Culture Snaps - March 12th, 2011

by Jillian Butler, Ampersandology

WATCHING

Barney's Version (2010)

I love Canada. Wait--let me revise that statement. I love Canada, but I especially love Mordecai Richler's Canada. Such interesting, heartbreaking things happen there! Also, that Canada includes Dustin Hoffman so, huzzah! I'm so happy to finally see this; it was sold out for the entirety of TIFF. 

READING

This Cake is For the Party, Sarah Selecky

I cannot put this collection down. Nothing in these stories reinvent the wheel, plot-wise, but Selecky's voice is incredible, in the kind of way that these character-driven tales have to be buoyed by. This book was nominated by the Giller, and after reading it, it's almost unbelievable to me that anything else could win if Selecky had to lose. 

LISTENING

Blind Willie Johnson, "Dark Was the Night, Cold Was the Ground."

Like, on repeat. Also. this cover by the outstanding Kronos Quartet. 

The story of Blind Willie Johnson is one of tragic circumstances, so downtrodden it seems implausible--he was blinded as a child by his father's vengeful second wife (lye to the eyes), he married twice unsuccessfully, and when his house burned down, he resigned himself to living in its rubble. Then he died. But you know what? This song is floating in the cavity of Voyager probe, shot out of the solar system in the hope that this capsule could act as an introduction to our world to other, unknown lifeforms. He lives, but in a different form than the rest of us. 

Have a suggestion for a future Ampersandology topic? Got something you’d like to say? All feedback welcome! Shoot us an email at ampersandology@gmail.com, or follow Ampersandology on Facebook. 

TIFF 2010: Easy A

by Jillian Butler, Ampersandology

The year John Hughes died, it seemed like the end of an era, in many ways: something along the lines of the day the American teen comedy died. Since then, many have tried, and failed or succeeded to varying degree, to sit at the same lunch table as Sixteen Candles or The Breakfast Club in the cafeteria of John Hughes Memorial High.

For every teen comedy that manages to graze that uncanny insight into Hughes' absurd vision of high school--mashed at high velocity between the indulgence of childhood and quasi-adult concerns -- there's a dozen or so that seems intent on whitewashing every teenage experience with the same middle-class, woefully misunderstood brush. In other words, for every Superbad, there's an American Pie franchise; for every Heathers, there's a Jawbreaker. Films which mimick, pay tribute but never quite touch the aching perfection of life before you can legally vote.

Enter Easy A: a funny, touching, awkward comedy that doesn't attempt to replace Hughes in the pantheon of teen comedy, but rather, become the bridge to the new century. It's about the currency of high school, i.e. one's reputation, and the loss thereof. Olive (Emma Stone) sure has a reputation--though, it's by her own design. After a false rumor about an imaginary fling grows its own legs, Olive finds her previous obscurity blossoming into notoriety. Olive feeds the chatter about her suddenly non-wallflower status by fake-rocking the world of poor schlubs in need, and while her reasons for fanning the fire are never made explicit, but they don't really have to be; in the first stages, her interest in the whole ordeal is infused with the kind of detachment you'd expect from a girl that never put a whole lot of stock in this whole 'high shool' thing to begin with.

Olive, bless her skinny jeans, is one of those high school girls on the wrong side of Smart Cookie, cursed to see through the absuridty of high school and think she can play off its foibles for her own amusement. In a glorious nod to the film's forefather, she muses that she wishes her teenage life COULD be a John Hughes movie in the 1980s; the adorable yet sexy Emma Stone cashes in on the promising wit and candor she showed in Zombieland by creating an sterling heroine -- two parts  Molly Ringwald with none of the mopey-ness and the self-aware geekery of Farmer Ted for good measure.

And then---the script. By God, that script. The words that exit the actors' mouth are--you can just tell--delivered with absolute relish. Diablo Cody can eat her heart out--Olive and co. present more the character than Juno could ever hope to be, made interesting not by peppery quips but by genuine wit; the leads (and all the other, terrific supporting characters) are buoyed by a script so packed with bon mots you almost want to scribble them down, right in the theater.

Sure, no high school kid talks like Olive or her friends slash mentor slash possible boyf, but props to director Will Gluck for creating a world where we not only don't care, but don't even notice. Working from a script by Bert V. Royal, Gluck populates his high school universe with kids are just a little more clever than your own memories, not to mention better looking (but always in that down to earth, Ringwald style). Hot damn, if high school had been this satisfying, I doubt any of us would have left.

Have a suggestion for a future Ampersandology topic? Got something you’d like to say? All feedback welcome! Shoot us an email at ampersandology@gmail.com, or follow Ampersandology on Facebook. 

TIFF 2010: The Town

by Jillian Butler, Ampersandology

North American Premiere

Recently, as the press for Ben Affleck's new directorial feature The Town ramped into high gear,  his longtime friend and sometime cohort Matt Damon was quoted as saying that Affleck seems posed to mimic the career of another Hollywood great:

 In a lot of ways, I always think of Clint [Eastwood], because Clint was doing orangutan movies, and people weren’t taking him as seriously. And look at the second half of his career. He’s an icon. And I really feel like that’s the kind of career Ben’s going to have.

Only time will really tell, but I think Damon may be on to something here; as an actor, Ben Affleck is nothing spectacular. Serviceable, yes: he's done the bland romantic comedies and requistie action flicks, enjoying solid to moderate succeess. But as a performer, he's become somewhat more notorious for his associations offscreen: the aforementioned friendship with Damon, his high-profile flings with Gwenyth Paltrow, Jennifer Lopez and now-wife Jennifer Garner.

