line, and kiss Eliot’s behind. Get behind, get behind, Spitzer’s behind. You can vote for Bush, but kiss Eliot’s fat tush. Your bills may need a push, so kiss Eliot’s fat tush. Don’t forget to gush, then kiss Eliot’s fat tush. Get behind, get behind, Spitzer’s behind. Come on folks it’s time, to kiss Eliot’s behind. You may think he’s slime, but kiss Eliot’s behind. Let’s all get in line, and kiss Eliot’s behind. Get behind, get behind, Spitzer’s behind.”

Spiderman 3 (2007)

Well, it’s Spiderman! It has to be exciting!

The third installment of the Spiderman series opened in theaters today. I woke up this morning and said to myself, “I’m going to see Spiderman!” And I did. The movie was showing at least every half an hour starting at 3 a.m. at the theater near me (in addition to the midnight showing last night). The theater was pretty empty when I saw the movie. After all, it was 10:45 a.m. on a Friday, and most people are at work or at school. So I saw the movie with a bunch of unemployed people (myself included in that group), toddlers, and a baby who screamed through most of the movie. It was quite an experience.

I thought the way the director, Sam Raimi, opened the film was great. As the opening credits ran, we saw scenes from Spider-Man and Spider-Man 2. It was a great way to remind the audience of the plots of the previous films.

Geeky Peter Parker (Tobey Maguire) gets a bit of a big head in this film. New Yorkers love Spider-Man, and Peter is enjoying all the glory. Unfortunately, it gets in the way of him connecting emotionally and relating to his girlfriend, MJ (Kirsten Dunst). And we’ve all been there. Well, we haven’t all been Spider-Man. But at some point or another, we’ve all been a little too absorbed in our own lives, and wound up hurting the people we love because of it.

And there are three bad guys in the movie! Venom, played by That 70’s Show’s Eric Forman (also known at Topher Grace) was very cool and scary. The Sand Man was played by Thomas Haden Church, who I remember as the dopey custodian on Wings. Plus Peter’s friend Harry Osborn becomes the New Goblin, played by James Franco.

Frankly, the plot is not that interesting. There are a lot of bad guys. They die; they come back, they die again, they come back again. The middle of the movie was even a little dull. And Peter Parker’s physical changes when the black suit symbiotic alien thing takes him over really amount to him having black hair and wearing black eyeliner.

What is really interesting is that despite the fact that it’s a movie based on a comic book, most of the emotions people go through in the film are very easy to relate to: Love, jealousy, anger, grief, competitiveness, vengefulness, loss, pride and shame. The characters deal with real psychological issues.

One scene reminded me of a friend’s description of the book “What is the What: The Autobiography of Valentine Achak Deng” by Dave Eggers. The Sand Man explains himself to Spider-Man. He explains why he needed to steal money. He explains how he accidentally shot Peter’s uncle. And Spider-Man is able to forgive him. “What is the What” discusses the idea that if we were all able to explain ourselves to each other, our personal histories, where we come from, what we have suffered through and what we have overcome, then we as a society would be able to relate to each other in much healthier ways. That we would be able to understand and relate to each other, instead of making assumptions and snap judgments about each other.

And in the end, Spider-Man talks about how we all have a choice. In the comic book world of Spider-Man, it’s all very black and white. There is good, and there is evil. In reality, there are many, many shades of gray. But that choice is still there. We have to make decisions that uphold our personal morals. We have to choose to be better people. Sometimes the need to make a decision is thrust upon us, but we are the ones who must choose which path to follow.

*******
As an added bonus, the new trailer for Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix was shown. It looks so good! I can’t wait for July 13!

Avenue Montaigne (2006)

A surprisingly delightful movie, Avenue Montaigne, also known as Fauteuils d'orchestre, is a character-driven study of aging, love, pain, loss, and life changes.

Set in Paris, the film follows the lives of a waitress, an art collector and his son, a concert pianist and his wife, and an actress for three days. And they are a very busy three days.

