Cannonball #6: The Elephants of Style by Bill Walsh

I’m a dork. I admit it. Exhibit A: I just finished reading a book all about the nuances of grammar.

Yeah, dork.

So if you’re into that sort of stuff, this is a totally enjoyable light read. It covers all the gray areas of grammar (like gray vs. grey, etc.) and then explains what to do in these scenarios, as well as the reasoning behind the option writer Walsh puts forth. There’s not much more to the book than that. It’s not even about the basics of grammar, because Walsh assumes a base level of familiarity with basic grammar before picking up this book. Walsh’s style throughout admits regularly that these are nuances for the most part, and he’s key to point out the important points and the more nitpicky stuff he addresses, so there’s a kind of self-deprecating I-realize-everything-I’m-saying-will-only-appeal-to-a-select-group-of-people tone that makes it an enjoyable read. If grammar excites you, you could do worse than this little refresher on grammar.

My roommate, however, kept rolling her eyes at me the whole time I was reading it. You be the judge.

Music Moment: “Obsessed” by Mariah Carey

Campy song title and concept? Check.
Silly song opening? Check.
The vintage Mariah font back in play? Check.
Heavy beat with Mariah going vocal crazy at the end? Check.
Mariah in her underwear in an overly sexy pose on the cover? Check.
Absolutely ridiculously awesome album title (Memoirs of an Imperfect Angel)? Check.

Mariah: never change. B+

Movie Moment: Fired Up (2009)

Given the reviews for Fired Up, you’d think it’s a total trainwreck. Having now seen it, I must say that anyone who hated it has no sense of humor. I mean, of course it’s fluff – it’s about two high school football players who go to cheer camp to score with girls. But as my roommate and I decided, it’s kind of a borderline parody of all these cheerleading movies. There’s a scene where the entire cheer camp watches Bring it On and everyone at the camp enthusiastically talks along with the dialogue word-for-word. Funny stuff, while also totally acknowledging that this is basically every other cheerleading movie you’ve seen.

Basically, there are only about 5% of the jokes that aren’t funny, and everyone and every aspect of the film is at least twice as good as you’d expect. If you just roll with the fact that it’s fluff and that it’s got a predictable storyline, it’s a really good time. Totally funny one-liners, surprisingly strong chemistry from the cast, and just all-around a surprisingly decent film. Manohla Dargis of The New York Times called it “a kind of dumb but also kind of smart-about-being-dumb comedy.” Spot-on. B

Movie Revisit: Synecdoche, New York (2008)

I promised in my original review to revisit this film on DVD and I had the chance to catch it again. It’s still kind of all over the map a bit, but knowing what to expect going in this time around allowed for a more nuanced viewing and there’s a lot of stuff going on beneath the surface, as well as right there on the surface with this film. It’s full of ideas, full of a love for the possibility of film as a medium, so credit for Charlie Kaufman there. The cast is a magnificent group of actresses supporting a wonderful lead turn from Philip Seymour Hoffman, and the film provides several striking visuals.

My main point of admiration for the film, as well as my main frustration is that the film feels like you need a decoder ring or a cipher to piece the film together. It was kind of like Mulholland Drive (one of my very favorite films of all time) where you could spend days piecing the film together and coming up with some sort of thesis. Whereas David Lynch would probably have an unspecific answer for what Mulholland Drive actually means, I think Kaufman knows exactly what he’s doing here with Synecdoche, which is probably why I find the complexity and obfuscation in Mulholland Drive more interesting than here. Mulholland Drive is open for interpretation, whereas Synecdoche invites interpretation but with a definitive correct interpretation, something that equals slight frustration for me.

It’s still an incredibly interesting film, something that won’t get boring upon repeat viewings. And there are so very few of those films around these days. B+

Movie Moment: Gray Matters (2007)

Ooh… this one’s gonna be rough, guys. This went straight-to-DVD (I think – if it didn’t, it got dumped in LA/NY theaters then yanked after a week or two) and it shows. Heather Graham and Tom Cavanagh play siblings who are like Will & Grace in their co-dependency but with the gay reversed – turns out Graham is a lesbian, which she slowly discovers over the course of the film after a drunken make-out with Cavanagh’s fiancée (played by Bridget Moynahan).

Potentially interesting premise, yes? Of course. However, writer-director Sue Kramer, in her first feature, can’t milk an ounce of verisimilitude out of this film. Every single moment in the screenplay rings of contrivance and plot necessity, from the quickee Vegas marriage that Cavanagh and Moynahan get after only knowing each other a week to Graham’s wacky therapist (Sissy Spacek, clearly in this film because she lost a bet) holding therapy sessions at random venues, let alone the therapist character itself, who doesn’t behave in any manner remotely close to an actual therapist. For example: I doubt therapists react to their mid-30s client’s coming out of the closet with an emphatic “YOU’RE NOT GAY.” Ugh. Even the stuff that does work just seems rehashed from stuff we’ve seen before. Graham’s character, for example, has a trait straight from Sally Albright in When Harry Met Sally…: the complicated and specific orders when eating out was cute and charming on Sally, here it feels rote, regardless of how well Graham tries to sell it.

It’s all just depressing, mainly because Graham and Cavanagh are kind of good in the movie. You can see them trying hard to sell the horrible screenplay, and they’re wholly believable as the co-dependent siblings. I spent a lot of my time watching this wishing that they had been in a better movie together.

This is just another in a long chain of disappointing gay-themed films. When the Precious trailer came out (which you should all totally watch, by the way), a blog I read mentioned how rare it is to find good films made about realistic black characters, and the same is totally true of homosexuality in film. Yes, there are progressive portrayals of gay characters and great films that deal with homosexuality, but there are so few films that are about homosexuality, like this film. What an interesting premise we have here, dealing with a woman who realizes at her sexual peak that she has been playing for the wrong team (to borrow a horribly overused analogy). Pair this with an interesting brother/sister dynamic and this should have been a great launching pad for an interesting film. Alas, we’re left with odd stereotypes, a handful of jokes that land, and two charismatic leads flailing around for something to do. A real disappointment. D+

Movie Moment: The Prestige (2006), knowing the twist

I had the twist for The Prestige ruined for me. Thus, the movie was ruined.

Part of me doesn’t want to fault the film for this, of course, but I’m reminded of a film like Matchstick Men where even though there’s a HUGE twist at the end, the film still offers something upon subsequent viewings. With The Prestige, knowing the twist took away anything to glean from the film. It’s 130 minutes and felt about twice as long, and the film is paced and structured so oddly that it was kind of needlessly confusing.

There’s some really lovely cinematography, though, and the acting is uniformly solid (less so from ScarJo, but she’s still alright), but honestly, when the only thing a film has to offer is a twist at the end, well… knowing that twist going in kind of sucks the fun out of the movie, yes? I have to ultimately grade this a C-, though I’ll never know what I might have thought going into this knowing nothing.