I Love Cinema Italiano, But This Isn't It

Review: Nine

The New York Times and The Washington Post ripped it apart. The holiday theatergoers shelled out for Avatar instead. The Golden Globes, unsurprisingly, nominated it, but they nominate every musical. So why does Nine not add up?

1. Nine is not Chicago. It has an arthouse theme: Guido, nearing fifty, suffers from director's block. Existential crisis doesn't sell tickets.

2. It's full of arthouse actors, most of whom are quite good. Marion Cotillard is sensationally moving in the truncated role of Guido's wife, Luisa. But even Johnny Depp couldn't turn Sweeney Todd into a runaway smash.

3. Maury Yeston's score for Nine is post-Sondheim: minimalist accompaniments to each song, eighth notes repeating endlessly. Movie critics and audiences unused to this style of composition say it's not memorable.

4. So Yeston wrote a splashy pop song for Kate Hudson, an American journalist. But "Cinema Italiano" sticks out like a nun at Mardi Gras. Did the filmmakers think we unsophisticated lot needed an American to guide us through Italian neorealism?

5. And why choose the songs they did? Judi Dench rolls her rs with vigor in "Follies Bergeres," but it's shoehorned in. And including more songs for Daniel Day-Lewis' Guido might have endeared him to us. As he plays it, Guido has little charisma or sense of humor.

6. The first number that lands, all too late, is Cotillard's "My Husband Makes Movies," stunningly filmed and acted. Even the erotic "A Call from the Vatican" feels off in Penelope Cruz's hands. (She's appealingly grotesque elsewhere as Guido's trashy mistress.)

7. Rob Marshall's gimmick, to ground the musical numbers in performance settings, made sense in Chicago because the characters were stage performers. Here, the soundstage cutaways do not justify why they sing in the first place. Could Nicole Kidman not sing at the real fountain rather than the fountain on Guido's soundstage? Whose head are we in: hers or Guido's?

8. The screenwriters don't trust us. The beautiful "Unusual Way" is chopped up with dialogue, even in the middle of verses. No wonder audiences can't remember the songs. Kidman is lovely as Guido's muse, Claudia, but her singing sounds studio-engineered; same with Day-Lewis and Cruz. Maybe the film would have been better without songs.

9. But then again, that already exists: it's called 8 1/2.

The Great American Songbook: "It Might As Well Be Spring"

Written by: Richard Rodgers, Oscar Hammerstein II
First recorded by: Louanne Hogan

The wind chill below zero degrees changed my mind fast: bye-bye "White Christmas," and in with springtime. Rodgers and Hammerstein were fond of season songs ("Younger than Springtime," "June is Bustin' Out All Over"). They won the 1945 Best Song Oscar for this charmer. A mopish Iowa lass pines at her windowsill, taking in the summer heat, for the calendar to turn backward:

They opened their stage career together with the rousing Oklahoma!, and Rodgers and Hammerstein contribute many more hearty all-American songs into State Fair, their first film musical. But "It Might As Well Be Spring," ten minutes in, imbues the film with an underlying uneasiness. Just listen to Rodgers' clever oscillating melody.

The first line, "I'm as restless as a willow in a windstorm," is a series of sighs (on "restless," "willow," and "windstorm") that monotonously droop to the same tonic note. But Rodgers animates the second line, mirroring the words with sprightly upward leaps: "I'm as jumpy as a puppet on a string." Even then, the leaps descend the scale wearily. When the melodic line repeats ("Like a nightingale"), the singer deflates on the words "without a song to sing." The end addresses the song's desperate ebb-and-flow:

But I feel so gay, in a melancholy way,
That it might as well be spring.
It might as well be spring.

So laissez-faire, that phrase "might as well." As with "White Christmas," the anxiety of World War II feeds into what could have been a straightforward romance song. Notice how Hammerstein slips it in discreetly: "Hearing words that I have never heard / From a man I've yet to meet."

Louanne Hogan premiered this song by dubbing Jeanne Crain in State Fair. But it found radio success with Dick Haynes, her on-screen brother. Then came the usual recording suspects: Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald, Johnny Mathis, Doris Day. In the 1962 State Fair, a young Pamela Tiffin (who longs for a "boy" she's yet to meet) sang it while swinging on fence rails like an audition for The Wizard of Oz.

The Great American Songbook: "White Christmas"

Written by: Irving Berlin

First recorded by: Bing Crosby, 1942

My Christmas present to readers is to commence my new blog project: commentary on some of the classic American songs of the twentieth century. These songs have withstood the test of time. (Though some artists find "Single Ladies" the best song of all time, it's not blog fodder yet.)

A week into December, what more appropriate song to open with than Irving Berlin's "White Christmas"? Berlin's holiday tune has sold more singles and more sheet music than any other song. The song was composed around 1940 and worked into Holiday Inn, still winning the Oscar for Best Song of 1942. Bing Crosby sings the ballad at the piano, teaching his protege what would become iconic music:

Apocryphal stories suggest that Berlin had more trouble writing a Christmas song than for the other holidays in the film (I wonder how easily "Abraham" came, performed in blackface on Lincoln's Birthday!). What we hear today on the radio was re-recorded by Crosby in 1947, with the original 1942 single lost. In 1954 he sang it again as a duet in White Christmas, designed around the song's popularity.

Berlin composed a simple 32-bar structure: one chorus, repeated with the same lyrics. The rhyme scheme changes between quatrains, from ABCB (and internal rhyme in the third line: "Where the treetops glisten and children listen") to ABBB. The nostalgic longing for the snow-blanched seasons of yesterday was a vital sentiment in World War II. The Christmas cards written could be letters sent to loved ones fighting in Europe. "White Christmas" combines a remembered dream with the wish, but not the certainty, that it will come true. Yet less melancholy runs through the lyrics and the gently unfolding chromatic melody than in other war-time singles like "I'll Be Home for Christmas" or "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas."

Barbra Streisand was one of the first to record, for her 1967 A Christmas Album, Berlin's verse:

The sun is shining, the grass is green,
The orange and palm trees sway.
There's never been such a day
In Beverly Hills, L.A.
But it's December the twenty-fourth
And I am longing to be up north.

Bred on Tin Pan Alley syncopations, Berlin doesn't write often about L.A. glamour, and for good reason. Few of the published verses to his songs are performed. Hard to see Streisand as a Beverly Hills shopgirl, but her fondness for offbeat story songs suits her here. Still, most popular versions - including The Drifters' bluesy take in 1954 - cut straight to the chorus.

