A Bargain In Infants
Now Playing: Aimee Mann--"Jacob Marley's Chain"
Holiday Festivities:

1. The Gray-Jones party, thrown by Matt and Carol, where I got in touch with my inner cookie-cutting demon. Hopefully he'll stay in the box until next year; quite frankly, I'm frightened of the forces I've unleashed.

2. The McLay-Ross party, thrown by Jess and Matt (another one), at which I proudly flaunted my low-techery (there was supposed to be a CD exchange; I don't have a CD burner--nor do I think I need one, any more than I need an iPod--and misunderstood the concept, so I showed up with a cassette tape, when everyone else arrived with 14 or so mix CDs--each), as well as a quiche provencale (another of which I cooked for Christmas Eve dinner--the next day it was pan-fried steak and Caesar salad). It was good to see Jess and Matt again, and I departed with a memorable gift from Jess' cousin Paul--namely, a sidesplitting alternate interpretation of the Doors song "L.A. Woman" which still has me giggling at every other moment.

3. Mittenfest at the Corner Brewery in Ypsilanti. Brandon, on leave from New York, organized an all-day folk fest at this location, a sort of Ypsi branch of the Arbor Brewing Company, and it was wonderful to see him again, as it was Annie, who I also haven't seen in a while. The whole thing was set up as a benefit for 826michigan, a writing program aimed at teens and younger for which many local musicians have done benefits in the past. I finally got to check out the resultant writing in the published collection Vacansopapurosophobia (described as "the fear of a blank page"), and was reminded again of my envy for children's sense of whimsy and surrealism that we adults must sometimes strain to achieve. It was an especial pleasure to come across Aja Bamberger's story "The House on Cherry Street," which had earlier appeared in the Current and which is crying out for a sequel. I also finally got to sample the Hungarian Cream Cheese Spread available from Zingerman's Creamery, and listened to Emily Bate's set and half of Need-Based Paint's. The former was particularly good; I'd heard her at one of the shows at Arborvitae and found (and find) her a rather more soulful Joni Mitchell. I sadly had to leave early to prepare for the aforementioned party.

The rest of Christmas pretty much involved me staying at home, drinking, eating, and watching movies...

Let's Scare Jessica To Death (1971): I last saw this when about ten, on the much-missed Commander USA's Groovie Movies, and was even then struck by how light was used to create a sense of dread, something too few horror movies do these days (one expects scary things in the dark). Jessica (Zohra Lampert, one of ther early pioneers of Second City and Warren Beatty's ravishing Italian wife towards the end of Splendor in the Grass) has just been released from an asylum and "returns to the country" to farm with her husband and their best friend. On discovering Emily, a mysterious drifter, already living there, Jessica also finds weird voices that may or may not be all in her head. This was a good one, with a refreshingly offbeat take on the townie-country hostility so beloved in post-Easy Rider cinema, and a frustrating yet ultimately successful performance by Lampert. It's very easy to believe that she was just let out of "supervision", and yet I find myself wondering if any drugs were taken on set (given the time, likely) and if so, what kind and how much. Her performance keeps one on edge, but it's a situation that actually increases the likelihood of getting into the movie's flow.

God Is Great And I'm Not (2001): There's a dark suspicion in the back of my mind that Audrey Tautou is the Meg Ryan of France. I mean, look at the evidence--huge, glowing eyes, a winning smile, and oversaturated adorability that leaves the viewer feeling dazed and, frankly, a little used (and I haven't even seen Amelie yet). She even stars in movies with Tom Hanks. I didn't have it in me to resist this flick, which doesn't steer as dangerously close to sentimental mawkishness as the other Tautou movie I saw, A Very Long Engagement. Of course, I saw both films for the exact same reason: Julie Depardieu, my latest actress fascination. I think it's the combination of beauty and battiness that work for me (first seeing her opposite her father in The Count of Monte Cristo as Valentine, a saintly, drippy character that she managed to redeem with her performance). Here she plays the "wacky best friend" and housemate of Tautou--who in turn plays a model falling in love with Francois (Edouard Baer), a non-practicing Jewish veterinarian who gets pissed when his new girlfriend treats the religion with which he has a love-hate relationship as her latest spirituality craze. In this country, nutty hijinks would ensue (and there are a couple of those) but everything's shaded just a bit darker, with a wonderfully inconclusive ending. Baer in particular is the most amusingly hangdog actor I've seen in a movie since "Sweater-vest guy" in Night Watch.

