2 Hours of Peace and Music-"Taking Woodstock"

Last year, the film I was most looking forward to was Ang Lee's "Taking Woodstock". Two reasons: It was Ang Lee and it was Woodstock. The movie opened....and was gone. What, huh? Where did.....? I mean gone. Since I was getting movies in the mail at a clip, I sort of forgot about it. There was no awards buzz. The one review I saw was noncommittal. Oh well, I'll catch it later. This is later.
My original excitement it seems was only half right. This WAS master director Ang Lee at work here but this movie is really not about Woodstock. It lurks on the periphery of Woodstock. It's steeped in the event, but it never takes you to the concert. Near the concert, yes. Now this is probably the experience that most of the 500,000 people had there. The young people who descended on the up state New York Farm of Max Yasgur were lucky to just get in the vicinity. My own sister Ellen has talked about trying to go and only getting as far as the jammed NY thruway (I think..., I don't really know the details of that story. I'll have to ask her). But this film, like so many concert-goers, never actually gets there. Not even the great music from the concert is showcased. Occasionally you can hear it in the distance like a far off flame that provides no heat. It's frustrating at times. Wait! That's Country Joe! Turn the camera. Turn the camera! Eventually, this film's dogged determination not to focus on the concert is it's undoing. But it doesn't come undone completely because what it does focus on is pretty terrific stuff. OK, that's what the film isn't, now let's take a look at what it is.
Based on a novel by Elliot Tiber, Demetri Martin plays Elliot Teichberg, a young interior designer and painter from New York City who has left the rat race to help his off kilter Jewish parents run a dilapidated motel in upstate New York. The place is a pit and foreclosure looms when Elliot contacts the producers of a music festival searching for a home. Walkill, New York has pulled the promoter's permit to avoid an influx of hippies.
Elliot hooks them up with local dairy farmer Max Yasgur and history's die is cast. Three weeks later the counter culture floodgates open and 500,000 young people show up with lots of brown acid and hormones and the greatest love fest of the 20th Century begins.
Ang Lee has made a choice here. This film is not about Woodstock, but is rather a coming of age story set against the backdrop of a generational coming of age story. The concert is irrelevant, or perhaps better stated, it is the window dressing. Elliot is bound to his parents by both love and tradition and these are not easy parents to be bound to. He's also gay and still having trouble with making that leap of faith out of the closet. Through his eyes we see a historic event unfold, I mean the edges of that event. In fact, Elliot is at least partly responsible for that event. He issued the permit. No permit, no party. Lee weaves a character tapestry that takes you inside the spirit of the concert but remains at a distance from the both the music and the details that made history. It's like telling the innkeeper's story in Bethlehem when all the real action is happening in the manger. There are parts of this movie that weren't worth watching when contrasted with Hendrix playing the national anthem or Joplin belting the blues or CSN playing for the very first time as a group. AHHHHH SHOW ME RICHIE HAVENS!
Ok I'm done. That's the movie that wasn't. The movie that is, is at times wonderful. Elliot's story is sweet and funny and swept up in history. The characters that inhabit "Taking Woodstock" are just wild enough to be believable. Stand outs are Imelda Stauton as the fear-driven Jewish mom who is just too mean to be described as quirky. Liev Schriber is an ex-marine transvestite with serious masculinity that can't be hidden beneath a dress, and a young actor I don't know much about named Jonathan Groff, who hits just the right notes as hippie promoter Michael Lang. He gives the character a shrewd gentleness that seems to represent the best of the counter culture generation (Groff is a Tony nominee for Spring Awakening). Eugene Levy as Max Yasgur is perfectly cast. It's the best performance I've seen him give. But at the center of this film is a terrific performance by Demetri Martin. Of course it doesn't hurt to have Ang Lee guiding your way, but Martin shows a depth of character that bodes well for his acting future if he so chooses (he's a pretty popular cult comedian).
Lee captures the absolute pinnacle of the generation that believed in peace and love without cynicism, who believed they could change the world. They did change the world and that's to their credit. It just couldn't last. There is a great shot as Elliot walks toward the stage after the concert ends. Yasgur's farm is ravaged, almost apocalyptic. The place that just hours before had been the "center of the universe" looks like a war zone. The moment is gone, never to be seen again. But for three days, it was beautiful, man.
I loved this movie, maybe as much for its flaws as it strengths. Lee stuck to his guns. He didn't make a concert movie. If he had, this might have been a great film.
As it is, I'll have to settle for the sweet, far out, coming of age tale that it is.
OK, man. Groovy.