"White Christmas" lasts, after all these years, because the song is hard to oversell. Berlin could have raised the octave at the end but scored the ending lower. And there's the musical break in "Christmases" during the final line, "And may all your Christmases be white," like a catch in the singer's throat. A emotional but unsentimental conclusion to a song that endures.

Read Roy J. Harris from the Dec. 5 Wall Street Journal for more on this very song.

Have Yourself a Merry Little Turkey

Christmas does not start until Black Friday. Call me stubborn, but I do not want to weave through Hallmark decorations or sit in coffee shops hearing "Chestnuts roasting..." unless Thanksgiving has come and gone. This year, as is appropriate, we will have exactly one month for carols. November 26 through December 25. And if you croon "Away in a Manger" or "The Twelve Days of Christmas" after the New Year, more power to you. Epiphany (when the Wise Men met Jesus) lies twelve days later, on January 3.

I had "Silver Bells" stuck in my head this week; what a nuisance. Octogenarian Santas may already be jingling outside Wal-Marts, and the weather's turning toward the chill. But the lyrics state, "It's Christmastime in the city," and that is a falsehood before Turkey Day. We are about to endure thirty days of full-frontal, last-chance-for-holiday-shipping, buy-it-now marketing. Unnecessary to jumpstart the madness.

Greeting card vendors and music sellers need some product to carry them after Halloween, in the waning days of autumn. I propose we compose some Thanksgiving songs. A holiday stuffed with food and family deserves some musical dressing as a complement. (Perhaps from the Cranberries.) Forging new Thanksgiving songs this late in the game would be impractical. Let's reconstitute the Christmas songs already trapped in our heads so that they will be seasonly apropos:

O Come All Ye Family (to "O Come All Ye Faithful")
O come all ye fatties,
Gorge on mashed potatoes,
O come eat, O come eat
All Aunt Bea's kitchen.
Come and we'll roll thee
Home, you king of gluttons.

Happy Turkey to You (to "The Christmas Song")
Turkey roasting on an open fire,
Jack, your uncle, nibbling on your yams.
Tiny tots with their seats at the kids' table,
And folks dressed up like anachronistic pilgrims.

No More (to "The First Noel")
The first Thanksgiving, Columbus did say,
Was to certain poor Indians in slaughter as they lay.
No more, no more, no more colonization,
Born is the king of eradication.

Good Vibrations

Review: In the Next Room or the vibrator play
Lyceum Theatre, New York
November 11, 2009

Women of the 1880s who showed symptoms of hysteria went to their doctor to induce a paroxysm. In the new age of electricity, no longer illuminated by candles, these women experienced a newfound sensation, or even two at once. A new scientific invention, ridding their womb of hysteria confined within, invoked in tandem pain and pleasure.

So it was that the vibrator came into existence. Sarah Ruhl's new play In the Next Room paints this scene to forward her views of women's progress. When plans changed during my day trip to New York, I scooped a ticket on the basis of the actors, Lincoln Center Theater, and indubitable curiosity. Ruhl's previous play Dead Man's Cell Phone dealt with metaphysical questions of life, love, and limbo. In the Next Room, I hoped, would ground her in the specifics of time and place.

But her main character, Mrs. Givings, jars with the costume drama around her. Laura Benanti's housewife, unable to feed her newborn properly, yearns to connect with her child and with her husband, the paroxysm-curing doctor. Though her character harbors proto-feminist desires, Benanti acts like she's just stumbled in from Mad About You. Ruhl encourages this modern portrayal with choice vernacular: Wednesday is "smack in the middle of the week"; Mrs. Givings loves to "walk walk walk" through the garden. She is a lifeforce but an anachronistic one.

As Dr. Givings, Michael Cerveris stays period. In his steady portrayal of a scientific mind, he does not wink at us like Benanti, even when he calmly times his patients' three minutes of paroxyical ecstasy. He unveils a boyish vulnerability as he gradually warms to his wife's need for intimacy. Chandler Williams makes an impression as a European artist given new sight with the Chattanooga Vibrator. (Yes, men received medical stimulation too. Don't ask where.)

Ruhl's strengths are comedy and sentiment. Benanti's charming monologue on her child's birth ("and then he tried to eat me") manages both. But Ruhl's play overall is a provocative outline of ideas. She doesn't know how characters should enter, so they all misplace their scarf or gloves, as in a farce. And she nudges characters to reveal truths more modern than their setting. Did women really open up to each other about the vibrations? Why would the midwife, once a God-fearing woman, connect the machine to sexual relations with her husband?

In the Next Room is rooted in whimsy and screwball comedy; don't think too hard about its social implications. Like its electric star, the play induces sensations of both pleasure and discomfort.

Come Fly with Me (But Not Too Closely)

Review: Up in the Air

Jason Reitman's finally making movies for adults. His first directed feature, Thank You for Smoking, had the pow-zam-bop energy of a comic book. He moved from that cheeky and deliciously adolescent film to Juno, an ode to hipsters, and a cult hit before it left the editing room. Thankfully, he achieves a more substantial follow-up than screenwriter Diablo Cody did (Jennifer's Body).

Now, before I talk about Up in the Air, which comes out on Christmas, I'd like to thank loyal Twitter followers for access to a test screening this past Sunday. We were almost ousted for counterfeit passes, but Twitter saved the day. Funny that the film finds technology distancing, when it brought us into the theater.

Up in the Air is not coated in the glossy sheen that energized Thank You for Smoking. George Clooney's management consultant, sent across the country to fire other companies' employees, connects with the men and women he's just unemployed. Why not set this mundane office existence aside and search for your passion? he tells them. He's just like Aaron Eckhart's Nick Naylor: he doesn't mean it. But there's less artifice to his journey because Clooney's weary traveler can't control the direction he takes.

Reitman's script, now aiming for adult audiences, strays in the second half down familiar territory. Some of the punches he pulls, without the zing of his other films to steady him, are expected and unsurprising. A heart-warming montage revisiting childhood memories; surprises lurking behind closed doors. To its credit, the film stays aware of the economic climate and ends on a dimly hopeful ambivalence. Recently laid-off residents of Chicago lend verisimilitude to the characters who are fired.

Reitman plays the topical card well; it's nice to see awards buzz around a film made for compassion rather than prestige. He gathers a cohesive ensemble: Clooney, Vera Farmiga, Jason Bateman (deliciously wry), Zach Galifianakis, and Amy Morton (who was vigorous on Broadway in August: Osage County) among them. J.K. Simmons's cameo, as a recently fired employee who wants more out of life, is the most poignant moment. Anna Kendrick's work as the firing company's protege--a rigid, PhD-wielding automaton--is clever. She keeps her guard up, exposing cracks in the veneer and a growing sensitivity without blossoming into a pageant model.