Our main character, if you can call her that, is Jessica, a 20-something girl from the suburbs who comes to Paris to find a job. She arrives in Paris without a place to live or knowing if she’ll find work at all. She winds up getting a job as a waitress and gets to start working the day of her interview. This was the only part of the film that I found totally unrealistic. Who moves to a strange city without knowing where they will live or how they will support themselves? Anyway, I digress. Always in the right place at the right time, Jessica quickly meets the neighborhood celebrities: An elderly art collector who is auctioning off his collection, and his son, who is still grieving the loss of his mother and upset with his father for selling the art the couple collected together over a lifetime; a 40-something concert pianist who loves to play the piano, but wants to give up playing professionally because he’s tired of wearing tuxedos and traveling from city to city and concert hall to concert hall to play for people who know too much about music, and his wife, who made her life out of scheduling his concerts and being by his side at every glamorous event; and a 40-something soap opera actress, who, though she is well paid for her television work, longs to perform more serious and creative roles. The climax of the film is the night of the art collector’s auction, pianist’s final performance, and actress’s opening night.

But the plot isn’t what is special about this film. What’s special is the amazing range of feelings the characters go through along the way. And they’re honest feelings. In one scene we see Jessica sitting on the roof of the concert hall in the rain, alone in a strange city, with no friends and no where to go, and you can feel her loneliness, her fear, and most importantly, her courage to face this incredibly frightening situation head-on. Many of the characters faced issues of growing older, and having their wants and needs and place in life changing. The art collector misses his wife, but refuses to stop living even though his wife has died. And we see crisises in relationships. Can the pianist’s wife be happy by her husband’s side in a house by a lake? Is love enough? The issues and feelings raised in the film are ones we have all felt and have dealt with or will deal with in our lives.

And I loved how for the most part, the characters, even the totally crazy actress, were very self-aware. No holding in feelings, no pretending to be someone that they’re not, but real, flawed people who were growing and learning and trying to be better people.

Something that I thought was really interesting was that all the music in the film is music that is being heard by the people in the movie. It’s the music the pianist is playing, or the pop music the retiring theater superintendant is listening to on her headphones. The soundtrack isn’t artificial, it’s part of the scene, part of the characters’ lives.

It was so nice to see beautiful, breathtaking long shots of Paris. The Eiffel Tower is nearly always in view, and the city lit-up at night is lovely.

I know many people don’t like to see movies with subtitles, but I found that they were not distracting at all. The dialogue is very comfortably paced, and I didn’t find that I missed any of the facial expressions or gorgeous scenery by reading the subtitles.

The Queen (2006)

I finally caught this film on DVD after trying unsuccessfully to see it in the movie theater. And frankly, I wish I had seen it in the theater. What I was really taken away by in this movie wasn't Helen Mirren's Academy Award-winning performance, but by the beautiful cinematography and grand scenic shots of Scotland. It took my breath away to see the rolling green hills and wide skies.

The film is mostly about the way the royal family publicly handled the death of Princess Diana. I had just turned 16 when Diana died, and don't remember most of the media hullabaloo. However, as a former journalist, I now understand how handling a crisis publicly can make or break you. Making the right speeches and sending out the right public relations statements at the right times and in the right places can cast a public official in a very nice light. And as this film delves into, while newly elected Prime Minister Tony Blair was very forthcoming with his grief for the death of the “People's Princess,” the royal family was very far away physically and emotionally from the center of where the public came to mourn: Buckingham Palace in London.

I had trouble relating to the emotions displayed in the film. Mirren portrayed Queen Elizabeth as having a uniquely British emotional disposition. She kept her feelings to herself and held everything inside. She does her duty as Queen and she is strict about following the rules of the monarchy. The only time the Queen cries in the film is when she is alone, stranded in the middle of the hillside when her car breaks down.

Watching the movie was like watching a caricaturization of the real public people involved in the tragedy. Tony Blair as the hero, coming to bring the Queen into the modern ages of public relations. His wife as the wicked and mean anti-monarchist. The Queen's husband and the Queen's mother staunchly asserting the need to follow the rules of the monarchy. Prince Charles as a wimp, trying to buddy up to Tony Blair, so that he won't come off in a bad light. And the Queen, trying to maintain her dignity, yet unable to meet the changing desires of her subjects.

As historical fiction, the film did a good job of setting the scene and showing what these characters might have gone through at the time. It was an interesting way to revisit a historical event nearly a decade later.