Statues in a Garden

I have piles and piles of books in the basement that I've kept for years that I told myself (and others) I would read in my retirement. Now that I'm retired, I've been trying to make good on that promise. I picked this slim novel up on a whim years ago at a second-hand bookstore in East Lansing and as I was about to pitch it in a mini-frenzy of weeding the other day, I decided to give it a go. It's one of the best novels I've read in years. 

I read Colegate's The Shooting Party way back in the 1980s and saw the movie, and liked both. This one, written earlier, shares some of the atmosphere of that book. It's set in England during the summer of 1914, leading you to believe that WWI will play a part, but it doesn't really, except for a handful of contact points. It's been described as being about scandal overtaking a high class family, but really, it's about what happens before the scandal. The aftermath, though important and devastating, is dealt with mostly in brief in the final pages.  The story concerns the aristocratic Weston family: Aylmer Weston, a cabinet member who is used to a busy life, his wife Cynthia who is used to a life of ease, their two children and their nephew Philip whom they adopted as a child. Philip, though much loved by Cynthia, has never quite fit in. This summer, Philip starts a chain of actions that threatens to blow up their perfect sleepy summery family life. To say more would be spoiling a surprising narrative.

As interesting as the story is, I was captivated by the narrative style. One Goodreads review refers to Colegate's technique as "Virginia Woolf lite" and that's a perfect way to put it. There is a narrator of sorts, though we don't learn who it is until the end, but most of it is told third person with shifting perspectives with the first person coming up only occasionally. It's more like it's being told by a hive mind, so to speak, of all the characters. It takes a few pages to get used to this style, but it's very effective. As interesting as the story is, I was At under 200 pages, it can be read in a couple of sittings, though I tried to stretch it out because it was so good. I will try to dig up more Colegate.

Barbra

I'm not exactly a Streisand fan, but I don't dislike her, either. I much prefer her as a singer. For my money, her best acting was in What's Up Doc in which she pulls off the feat of making the frantic screwball heroine likable—something Katherine Hepburn couldn't do in Bringing Up Baby, the model for What's Up Doc. This book took Streisand ten years to finish; at over 900 pages, it's an exhausting read, and was undoubtedly exhausting to produce. Much of it is fun to read, with some juicy tidbits about her co-workers. But for me, the biggest problem is that her overall point seems to be to rebut her reputation for being controlling, demanding, and egotistical. At this, she largely fails. Even as she insists she is not those things, many of her anecdotes show her to be exactly those things.

I will grant her this: her reputation has been made worse because she's a woman. As a director, Stanley Kubrick was certainly as demanding and controlling as Streisand, but rarely called out for being a pain in the neck like she has been. (Of course, she has not, to my mind, directed a movie as great as Dr. Strangelove or 2001 or Clockwork Orange or even his lesser films like Barry Lyndon or The Shining.) Her controlling attitude as as actor, singer and director (an attitude she has had since her first stage appearance in 1961) has hurt her reputation in ways that wouldn't have hurt a male artist. Still, she shows in this book that she is, indeed, demanding and controlling, sometimes in fairly petty ways. I'm not sure she's aware of how badly she comes off sometimes, though it is brave of her not to sugarcoat her behavior, beginning with her very first Broadway role right up to her latest concert tour. As a singer, she is spectacular. As an actor, she is fine. I can't judge her as a director, because Yentl is the only film she's directed that I've seen and I wasn't terribly impressed with that (though she did take on lots of directorial chores in A Star is Born which I liked). Still, despite wild overusage of phrases like "Point is" and "Needless to say," for a 900 page book, this is a breezy read and feels like it gives a fairly honest idea of what she is like, for better or worse.

A Queerish Earnest

We actually went out to a theater to see the National Theater Live production (recorded) of The Importance of Being Earnest. It's always fun to see filmed theater, and I wish there was more of it. The production had a campy style, which seemed appropriate for an Oscar Wilde play, and a gay subtext which seemed less necessary. It's like a queer veneer was laid over the action of the play at random, having little to do with anything that was actually going on (Algernon and Jack prancing about and bumping butts, Gwendolen and Cecily kissing on the lips). One reviewer called it "subversive-lite." I know some critics have detected a more serious gay subtext in Algernon's concept of "bunburying," making up a story or an identity in order to lead a double life. Algernon and Jack could have been presented with at least the actual possibility of a physical relationship. There seems to be no attraction between the two women, so their kiss and grabs are totally unmotivated.

But the production was colorful and well-acted by all. Lady Bracknell, the real star character of the show is often played in a campy manner (or sometimes by a man in drag). Sharon D. Clarke plays her a bit more realistically as someone who is ostentatiously used to having power over others and getting her way. Hugh Skinner (Jack/Ernest—the standing man in white in the photo above) looks and acts exactly like a young monied man of his time. Ncuti Gatwa as Algernon gives a very queer reading of the part, to the point where his sudden attraction to Cecily barely registers. But he is fun, and his character largely steals the show from Jack, who is sort of the title character (his name actually being Ernest is a plotpoint). Ronke Adekoluejo tries a bit too hard to toughen up the character of Gwendolen, and Eliza Scanlen, in mostly underplaying, is sometimes in danger of being disappearing.