Reitman's script and direction are best when they let the humor and pain coexist: a screwball comedy set in modern times. It's reassuring to see a movie reach modest heights rather than serve up manufactured feelings that taste of airline food.

When Actors Take the Mic: Part II

At long last... the actors who will not be taking home Grammys. Note the predominance of women. (Be aware, Nine ladies.)

Before I launch into the list, a true oddity: Clint Eastwood. Paint Your Wagon, 1969. He has this surprisingly folksy voice, but honestly, the film ain't Seven Brides for Seven Brothers.

The Bad.

Gloria Grahame. Oklahoma!, 1955. A film noir seductress singing Rodgers and Hammerstein? "Singing" is generous; it's said they stitched her tracks together note by note. "I Cain't Say No" is the sore thumb in an otherwise sprightly performance. (Yes, it's a comic song. But she's not playing deer-in-the-headlights; she just has no idea how to perform a number.)


Vanessa Redgrave. Camelot, 1968. Lerner and Loewe wrote a easy-sing for Julie Andrews, after the vocal challenge of My Fair Lady. But Guenevere's not easy for Redgrave. She's a sensuous siren, a tigress in the role, until the music starts. Now we realize why Audrey Hepburn and Natalie Wood were dubbed... and why the movie musical suited the glossy 1950s better than the realism of the 1960s New Wave.


Helena Bonham Carter. Sweeney Todd, 2007. Her performance diverged from Angela Lansbury's comic, Dickensian Mrs. Lovett. Yet her weary, haunted demeanor is touching. Still, it's hard to ignore her breathy, hesitant higher notes, and the disappearance of harmonies in "A Little Priest."


Susan Sarandon. The Rocky Horror Picture Show, 1975. Damn it, Janet. It's like you're under sedation.

The Ugly.

Pierce Brosnan. Mamma Mia!, 2008. New York: "the best imitation I've heard of a water buffalo." Palm Beach Post: "a drunk walrus singing through a foghorn." The voice that won him a 2009 Razzie for Worst Supporting Actor:


Lucille Ball. Mame, 1974. Another score written for Angela Lansbury's warm middle register. Ball has no warmth or middle register. She recorded "open a new window, open a new..." one night, but couldn't handle the interval; they had to save "door" for the morning. Watch "It's Today" (starting at 6:40) and cringe:


Sophia Loren. Man of La Mancha, 1972. Just because she's a prostitute doesn't mean she should croak like a strangled bullfrog. And just think--Maury Yeston wrote a new song, just for her, in Nine.


Movie musicals could be worse off. Cary Grant wisely turned down Harold Hill for Robert Preston. Michelle Pfeiffer almost portrayed Evita. Goldie Hawn and Madonna were originally set for Chicago. But on the horizon... Keira Knightley in My Fair Lady. That might not be so loverly.

When Actors Take The Mic: Part I

I'm on a Nine kick. Daniel Day-Lewis, Penelope Cruz, and Marion Cotillard are joining an austere club of movie stars coaxed into singing on the silver screen. How risky! In a movie musical debut, one could pull a Julie Andrews, Barbra Streisand, or Jennifer Hudson and nab an Oscar. But they were established vocalists. Actors-turned-singers, though, have also gained award buzz. Some with Oscars, some with Razzies. Let's start with actors who surprised us:

The Good

Antonio Banderas. Evita, 1996. Though Madonna was the musician of the cast, her delicate performance impressed (maybe for the first time) more than her vocals. Many keys were lowered and harmonies rewritten to keep her voice within about an octave. The surprise was how Banderas lent gusto to folk and rock ballads.


Jimmy Stewart. Born to Dance, 1936. Back when vocal standards were not terribly great on film--let's face it, Astaire and Rogers were dancers first, charmers second, and singers to get by--Jimmy Stewart proved he could carry a tune. He has a light, pleasant tenor, on-par with many screen singers in the 1930s.


Catherine Zeta-Jones. Chicago, 2002. Following Chita Rivera and Bebe Neuwirth, both fantastic Velmas, Zeta-Jones's rendition of "All That Jazz" is even more electrifying. No doubt her West End musical experience helped. And she took home an Oscar for proving she's got the stuff.


Meryl Streep. Mamma Mia!, 2008. To be fair, her first on-screen singing was in Postcards from the Edge, and she performed in Broadway and off-Broadway musicals in the 1970s. She counteracts the sleek, Swedish ABBA glean with a coarser "acted" sound. At 59, she's probably past her vocal prime. Her belting is solid at times, strident at others. But Streep emotes like mad, grounding a beach-party romp in occasional sincerity. "The Winner Takes it All" uses her first take.


Ewan McGregor. Moulin Rouge!, 2001. The vibrato quivers, but there's a solid pop tenor in there. Unlike his leading lady, he's not afraid to sing louder than pianissimo. Check out this link to "Luck Be a Lady" in Guys and Dolls... and his B-flat at the end!


Johnny Depp. Sweeney Todd, 2007. The original Sweeney on Broadway, Len Cariou, was no Don Giovanni; he had a light, everyman baritone. So Depp's quirky, David Bowie take on Sweeney--while not as punk rock as he wished--satisfies more than the rest of the cast (save Ed Sanders, the boy who plays Tobias). He commits musically, and despite some contorted vowels, he finds a nice balance between raspy and lyrical.


James Cagney. Yankee Doodle Dandy, 1942. The greatest performance on this list (also winning an Oscar). He talk-sings, his footwork favors spirit than technique--and yet he's a true-blooded song-and-dance man.


On Friday, the Bad and the Ugly!

A Very Unusual Way of Casting "Nine"

The Golden Rule of Movie Musicals: Cast a bankable actor, even if he can't sing, in place of a well-received Broadway star. Sad but understandable. The Rule explains many recent casting decisions. Take Gerard Butler in The Phantom of the Opera, Helena Bonham-Carter in Sweeney Todd, Uma Thurman in The Producers.

Wait a minute; didn't I say "bankable actor"? Did anybody attend Susan Stroman's megawatt flop to see The Bride sort of sing and sort of dance? With Tim Burton and Johnny Depp on the marquee, was Bonham-Carter a more marketable choice than names who have musical stage experience? (Here's looking at you, Meryl Streep and Toni Collette.) And did anybody know Butler before 300?