Wild In The Streets (1967): I actually fell asleep during this one when I first saw it about fifteen years ago, odd when given its reputation as one of the most batshit movies made during the sixties. I think the problem is that it takes itself way too seriously for a movie in which the voting age is lowered to fourteen. Pop star Max Frost (the phenomenally irritating Christopher Jones) comes from a troubled childhood (his screwed-up mother played by Shelley Winters and one of his younger selves played by Greg Brady himself, Barry McDonald) and decides to use the new cultural power apparently given him through musical success with his band (including drummer Richard Pryor, in his first screen role) to front slimy, "with-it" California senator Johnny Fergus (Hal Holbrook) in a bid for political power (to the great suspicion of the latter's wife, played by a lusciously repressed Millie Perkins). At the end of the movie, all those over thirty have been sent to reeducation camps and forcibly fed hallucinogens, Frost has his own stormtrooper division of prepubescent youngsters (so he's basically a combination of Elvis, Mao and Joseph Kony), and some of these latter begin to plan the seizure of power from all people over ten. The best scene: loopy band member--and former child star!--Sally (Diane Varsi) is elected to fill a congressional seat and shows up in the hallowed halls wearing little more than a bicorne hat and shaking a tambourine. The most ridiculous aspect: we're asked to believe in the band's initial success in the California music scene. Forget Moby Grape--the Mike Curb Congregation could blow these people out of the water. But then, I'm taking it too seriously, and Wild In The Streets already does that way too much for anyone.

Shattered Glass (2003): I'll always remember Shattered Glass for one thing--a criminally underappreciated parody sketch on Saturday Night Live when guest host Peter Sarsgaard upbraids his Cat Fancy magazine underling Seth Meyers for making up stories: "This is CAT FANCY magazine! We have a responsibility to every elderly recluse and shut-in in America!!" The weird clannishness suggested to me by the world of political journalism and (these days) political blogs comes through brilliantly in this enjoyably squirmy portrayal of Stephen Glass' downfall. Glass (Hayden Christensen), a young reporter in a field full of the type, habitually fabricated stories for The New Republic (which, to read Eric Alterman among other commentators, had been declining anyway under the ownership of Marty Peretz since the early Reagan years) throughout the late 1990s, eventually paving the way for Jayson Blair in the pantheon of journalistic "shame"--not that Glass himself seems to understand such behavior. Christensen is great at getting the viewer to feel awkward and embarrassed despite the enormity of Glass' actions; Sarsgaard is excellent as his unpopular colleague and then editor, who takes the brunt of the fallout with the revelation of Glass' lies. The cast all-round is terrific; the always welcome Melanie Lynskey (see above mention of Julie Depardieu, etc.) shines as a policy wonk drudge trying to escape into Glass' more rarified world, and Steve Zahn and Rosario Dawson (see Lynskey, Depardieu, et al.) are fun as Forbes Digital reporters who begin to unravel Glass' paper trail--or lack thereof (although the screenplay slips a little, I think, in presenting the story too obviously, too "Hollywood," as a conflict between well-established journals--The New Republic's been around since 1914--and newer media like the internet and print media about the internet). Even Chloe Sevigny doesn't annoy me as much as usual. The most alarming thing I gleaned was the speed with which everyone in this supposedly sophisticated bubble was taken in by Glass' frequent (and hilariously portrayed) overselling, although with the media's sorry performance these days in the face of so many horrific challenges, it probably shouldn't surprise me.

Fat Girl (2001): Rather grim fare for Christmas Eve, I should say; a baffling, gripping movie with a shocking and unsettling ending. I suspect if I squinted really hard, Catherine Breillat's story of adolescent jealousy and longing might resolve itself into a creepy modern-day fairy tale. Twelve-year-old Anais (Anais Reboux), the title character, spends her vacation at a beach with her family and her much more conventionally attractive older sister (Roxane Mesquida), who in turn becomes enamored of an Italian college student and loses her virginity to him. Much of the action centers around Anais' interpretation of events (Reboux is hypnotic), which range from affection to jealousy and horror and back again. The acting is low-key but effective, with the two young actresses especially good at conveying the love-hate feelings many siblings feel towards each other, especially when younger. At an extreme, the finale can be seen as a kind of Freudian wish fulfillment, but I'll have to think on it. A lot.