I generally think that colorblind casting is a good thing. Here, Algernon, Lady Bracknell and Gwendolen are played by Black actors, which brings a Bridgerton tone to the play (realistically, there is a vanishingly small possibility that these characters would have been Black in the Victorian era). It makes mincemeat of one of the last plot revelations, but generally, the casting works. I should add that I have never been able to buy the ridiculous conceit of a woman assuming she can only be attracted to someone of a specific name (Gwendolen to Ernest). It's so stupid, it almost makes me mad—couldn't Oscar Wilde have thought of a better device? But the play has so many good laugh lines, it's hard not to just give in. (Pictured just above are Skinner and Gatwa.)

Mother, Jugs and Speed

Apparently, nostalgia for the 1970s has been overtaking me which accounts for my re-watching of this dark comedy which I saw when it first came out in 1976. I was in college and I remember thinking it was a bit cheesy but also kinda daring in how it mixed comedy and drama. With two of the three leading roles taken by 70s icons (Bill Cosby as Mother, Raquel Welch as, well, you know), I would have thought this might not have weathered the years too well, but it remains surprisingly watchable, though today's young people might not dig it.

The title trio works for a scrappy little ambulance service in Los Angeles. Mother is the old hand, cocky and confident as he swigs beer from the driver's seat; Jugs is the office dispatcher who is taking night classes to get certified to be a driver, though the big boss (a wonderfully slimy Allen Garfield) isn't yet ready for women in the ambulances; Speed (Harvey Keitel) is the new guy, a cop currently under investigation on corruption charges. There is some character development along the way, including Jugs and Speed becoming an item, but mostly the film jolts from one emergency call to another. Mostly they're played for darkish humor, with the funniest moment being an attempt to get a woman on a stretcher down from a second floor apartment that goes hilariously awry. Sometimes there is tragedy: there is one death in the ambulance, and one of the drivers is shot dead during an altercation with an out-of-control drug user. The three stars (and Garfield) get most of the spotlight, so it's not exactly an ensemble piece, but there are solid turns from Bruce Davison as a likeably mellow driver and Larry Hagman as a crazed horndog. Keitel, known mostly for fairly intense roles, gets to relax a bit here. It takes some time to get used to him in that mode, but he does a nice job and works up some decent chemistry with Welch. Even Cosby, current-day pariah for his record of sexual assaults, is good. The PG rating is a relic of the era—this might get an R today.

The Wolf of Snow Hollow

My first exposure to the indie DIY guy Jim Cummings (he writes, directs, produces and acts) was this film from 2020. In the current mode of genre-mixing, it combines horror, dark comedy, and domestic melodrama, and does a pretty fair job of it. In a small snowy town (that I assumed was in Colorado but the film was shot in Utah), Cummings is a single dad, recovering alcoholic, and police officer whose ailing father (character actor legend Robert Forster) is still the town sheriff. There appears to be a particularly savage serial killer loose and the locals eventually assume the deaths are caused by a werewolf. Cummings isn't sure, and with help (and hinderance) from his dad, a female detective (Riki Lindhome), and other cops, Cummings eventually figures things out, though not before falling off the wagon and getting close to a breakdown.

Cummings is both quite handsome and surprisingly good in what winds up being a complex role. His character is (generally) competent, intense, and sensitive, and though there are some quirky walls put up, likeable. Forster died of brain cancer not long after this movie was shot, but if he was sickly, you'd never know it from his performance, which is strong as usual. The snow, all of it real, I assume, adds so much to the atmosphere. Highly recommended.

Movin' with Nancy

On a night honoring Nancy Sinatra, TCM showed her 1967 TV special Movin' With Nancy. I have a vague memory of seeing this when it aired (I would have been 11 years old). Mostly I recall her colorful mod outfits and feeling disappointed that she didn’t sing "These Boots Are Made for Walkin'" which had been a big hit the year before. When I flopped down on the couch the other evening for a re-viewing, I expected a delightful trip down psychedelic memory lane, but very quickly I found myself sitting up and taking notes on a rather strange brew.

First, it's not a traditional 60s variety show, on a stage before a live audience; it's a collection of short films that feel very much like 80s music videos. The first features Nancy driving around, singing about needing to get out of town, setting up a sort of theme for the show, tied to its title, although this conceit is jettisoned whenever it doesn't fit. In the second, she escapes into the sky in a big balloon, singing "Up, Up and Away" while a small cadre of dancers in brightly-colored clothes leap in the air. There are two duets with her producer and musical partner Lee Hazlewood: the humorous break-up song "Jackson" and the surreal "Some Velvet Morning," perhaps the strangest pop song to make the Billboard Top 40.