Now we have another curious exception to the Rule. Antonio Banderas led a 2003 revival of Nine. Here he is performing "Guido's Song":



Undoubtedly this revival inspired Rob Marshall to film the property. And what luck! Here was a star known to American and European audiences, with box-office success for action films, children's movies, sex thrillers... and he even sang on-screen in Evita. His Spanish accent might even pass for Italian.

So when the film was announced, how odd to see Javier Bardem's name attached. Another Spaniard known for European comedies, a recent thriller... and not for singing. When Bardem dropped out, was Banderas back in the running? No, for the role of Guido went to Daniel Day-Lewis. Why?

1. Marshall might want his own vision, separate from all previous Nines.
2. Maybe he, like Tim Burton, has grown weary of "the belting-to-the-galley type of Broadway singing."
3. The prestige factor. Six of the main actors (Day-Lewis, Marion Cotillard, Penelope Cruz, Judi Dench, Nicole Kidman, and Sophia Loren) are Oscar-winners.

Fortunately, we'll only endure one or two songs from each. Here's the musical's songlist with the changes made:

Overture Delle Donne (Women)
Not Since Chaplin-Cut.
Guido's Song (Day-Lewis)
My Husband Makes Movies (Cotillard)
A Call from the Vatican (Cruz)
Only with You-Cut.
Follies Bergeres (Dench)
Cinema Italiano (Hudson)-Added.
Nine-Cut. Replaced with:
Guarda la Luna (Loren)-Added.
Be Italian (Fergie)
The Bells of St. Sebastian-Cut.
A Man Like You-Cut.
Unusual Way (Kidman)
The Grand Canal sequence-Cut.
Simple-Cut.
Be On Your Own-Cut. Replaced with:
Take it All (Cotillard)-Added.
I Can't Make This Movie (Day-Lewis)
Getting Tall-Cut.

As for "Unusual Way": Hard to say how Kidman's wispy vocals will fare. Most screening viewers report the song is fine, but one report says Kidman is "uncomfortable," and another says she's "the weakest of the women." Take with a grain of salt. Here, for eventual comparison, is Laura Benanti's rendition on stage (starting at 2:13):

Survival of the Dumbest 2

A column of ideas we should not adopt, for our national sanity.

Twitterature
It's a noble quest to manufacture literary journals in our near-Dickensian hard times. Though I'm a fan of reading novels for pleasure from actual pages--perfect bound, in signatures of 32--I fully endorse literature in other media. So when I read about Electric Literature in the New York Times, I rejoiced. Love letters to niche literary fantasias in the national news!

But I do wonder how graduate students will form master's theses in ten years on tweeted work: "Starting next month, Rick Moody will tweet a story over three days." It's a brave new world. Writing necessitates brave new marketing. But when you read Moody's tweets, do you start from the bottom or from the top? When you join in halfway through on your iPhone, can you read the first half you missed? Imagine writing the MLA citation.

I hope his novel is as provocative-cum-hilarious as Elizabeth Taylor's review of This Is It: "I truly believe this film should be nominated in every category conceivable." Yes, Elizabeth Taylor, the hot-tin-roof cat who's afraid of Virginia Woolf. Her tweets on Michael Jackson practically constitute a biography.

John Irving just spoke in Brookline about nineteenth-century novels. "That was it," he said. For him, Dickens and Hardy epitomize the greatness of literature, overflowing with characters and semicolons. Short form deserves praise, just like sprinters, but I hope we remember that marathon writers can be astonishing. And literary journals. At least people are still reading, Sort Of, even if the world fails to warm to TwitLit.

Survival of the Dumbest

A column of ideas we should not adopt, for our national sanity.

Disney's Keychest

A major innovation where film viewers can stream movies from cyberland on any format they want. Disney is developing this independent of all other studios--so that they can brand it. They'll probably make an animated cartoon of the Talking Keychest and then include the character in Spaceship Earth at Epcot. Just so you know it's Disney.

The terrifying angle is how they market this to parents:

A mother could start streaming Toy Story on a laptop for her kids, continue the film on an iPhone at a restaurant and finish it at home with a video-on-demand cable service ... [P]iracy, at least conceptually, would be less of a worry.

Who cares about piracy? I'm worried more about:

1.The ten-year-old laughing at Buzz and Woody while their parents twirl their pasta at Macaroni Grill. Parents should converse with their children at dinner. Yes, it's a secondary purpose of dining, but if you go out to eat, it's not just to avoid dishes but for ambience too. Relaxation, perhaps. Getting away from frantic domesticity. Tell your children that hot-fudge sundaes are the night's toys, and that they can only play if they make eye contact.

2. Should young kids have access to laptops? I first used the Internet in fifth grade and was monitored until I matriculated to middle school. Even then, I had to ask permission. We were also dial-up, which meant dragging a long shriveled cord across the upstairs, in front of the stairs (perfect for tripping) to my parents' bedroom's phone jack. It's great that we take Internet access All The Time, Every Time for granted. But is it? Kids should learn technology, but we don't need to force it upon them. It's like picking their nose: they will figure it out on their own. Let them watch Pixar on your high-def LCD screen.

3. OK, I am worried about piracy. But in the sense that having information streaming whenever you want it, on planes, trains, even automobiles, and switching among formats--all of that causes us to value the information less. Don't try to deny the truth.

Once upon a time, meaning ten years ago, you missed Friends. Your choices: call to see if your friends videotaped it on those antiquated VCRs, or wait until summer reruns. Then TiVo and DVR made scheduling simpler. In 2006, network channels posted their episodes online after they aired. In 2007, Hulu, a free service! Nowadays, I can find all of my Monday night sitcoms on certain websites where I don't need to download; no real illegal action on my part. And so I don't value paying for basic cable so much, because the content is elsewhere. I don't value must-see TV because I can't miss it--I can find it tomorrow, or next week!

I rarely see stupid movies in theaters for $8.25 and up; they're already available on Torrent websites, so why force me to waste my money on content already out there? But everyone's desperate for our 2.5-second attention spans. There are things we should value: Quality entertainment. Undivided attention. Eating dinners as a family. Together.

Apples to Adjectives

Urban legend has it that the adjectives you collect in Apples to Apples, the popular party-starter, define your personality. Here, direct from tonight's winning game, are my essential traits:

• Spunky
  
• Fragrant
  
• Cute
  
• Important
• Fabulous
  
• Delightful
  
• Unscrupulous
• Talented
• Fuzzy (Doesn't really fit, but I was proud of "Mardi Gras.")

And the final tie-breaker card I snagged with "Prince Charming": Brilliant. You are all privileged to know me.