Gas-s-s! (1970): The other side of the Wild in the Streets DVD (one of MGM's "Midnite Movie" releases) contains Roger Corman's utterly berserk satire of generation-gap politics, a sort of cross between John Christopher and the Firesign Theater, when (in an inventive little animated sequence at the beginning, courtesy of Murakami Wolf) U.S. military scientists accidentally release a gas into the atmosphere that kills everyone over 25. In the ensuing mayhem, a group of free spirits (the two alternately annoying and endearing "did we ever see them again?" leads are backed by Ben Vereen and Bud Cort, as well as Talia Shire--billed here as Tally Coppola--and Cindy Williams in their first film roles, so far as I know) try to make it across the Southwest to a mystical pueblo with the "answer." I often find sixties satires to be somewhat dated, but many of the jokes and sight gags in this one are still funny (Edgar Allan Poe riding aroudn the desert on a motorcycle, football players establishing a fascist empire in west Texas, the voice of God heard over a Country Joe and the Fish show as an elderly Jewish man); sometimes hilariously so. There's nothing funnier, I think, than the way lead actress Elaine Giftos (the more "endearing" half) introduces herself: "I'm Dr. Harvey Murder's mistress... and lab assistant." Given time, though, I'm sure people can find their own favorites.

Claire's Knee (1969): Watching a smug, "intellectual" middle-aged jackass (Jean-Claude Brialy) attempt to seduce two teenage girls and then talk about it (and talk about it, and talk about it) with his affianced best friend proved much more interesting and educational than I figured. One of the chapters in Eric Rohmer's "Moral Tales" series (which include 1972's Chloe in the Afternoon and a bunch of movies I've never seen), Claire's Knee is a mercilessly talky attempt (admittedly, with some stunning location footage of the Savoyard countryside around Geneva and Annecy) to dissect the anatomy of human (okay, male) desire. It sounds ridiculous, and I might have found it so had I seen this in a different mood, but the whole subject can become so utterly insane that it's good at timets to hear things thought through in a movie rather than acted upon.

The Leopard (1963): I was worried about watching a movie centered on a Burt Lancaster lead performance dubbed into Italian, but found my fears groundless after experiencing what may be the perfect cinematic example of style married to substance. Luchino Visconti's masterpiece brilliantly interprets Giuseepe di Lampedusa's 1958 novel of the Risorgimento (Italy's struggle for unification during the 19th century; I read the book due to my fascination with the subject some years back but stayed away from the movie until now) as seen through the eyes of an ailing Sicilian aristocrat (Burt). Alain Delon and Claudia Cardinale, possibly the best-looking onscreen couple in film history, costar as his nephew and niece-in-law. It's over three hours long, but it's one of those rare movies that actually deserves to be. There's both epic sweep and intimate perspective, battle scenes and private moments, political and personal savvy (especially when the two are one and the same), and above all a problematic and tangled perspective (like Lampedusa, Visconti was an Italian aristocrat of ancient ancestry, but like many Italian filmmakers of the period--Pasolini, for example--he was also a Communist) that adds immense richness to this already fascinating tale. I forgot Burt was being dubbed after about twenty minutes; it's that good. This one's begging to be re-released in American theatres on the big screen, if it hasn't already.

My Son The Fanatic (1997): The late, great Om Puri was one of those actors whose presence was always welcome and helpful, even when it was in crap like Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (in which, I'm afraid, he played the high priest of Kali). In this involving little slice-of-life drama set in northern England, Parvez (Puri) is a taxi driver who hasn't found much in the way of success over twenty years after he first arrived from Pakistan with a young family to support. Worse than that, his son Farid has grown tired of the rituals of modern Western life, turning to fundamentalist Islam, complete with a "charismatic" imam. Parvez, after being disgusted with the hypocrisy of his own religious upbringing, has his own take on life, which includes drinking and listening to jazz, as well as befriending Sandra (Rachel Griffiths), a prostitute who frequents his cab. Encounteres with Sandra and Schitz (Stellan Skarsgard), a visiting German businessman, lead to a violent rearrangement of his own life that's tragic, inevitable, and inspiring all at the same time. The 87-minute running time should shame many Hollywood movies of the aughts (which all seem to be two hours minimum at present).