Date Night

The title of this film would normally keep me at arms length. "Date Night" sounds like a bad rom-com staring one of those horrid thirty-something ingenues named Aniston-Lopes-Heigel etc. Yep, the title is a bad start. TINA FEY AND STEVE CARELL. Alright we're getting warmer. There are so few genuinely funny people in film today that it saddens me, but here, here we have two of them....together. Two! OK, ya got me. I packed myself up at midnight and went to the cineplex. No pressure Tina and Steve, but this better be good.
Ding, ding, ding! They come through with flying colors. Both of them are hilarious. Neither one overshadows the other. And here's the best part. They both play honest, reality-based characters who connect with each other and explore real issues about marriage in a no-shtick zone. Well, minimal shtick zone. This is a funny, sweet and even insightful comedy that keeps moving forward at a fast clip. The plot is a little heavy handed and if this movie is flawed it's in the implausibility of a few of the plot driven scenes. Doesn't matter. It's all about them. Tina Fey and Steve Carell deliver the goods in a big way. If you like your comedy with a dose of sincerity, a thimbleful of intelligence, and maybe even a little something to say, you'll love this. Think "The Out-of-Towners" for the new millennium. If bathroom humor and gross-out gags are more your style, skip it and grow up a little. Read a book maybe.
Oh, and as a side note, we finally found something Mark Wahlberg does really well---stand there and look pretty without a shirt.

Politics and Paranoia-The Ghost Writer

"The Ghost Writer" is reminiscent of those stark '70s political thrillers that were spawned by the corruption and mistrust of the Nixon administration, films like "The Parallax View", "Three Days of the Condor" or Coppola's "The Conversation". Roman Polanski's "The Ghost Writer", a taut, bleak thriller, finds it's paranoid inspiration from the evil-doings of the latest Bush administration. Fictionalized, of course, sort of. Just like in the seventies, you have to buy in to the premise that the government (in this case the American government) is capable of anything to protect it's own interests. Nixon and W. made this premise plausible. Of course Polanski might also have drawn his inspiration from the fact that he was a fugitive from justice for decades and was constantly chased by some form of American government that was out to get him (not so much paranoia as fact). Let's go with the first one just because it makes me happier to think of George Bush as a bad guy.
The ex Prime Minister of England is writing his memoirs and needs a new ghost writer. The last one turned up dead. There's something fishy about this particular death (literally, since he washed up on a New England beach like a halibut). Now the Prime Minister is being accused of war crimes and of being a stooge of the U.S. Government. Did I mention that the politics of this film is somewhat left of the ACLU? Pierce Brosnan, playing Tony Blair, oh, I mean a darkly handsome liberal ex Prime Minister, plays a mysterious cat and mouse game with the new ghost writer (Ewan MacGregor) who just wants his money and a release from the monastic seaside sanctuary where the Prime Minister, his wife and various aides are holed up while protesters scream for his head outside the gate. Paranoia ensues and intrigue abounds.
Ewan MacGregor (whose choice of material isn't always the sharpest) Pierce Brosnan and Kim Cattrall are all excellent as is the supporting cast. Even Jim Belushi, who is an awful actor, is decent here. Polanski returns to the taut, suspenseful story telling that made "Chinatown" and "Rosemary's Baby" such masterworks. "The Ghost Writer" isn't up to that level, but it is a good political thriller, perfect for watching on a rainy night with a bottle of wine, right around election time.