Serious, Man, Those Coen Brothers Got Chutzpah

Review: A Serious Man

Once you've treaded the bleak waters of Cormac McCarthy, and nabbed Oscars for your nihilistic streak that's now in vogue, where to go next? Back into the art house, the Coen brothers have decided. Back into the casting pool of indie unknowns. Back into the synagogue.

No Country for Old Men was a desolate firecracker that churned suspense the old-fashioned way, an intricate insistence on craft. But the abrupt ending, and Javier Bardem's unpunished murder spree: those surprised as much as his lethal air compressor. The Coens' next outing, Burn after Reading, culminated in a cat's cradle of plot threads -- yet the mix of wrong-place-wrong-time encounters was frustratingly kept off-screen. Comeuppance for the wicked, a Coen staple from Fargo to The Ladykillers, now fails to mollify the brothers.


A Serious Man continues the theme of man pitted against an uncaring world. More explicitly in this film, man vies against God, as Job did in the Old Testament. If only half the plotlines that flicker by produce answers, the final foreshortened vista opens up a fourth act, not committed to celluloid, that disavows all notions of good vanquishing evil and happily-ever-afters.

Sounds like a downer? The Coens draw comedy out of everyday setbacks -- and ethnoreligious stereotypes. Unceasing tsuris and kvetching battle against the movie's simple, under-the-radar approach, and at times the squinting, nebbishy physical tics actors rely on threaten to overwhelm. Thankfully, Michael Stuhlberg balances all that mishegoss with an endearing portrayal of mensch Larry Gopnik, unfairly dealt a poor hand. Mazel tov to the Coens for taking a chance on theater-raised talent.

You won't be ver clempt by the end. Larry Gopnik's journey is heady and existential, set in 1967 but nostalgic and twinkly enough to be 1950. As his mind becomes overburned, nightmarish visions invade, superimposing a sexuality and violence on the film that were just breaking through in the late 1960s. Larry's crisis of faith, possibly cyclical or more probably aimless, is definitely contemporary. And also entertaining. The Coens are master puppeteers, their audiences collective Jobs dependent upon their give-a-little, take-a-little hand. Don't think they take their job too seriously.

Andrew Lloyd Webber Never Dies

The theater world was abuzz this past week as Love Never Dies, the sequel to The Phantom of the Opera, unveiled its premiere dates and excerpts from the score. You may not have known that The Phantom of the Opera would receive a lavish musical sequel, opening March 2010 in London. You may not have realized that musicals have sequels. Oh, but look at the pantheon:

1. Let Them Eat Cake (1933). Same cast, same writers as Pulitzer-Prize winner Of Thee I Sing. But you can't have your cake and eat it too. 90 performances.

2. Bring Back Birdie (1981). Chita Rivera reprised her role from Bye Bye Birdie; Donald O'Connor stepped in for Dick van Dyke. The two track down Conrad Birdie, teen superstar, vanished for 18 years, to make a comeback. 4 performances.

3. Annie 2: Miss Hannigan's Revenge (1989). Played at the Kennedy Center in December but never made it to Broadway. Worse than receiving socks for Christmas.

4. Annie Warbucks (1993). Pretended the other Annie sequel never happened. Daddy Warbucks must marry within 60 days or else Annie will still be an orphan! Leaping lizards! 200 performances off-Broadway.

5. The Best Little Whorehouse Goes Public (1994). The Times described the Vegas locale as "an international airport lounge on uppers." 16 performances.

The history of Love Never Dies:
1986 The Phantom of the Opera opens in London, launching Michael Crawford and Sarah Brightman's careers, and redeeming ALW for Cats.

1999 Frederick Forsyth publishes The Phantom of Manhattan, set in the early 1900s, in which Christine learns she has fathered the Phantom's son. This same year, Kiri Te Kanawa presents ALW's "The Heart is Slow to Learn," intended for the Phantom sequel.

2001 ALW recycles the above melody for "Our Kind of Love" in The Beautiful Game.

2007 The Daily Mail reports that ALW has worked on the sequel's score... and that his cat Otto deleted it in one fell swoop from his digital piano.

2008 First named Once Upon Another Time, then retitled, the show goes on. A simultaneous New York-London-Shanghai opening is announced, then revoked.

2009 On October 8, ALW held a press event in which the orchestra played the "Coney Island Waltz," reminiscent of Carousel, and Ramin Karimloo sang "Till I Hear You Sing":



The show takes place ten years after the chandelier fell in Paris. Why quibble with the casting of Karimloo, age 31? Or worry about how Charles Strouse (with Annie and Birdie) singlehandedly cursed the musical sequel? Or Ben Elton's lyrics, from which I quote:

And leaves come, and leaves go,
Time runs dry,
And still I ache down to the core.
My broken soul can't be alive and whole
Till I hear you sing once more.

Update: New York magazine was completely inspired by my timeline and decided to create one of their own, which reminded me that Joel Schumacher directed the Phantom film because of the passion he lent tortured, trapped artistic genius Colin Farrell in Phone Booth.

"Take Out T-C-P"?!

Jimi Hendrix, after hearing so many people sing "Scuse me while I kiss this guy" in "Purple Haze," gave a tongue-in-cheek nod to "that guy" at one of his later concerts. I don't think they kissed, though. There's even a whole website spawned from Hendrix's infamous lyric, cataloguing all of our misheard mondegreens.+

+Mondegreen: a malapropism for song lyrics. Termed in 1954 by Sylvia Wright and her misinterpretation of the final line of Scottish song "The Bonny Earl of Murray." Lady Mondegreen was, in fact, "laid him on the green." Flash to 2008, when Mirriam-Webster permitted mondegreen entrance to its dictionary.

Recognizing and correcting a mondegreen, as well as insisting upon your own foolish lyric and how it sounds better, belongs to the upper-middle-class, iPod-surfing, road-trip experience. There's nothing that bonds people like shared misunderstandings. "Blinded by the light," we sing, but then what comes next? Our vocal cords say, "Wrapped up like a douche," but that doesn't make sense (and isn't pleasant if you try to puzzle it out). Bruce Springsteen originally wrote "Cut loose like a deuce," but Michael Mann had to change it to "Revved up like a deuce" and befuddle our eardrums on each listen.

We've all jammed to "Bohemian Rhapsody" in the car, a la Wayne's World. "Scaramouche, scaramouche" bewildered us; but we stayed in the game, through all the "Bismillah"s and "Mama mia"s... until the fateful line:

Beelzebub has a devil put aside for me.

Yes, Beelzebub, the prince of demons, the Lord of the Flies. On the tip of your tongue? My parents thought it was "the albatross" (those dangerous wings). KissThisGuy.com cites "the algebra."