His leading man status always seemed, to me at least, a little like something the public needed to be constantly reminded of, rather than naturally assumed. And I think it's significant that the bona fide success in his career has been for a role he assumed behind the camera: his shared Oscar with Matt Damon in 1999 for the script Good Will Hunting. So it seems to make his gradual shift from screen vision to visionary a natural, if inherited, title.

Overall, The Town is a solid effort, and that's really both the best and the worst that can be said about it: it's not as electrifying, brittle or surprising as his 2007 directorial debut Gone Baby Gone, but it's another strong entry into the career that Affleck's building for himself as the guy behind the camera. It's filled with the same sophomore mistakes that most artists who knock it out of the park on the first go usually suffers: a sloppy third act resolution, too much reliance on the theatrics of gunplay and 'splosions, and a drop of stunt casting (see: Lively, Blake, who is about as convincing as a hard-shelled junkie as a teenage girl wobbling around in her mother's borrowed shoes and heavy makeup while home alone).

But it gets so much more right. For the most part, the casting is enviable and proves why its pays to have good Hollywood pedigree. Jeremy Renner earns his accolades just by showing up these days, because what he brings to the table is so sublime: his Jim is a sociopath, a bad dog that needs to be put down but gets off on glimpses of a fragile humanity. Rebecca Hall continues to win at life, playing the onetime hostage of a bank robbery and walking the delicate line between 'smart and capable' and 'fragile innocent'. Affleck, too, probably turns in one of his better performances in years. And Jon Hamm is there too! And Pete Postlethwaite! AND Chris Cooper!

Perhaps the most interesting idea in the film comes before the action even starts, with a placard that suggests one neighborhood in Boston -- Charlestown-- has produced the most bank robbers than any other American neighborhood in history, to the point it became something of a familial legacy--in other words, fathers handing over their mantel to sons and brothers becoming cohorts in the "family" business. That's a ripe concept, and it's something that Affleck (wisely) doesn't linger on; a lesser filmmaker would have relied on the neighborhood's reflexive mythology to infuse his characters with pathos and tragedy. But Affleck's not making a social problem film, and instead allows his story --and the corners he paints his characters into well before they notice their prison-- to cash in the promise of that ghostly inheritance.

Have a suggestion for a future Ampersandology topic? Got something you’d like to say? All feedback welcome! Shoot us an email at ampersandology@gmail.com, or follow Ampersandology on Facebook. 

TIFF 2010 Capsule: Never Let Me Go

by Jillian Butler, Ampersandology

World Premiere; cast in attendance. 

Never Let Me Go, based on the novel of the same name by Kazuo Ishiguro, is just as dour, bleak and depressing as the book. And I mean that in a good way!

*spoilers follow, if you`ve never read the book, heard an interview or seen a trailer for this film at all*

Never Let Me Go takes place in an alternate 20th century. In this Bizarro World, Kathy, Ruth and Tommy are just a few of the many children who live at Hailsham, a boarding school that evidently has more to its makeup than meets the eye. The children are told repeatedly how special they are, and live lives under careful scrutiny for their diet, behavior and activities. Gradually, it's revealed that they are part of a mysterious, unexplained medical process that allows humans to expand their lives comfortably, but only at the cost of human donors. The three children are these donors, raised with the expectation and assumption that someday, they too will undergo the procedures that will give life to other people while taking their own away.

Now I'm a big believer that when facing adaptations, you need to judge a film independently from its source material, to a certain degree. They're different mediums, and as such, aim for entirely different goals, executed through different modes of communication. The screenplay was the work of Alex Garland, better known to Jill and those like her as the man behind The Beach and 28 Days Later, but the effort in transferring the source material to the screen plays is evident.

The problem with this adaptation, of course, is that the surface of the source material isn't much to stand on, as far as third acts go. Never Let Me Go isn't a plot driven story--it's tragedy comes not from sudden, life-shattering events but rather, the gradual and inevitable end of these three characters that hangs over every page. Ishiguro's deft blend of narrative and characterization that makes it compelling, not the plot. If that leaves the film as a character piece, then all the better, but what ends up onscreen from the novel is only the tip of Hemingway's iceberg.

Still, taken as a work unto itself, then, Never Let Me Go is a restrained work of mysterious qualities, and I could see how someone who had never known the book or its story could be satisfied; most of the central characters seem to shift and mutate like shadows on a wall--identifiable yet somehow otherworldly and operating under their own laws.

It's still a beautiful film, don't get me wrong. Only the second outing of Mark Romanek, he plays with a muted color palette that holds no suggestion of youth or vibrancy, suggesting the neutered potential of these short lives to dazzling effect. The actors, especially Carey Mulligan as Kathy and Andrew Garfield as Tommy, tease out careful, deliberate portrayals that do a great deal with the little they're given to build on.

But what was perhaps most interesting was the Q&A session after the film, which, along with the cast and the director and production team, was attended by Kazuo Ishiguro himself. He, said, in response to the very simple question of why the donors never tried to escape (please note here, I'm parapharsing from memory):

I didn't want to tell the story of humans persevering against incredible oppression. That story didn't interest me, because it's been told so many times, the slaves breaking out against their masters. What interested me was the slaves that didn't break out of their servitude, that accepted their miserable lot in life.  I was interested in what could have happened in the minds of those people that just gave in to greater social forces, and what effect that has on your humanity. 

Chilling. I only wish that nuance could have translated onscreen.

Have a suggestion for a future Ampersandology topic? Got something you’d like to say? All feedback welcome! Shoot us an email at ampersandology@gmail.com, or follow Ampersandology on Facebook.