Sinatra's best solo bit comes with "This Town," sung as she walks around mannequins posed in an urban waterfront area. This leads into a cute bit with Dean Martin as he plays her "fairy god-uncle" who uses his cane as a wand to make an unhappy Nancy happier as they duet on "Things." Then a somewhat creepy vibe enters as Nancy sings "Wait Till You See Him" as she stares longingly at bigger-than-life photos of her famous father Frank. Following is her father singing "Younger than Springtime" at a recording session; Nancy enters, watches him finish, then stands with him in an awkward embrace as they listen to the playback. She has a nice scene posing for a fashion shoot with Sammy Davis Jr. as a rather fey photographer and she closes with "Who Will Buy?," a beautifully wistful song from the musical Oliver which turns into a frenetic dance number led by David Winters (A-Rab in West Side Story).

Random observations: First, Nancy Sinatra is not a terribly expressive singer or actor. She’s not exactly wooden, but she frequently looks distracted, or like she's thinking about being more expressive but deciding against it. Her voice is serviceable but not great; she's fine in her duets, but less impressive in her softer songs, like her song in honor of her father. She looks good in her collection of mod 60s styles and she works well with Dean Martin and Sammy Davis Jr. The concept of filmed outdoor pieces really does feel like a precursor to the later music video genre, and director Jack Haley Jr. deservedly won an Emmy for the show.

Though several of the songs she performs here were radio hits, it's still disappointing that she doesn't do "Boots," especially as it seems to be teased frequently with many close-up shots of Sinatra's boots as she walks. Her duet of "Things" with Dean Martin actually hit #1 in Norway. The TCM showing included the original ads for Royal Crown Cola, being pushed as the "mad, mad cola with the mad, mad taste." Nancy sings one of the ads, as do Dino, Desi & Billy (a teen pop group featuring Dean Martin's son) and a handsome Australian singer named Robie Porter. As an example of the kind of TV special that went the way of the dinosaur, it's an interesting and occasionally enjoyable experience. But it's difficult to get past the discomfort of the daddy stuff (Frank is referred to as "Daddy" in the main credits).

Cinderella 2021

Once again, I fell prey to the lure of a well-made preview. The new musical version of Cinderella from Amazon Studios looked like it would be great fun from the two-minute trailer I saw online. Billy Porter as the fairy godmother? A village of people singing and dancing to "Rhythm Natio"”? Pierce Brosnan and Minnie Driver as the King and Queen? (And speaking of Queen, "Somebody to Love" is sung by the Prince and his buddies.) Yes please, I thought. But no, all hopes were dashed upon seeing the other 110 minutes of the movie. Director and writer Kay Cannon had notable ambitions in creating a female empowerment pop-musical fairy tale film, and a couple of sequences shine, but it fails to come together to make a satisfying whole.

In this iteration of the old standard tale, Cinderella (singer Camila Cabello) is an aspiring dress designer whose dreams are stymied by her wicked stepmother (Idina Menzel) who insists she stay in the basement, smeared by cinders. Meanwhile, the Prince (Nicholas Galitzine) is being pressured by his parents to pick a bride--ideally a good political choice to keep the kingdom on its feet--but he is still into partying with his bros and is in no hurry to settle down. His folks decide to host a ball, invite the whole village, and make the Prince pick a wife. A Fairy Godmother (Billy Porter, who is the best thing about the movie but who is only in it for about ten minutes) transforms Cinderella into… and so on. The biggest change in the story, and one I wholeheartedly applaud, is that Cinderella's real desire isn't for a man, but for a dress business, which could be enabled not by the Prince but by a wealthy village woman. 

The problem here isn't the basic story or dialogue, it's pretty much everything else. Mostly, the songs here are pre-existing pop songs, and while I enjoy seeing familiar music pop up in unusual settings, here the songs seem to be shoehorned in, sometimes to make up for lack of plot or character development. It's kind of thrilling to see Janet Jackson’s "Rhythm Nation" as a village-wide dance number, but sadly, the lyrics mean absolutely nothing in context. These townsfolk are not fighting injustice or trying to improve their society, or joining together in any way. They're just doing a nicely choreographed production number--that is, by the way, poorly and unimaginatively shot, as are most of the big numbers in the movie. I could pick apart every other production number, but you get the drift. There are a couple of new songs written for the movie, but they aren't especially memorable.

As for the performances, there’s not a lot to say. Most everyone is OK and not much more. Camila Cabello is a popular singer, but her rough voice didn't fit the songs here. For me, her acting was better than her singing, but she fails to make the character much different from any other Cinderella figure of film or TV. Nicholas Galitzine is pleasant looking at the prince, but not especially hunky, despite the horde of women who sing the Salt-N-Pepa song "Whatta Man" at him. Better are the adults: Idina Menzel gets to sing "Material Girl" and makes the wicked stepmother a bit more than the usual stereotype. Pierce Brosnan and Minnie Driver are quite good as the King and Queen. Most of the singing sounds overly processed, but I guess that’s the trend these days. Overall, a nice idea for an update, but not one I can recommend.