It gets bad when listeners can't figure out the title. Some hear in Creedence Clearwater Revival's "Bad Moon Rising" the banal "There's a bathroom on the right." (Real lyric: "There's a bad moon on the rise," just like the title promises.)



But there's one mondegreen so strident, so irascible, so nebulous that it dwarfs all other mondegreens before and after. Ellen DeGeneres does a bit about not even bothering to learn the words (at 3:15 in the link).

Yep, we can spell R-E-S-P-E-C-T. We know what it means to me. But... wait... we're supposed to "Take out T-C-P"? Then we're left with R-E-S-E. Close to Reese, the maker of delicious Pieces. "Rese," it turns out, is a verb meaning "to shake; to quake; to tremble." How we gonna get any respect by shaking and trembling?

American culture lesson of the day: "TCB" was a common African-American expression in the 1960s for Taking Care of Business. Second, Aretha covered Otis Redding's song and added the R-E-S-P-E-C-T bridge. Music publishers couldn't tell, audiences couldn't tell, and sooner or later, we were all chucking T-C-P to the curb like the proto-fems we were/are. Comments on YouTube think TCP stands for "The Colored People," or that it's a pain-soothing drug. The real (allegedly) lyrics:

R-E-S-P-E-C-T
Find out what it means to me
R-E-S-P-E-C-T
Take care, TCB

If you get off, jump back in on "Sock it to me, sock it to me."

Scattered, Smothered and Covered*

Sometimes you turn 23, and over ice cream at Ben and Jerry's, you ponder one of the most irascible mysteries of life: How many ways can Waffle House cook their hash browns?

True story. Happened yesterday. See, the hash browns can come plain -- just scattered -- or with add-ins, as many as you want. Maybe that's a factorial, it was suggested. Actually, the equation should be 2 to the power of x (with x being the number of add-ins), said the math whiz. Before anyone loses another minute of sleep, here are the facts, straight from the House's mouth:

What the menu claims: 1,572,864 ways
Variable one: number of sizes: 3
[Regular, Large, or Triple]
Variable two: number of add-ins: 7
[Smothered, Covered, Chunked**, Topped, Diced, Peppered, and Capped]

You can also order plain hash browns, a.k.a. Scattered, or get them "Scattered All the Way" with all the fixin's.

Which equation do I choose? Let's give those math skills a try and start with a simpler problem. Say we could start with 1 size and 3 verbs. We'll Smother, Cover, and Chunk our hash browns. Or Smother and Cover. Or Cover and Chunk. Or Smother and Chunk. Maybe just Smother, Cover, or Chunk independently. Or... plain! So we have 8 ways to eat them: one set of 0, three sets of 1, two sets of 2, and one set of 3. If we try 3! (that's a factorial) we get 6 (1 times 2 times 3). If we go 2^x, x=3, we get 8. But I just threw in the plain option at the last minute... is that really the answer?

More ambitious now; 5 add-ins, still 1 size plate. One set of 0 (for plain Scattered), five sets of 1, ten sets of 2, ten sets of 3, five sets of 4, and one set of 5. That's 32 breakfasts. But 5! equals 96; far off the mark. 2^5 results in 32. Houston, we have a winner!

Therefore, 2^7 for seven total add-ins comes to 128 within the regular size. Since there are three sizes, which are mutually exclusive, we just multiply by 3. And plain's already in there, as I just proved.

Waffle House says 1,572,864. This blog reports 384 ways. But I digress; we go to Waffle House for greasy food, not fuzzy math.

*Title of a Hootie & The Blowfish*** compilation. That means they like their browns with onions and cheese.
**Chunked=with ham in Waffle House lingo. Blogger, for some reason, doesn't think it's a word.
***The band's named for two of the members' friends. I just learned, just now, that "the Blowfish" refers to only one person.

Peas and Rice: On Profanity in The New Yorker

I just learned about Shouts & Murmurs, the capricious New Yorker column about inebriates, space aliens, terminal illness, and "Independent Phone Acquaintances." That's just September right there. If you want to catch up, go read about fourteen passive-aggressive hors d'oeuvres: "Hepatitis! (Note: This is not technically an appetizer.)"

Last week's "Easy Cocktails from the Cursing Mommy" reminded me that The New Yorker can be so stodgy. They use so many accent marks, you'd swear you were perusing French. Scads of purée, fiancées--even Kahlúa, which you won't find on most bar menus. "O.K." must need those two periods, or help us all, we won't recognize it. Never mind that it's not an abbreviation. And when's the last time you visited a shack that serves delicious, ice-cold "Sno-Kones." That can't be in the AP stylebook.

Over-the-top syntax preservation, I don't know what to say about you. You know what else makes me laugh? The New Yorker's umlaut-mania with doubled vowels, as in "reënlist." Even more absurd is the "Cursing Mommy" column which pits these conventions against, and I quote, "Phewww!! Gahhh! Disgusting!" And the mock-blog string of blue words, all in caps. At least twelve!

Which brings me to the real issue. The New Yorker's unexpected recklessness with "God damn." Or "goddam." I've never understood the second spelling. Are we supposed to think, O language gods, that we're going polytheistic on things we abhor if "god" is lowercase? Is it somehow a less offensive word because we don't capitalize it? The mysteriously absent "n" doesn't fool anybody. We don't interpret that as a strange compound word for Zeus's own personal levee.

Lots of mild curses in English are censored takeoffs of harsher ones. "Zounds," which you can still find in your local comic shop, replaced "God's wounds," and took the religion right out of it. Same with sound-alikes: "Geez," or "You scared the bejeesus out of me." But peas and rice, people! The word "goddam" is still pronounced the same way as the clearly sacred version. To flip back and forth is just frivolous. Maybe it's a sly comment on our secularizing of everything spiritual, like when atheists tell people to go to Hell. It's OK (or O.K. in certain parlance). These heathens only mean hell, lowercase. With a wee little satan for company.

De-capitalization happens. We chop the heads off brand names; remember the last time you put on a band-aid and xeroxed something? But that's unconvincing. People wear Band-aids, yes they do, and they just copy things, in a generic, non-trademarked way. So why cut God out of this? I'm sure he doesn't appreciate you invoking his damnation in such a powerful way, and then stepping back and saying, "hey man, it's cool, I meant some other god. Oh, and I didn't say the 'n'."

It's best we take responsibility for our cursing. Good news--The New Yorker has no problem spelling four-letter words. Though they sometimes add extra "u"s. Oh, Heaven help us.

Caught Red-Banded!

I'd always wondered why previews advertised their appropriateness for a "general audience." It's like the Gospel of Judas; you surmise such a thing must exist somewhere in the world. Then, senior year of high school, $8.00 shelled out for Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle confirmed my suspicions: Restricted trailers are real! A fierce maroon overtook the screen, and soon enough, I was thrust into two uncensored, possibly uncomfortable minutes of advertising.

Can't remember what film it promoted. The earliest mention I found of red-band trailers was for Reservoir Dogs, so they've been around the block. But the red-band craze expanded, seemingly overnight. Regal theaters, in March 2008, began showing them before select R-rated features, and demand remains high. Part of the excitement comes from seeing if the naughty content in the description (i.e. "sexual content and strong language") will grace the preview. And just think, when the expletives and deshabille surface, why, they could be the mere tip of the iceberg.

Let's take a look at recent red-bands, and if you get enough bang (literally) for your buck:

• The Hangover. And it delivers, from the first dialogue ("Why can't we remember a goddamn thing from last night?") on through the bareass Asian badass who assaults the dudes and toddler self-pleasuring. F-words in the trailer: 3.
• Funny People. One dirty joke, and the rest at surprisingly tasteful network TV standards ("I'm really good at Grand Theft Auto. Maybe I should start beating up hookers."). It ends with a swipe at IKEA, for goodness' sake. F-counter: 2.
• Forgetting Sarah Marshall. More of a narrative than the first two snippets-and-punchline approaches. We're treated to Jason Segel's derriere and several sexual positions. F-counter: 0.
• World's Greatest Dad. Opens with a haiku on menstrual cycles. Clearly marketing didn't want to give too much away, because the trailer evades the (very R-rated) device that revs the plot. This trailer is reminiscent of the Funny People one: a feel-good story with dirty words. Untrue here, but at least it's spoiler-conscious. F-counter: 4.

Looks like red-bands stick to frat-boy hijinks. And there's a perverse joy to the restricted trailer, especially because it can be better than the film itself. Will this be true of these upcoming movies?

• Legion. Low-key until psycho-granny goes full zombie, and the hyperviolence ignites. A man's chest boils up and tears apart. Hard to tell how serious we should take this film. F-counter: 2, granny-style.
• Zombieland. 7 zombies machine-gunned, 3 zombies run over, 2 zombies punched in mouth, 1 zombie whacked with banjo. I think it's a comedy. F-counter: 3.
• Hot Tub Time Machine. Apparently it's about a hot tub -- wait for it -- that acts as a time machine. F-counter: 3.
• I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell. The Mount Everest of depravity; how can there possibly be a "general" trailer? There is, though, and it's actually funnier: "I need this like I need Hepatitis C." F-counter: 5.

Let the canons roar!

The New York Times just wrapped a four-part series on "The Future of Reading." Before you sound the death knell for education and our children and the fate of the world, read this article ("A New Assignment: Pick Books You Like") and consider. Have we been boxed into preordained reading lists that supposedly shape us just because they shaped previous generations? Must the pages classrooms turn be printed from wood pulp and black ink?

The piece begins as a teacher strikes Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird from the curriculum. On first read, I felt Lee, and the sum of twentieth-century American literature, had been slighted. Teaching Harry Potter may have literary merit, and as Literary and Cultural Studies demonstrated at William and Mary, you can analyze any creative output from Ulysses to The Lost Symbol. But all those allowances detract from what our children Should Learn.

Mmm, capital letters. Irony sighting. Yes, I'm suspicious of pre-administered educational paths. As any teacher who's constructed lesson plans knows, things go awry. Time flies by, students ask extra questions or light their pencil sharpeners on fire, and soon enough, the syllabus goes out the window. It's okay because the classroom is an interactive learning environment, 50 percent preparation, 50 percent inspiration. (Plus an additional, a-mathematical dollap of perspiration.)

Still, AP and IB tests, SATs and ACTs, IOWA and Stanford tests are a necessary evil. How else to quantify the essentially qualitative process of absorbing knowledge? We need some strictures, and so we need some books that are classics and will always be taught.

Or will they? When everyone else downed William Golding's Lord of the Flies in tenth grade, my English class covered Pat Frank's Alas, Babylon. Not in your high-school library? Frank's novel, not as literary or eloquent as Golding's, nonetheless bravely depicts a post-apocalyptic society of scavengers reconstructing their nuclear-smited world. An alternative to the standard harangue on civilization, but still a heady read, and poignant that year. We read Alas, Babylon in the same classroom where we sat eight years ago on a September afternoon, watching replays of the World Trade Center collapse, and verbalizing the emotions we'd felt all day long.

Context is everything. Reading recent novels during their zeitgeist may pull more students in, unearth more cultural relevance. Initially, I thought, "everyone should read To Kill a Mockingbird," and indeed we can't let our children forget. But one novel is a mere ripple in an ocean of literature. There are technologically newer ways to let kids read, and why shouldn't they? Reading online is not the same, and I don't believe that the Internet will pull people into printed books. Too much light and sound; skimming the surface of online writing is inevitable. (If you did read the Times article, I reckon you sped through it. Even took a breather on Perez Hilton during the page jump.) But why say reading must be this, and knowledge must be that?

Literature is not ours. Language is not owned by us. We can only subjectively assess and choose, in a given time, in a given school, what is apropos. Now it doesn't mean eighth-graders should substitute Captain Underpants for Shakespearean tragedy. Let's not get irresponsible. There's a reason for the canons already in place, and perhaps there's nothing wrong with reminding ourselves why.

In ninth grade English, a friend raised her hand and said she hadn't liked Mockingbird (i.e., committed blasphemy). "Why do we have to read it? It's the same story we see all the time." And I remember the teacher said, "Maybe that's why it's important. We don't want to forget it."

Punctuation Police

The beginning of what I hope will be an ongoing series in poor editing jobs. Here's a simple pamphlet that I ripped off on the Red Line. Its public service mission is to dissuade you from majoring in English at our local Cambridge College.

I took the liberty of copyediting this card that promises learning at an "adavanced" level. If you're still convinced that Cambridge is the college for you, you might still have some difficulty. See, their key marketing point on this advertisement, the website, is wrong. There's a backslash missing after the "edu," so that "Page not found" will pop up.

Of course, they do offer a BA in Psychology. Maybe it's all a clever mindgame.

"Just one word: Plastics."

Back from the beach; and the blog resumes. Amid the sand and surf, I devoured the wonderful Pictures at a Revolution, written by Mark Harris, and published last year by Penguin. After my undergraduate thesis on The Graduate and sixties wanderlust, it's hard to resist the tsunami of New Hollywood talent and their French New Wave aspirations.


Harris doesn't judge the players of the 1967 upheaval of traditional studio filmmaking. But their political and racial attitudes sure don't weather the years as their great films do:

"I think that when the bulk of them get out of the rut they've been kept in, they're going to snag all the public relations jobs because they're brilliant about remembering people... This quality is straight out of the jungle; they had it in the jungle when I made The African Queen." -Katharine Hepburn, 1967

Harris also leads us through the excruciating production of Doctor Dolittle because, well, it bought its way to an Oscar nomination for Best Picture. If you see it, you'll wonder why. Everything went wrong. They wanted Rex Harrison, Julie Andrews, and Alan Jay Lerner; they only acquired Rex, and he was an anti-Semitic terror on set. Animals aren't easy to work with: "The script just says, 'Swans do something,' and we have to see what they do," said a producer. An unattentive squirrel was sedated with gin from a fountain pen; after they got the desired shot, it blacked out. Oh, and the rhino came down with pneumonia. Perfect.

But looking back, it's apparent that many other studio films have wined and dined their way to Oscar nominations:

• 1956, the year of Three-Hour Spectacles! Around the World in 80 Days bested Giant, The Ten Commandments, and (the comparatively modest) The King and I.
• 1963: Cleopatra nearly bankrupted Fox. Naturally all Fox employees voted to save their jobs.
  
• 1969 gave us Midnight Cowboy, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, and... a wildly miscast Hello, Dolly.
• 1970: Patton. Five Easy Pieces. That subversive Altman flick MASH. And then the disaster movie Airport? Congratulations; theme park rides are now eligible for awards.
• 2003: With The Lord of the Rings ending (and ending and ending...), Lost in Translation picking up critical juice, and Clint Eastwood delving into noir with Mystic River, how much champagne did Master and Commander and Seabiscuit dole out?

All this is to say that filmmakers are both perceptive and practical. Everyone working on Dolittle knew it was a dud, but they had to pay rent somehow. The crew of Guess Who's Coming to Dinner recognized that its sting was too muted, its racial politics too strident to be anything more than didactic; but when you've got Hepburn, Tracy, and box-office star Sidney Poitier, what'll happen? Huge financial success. Meanwhile, Dustin Hoffman thought he was a mistake from Day One of The Graduate, preferring to whither away off-Broadway--and look at how well that turned out.

The wheels on the bus go round and round

A scene from yesterday's bus ride downtown:

I enter with a Ukrop's bag in my hand and take an empty seat. I'm puzzled because five people are standing. Then I learn.

MAN (seeing bag): Did you go to the supermarket?
ME (unused to people talking to me on the bus): Sorry?
MAN: The supermarket?
ME: Oh, yes. I did. (Note: Bag contains picnic blankets. Not important.)
MAN: Did you talk to Veronica?
ME: No. I didn't.

(Long pause.)

MAN: Did you go to Shaw's?
ME: Yes. I did.
MAN: Yeah, Shaw's. That's where Veronica works.

(Long pause. MAN leans over to HISPANIC MAN beside him.)

MAN: Do you like hombres or chicas?
HISPANIC MAN: What?
MAN: You like chicas?
HISPANIC MAN: Chicas. Sure...
MAN: Chicas. Man, they are great. (to a new passenger:) Hey. Are you Asian?
ASIAN MAN: ...

It was like an outtake from Crash. The Oscar winner, not the David Cronenberg freakshow of erotic auto accidents.

Double Double, Toil and Trouble

Review: Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

The fire's burning, the cauldron's bubbling in this sixth of seven -- scratch that, eight! -- Harry Potter films (maybe it's better to just call them "movies"). It's refreshing that everyone takes them seriously, but not Too Seriously. Each installment has its pluses:

• The first visualized an enchanting, colorful new world.
• The second showed that new worlds also deserve good editing.
  
• The third began to feel "crafted," and had the advantage of Rowling's thrilling third act.
  
• The fourth was oh-so-British (even if I can't remember much of it).
• The fifth was surprisingly apt at streamlining a behemoth of a novel, then painting it all in dreamy crystalline blues.
  

Not to mention great work from Richard Harris, Maggie Smith, Alan Rickman, and Imelda Staunton. Mere highlights of the world's greatest acting ensemble.

So what does the penultimate (sort of) year at Hogwarts (again, I should qualify that) offer on the cinema screen? The book is one of J.K. Rowling's more mature entries into the canon; and Dumbledore blessedly plays a large role. I found Michael Gambon, for the first time, effective as the headmaster. He lends a gravitas to The Half-Blood Prince that keeps the film grounded. His leering gaze, slightly sinister, and his lack of warmth are odd but serve him well at this juncture, when his motives seem curious. Flashbacks to young Tim Riddle -- and there should be more -- play up the mystery and menace of their magical world.

Less elegant than The Order of the Phoenix, this sixth film can be choppy. The Ron-Hermione pinings are sweet but take up gratituous amounts of screentime. The entire beginning could be shortened to the eerie Diagon Alley sequence, perhaps to give Dumbledore and Harry's relationship more thrust. As it is, the ending speeds along too quickly, from the faux Horcrux in the cave to the confrontation with Snape.

At least most of the noble Brits get one good scene in The Half-Blood Prince. And some of the child actors are intriguing as always, especially Evanna Lynch as Luna Lovegood. Of the main three? Rupert Grint has been the most consistent. Emma Watson dominated The Sorcerer's/Philosopher's Stone but has fallen into generic teen-girl mode. Happily, Daniel Radcliffe has become something of an actor in the series; Phoenix showcased him better, but he's got loads of grist awaiting in The Deathly Hallows.

If it's not quite a cohesive movie, it's still entertaining. There's an artistry to the technical filmmaking, from the mists off the cliffs to the intoxicating swirls of memories. And coupled with Phoenix, The Half-Blood Prince has a welcome The Empire Strikes Back vibe going on.

Hogwarts through the Ages

Strongest books: The Prisoner of Azkaban, The Goblet of Fire.
Strongest films: The Prisoner of Azkaban, The Order of the Phoenix.
Best performance: Alan Rickman without contest.
Best character expansion: Helena Bonham Carter as Bellatrix.
Best cinematography: The Half-Blood Prince.
Box-office for #6 so far: $826 million.

My wishes for Book Seven on film:

1. Excise the Epilogue. Let's not have Radcliffe et al. dressed up like they're forty.
2. Add a little somber-ness into the (fairly) happy ending of the novel.
   
3. Only sacrifice characters who make legit appearances in the films. The Muggle Studies professor does not count.