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R.I.P. Gene Wolfe, Aged 87

The great novelist and engineer Gene Wolfe died today aged 87. 

I had only really learned of his writings last year and had dug into the first book of his masterwork, the 1980 novel “The Shadow of the Torturer,” hailed by many as the “Ulysses of science fiction,” an understandable though not altogether accurate statement. Having nearly finished the second book of the larger work, I can say it is the most ingenious and delightfully challenging work of fiction I’ve ever read. I can only imagine what the final three parts hold in store. 

There exists a cottage industry of scholarship regarding attempts to break down and parse and simply fully appreciate the density and brilliance of the ideas contained in Wolfe’s novels. His writing is thrilling and terrifying and deeply wise and poetic in ways mirrored only by the finest writers. 

Some authors considered him one of the greatest in English, if not THE best modern writer, with comparisons to Proust and Borges and Vance and Melville a commonplace. He was not wildly popular in his lifetime, and perhaps the difficulty of the works drove people away, although I’d wager the reputation of difficulty was the actual culprit. With some attention and interest and a small investment in light research, one would find an author that rewarded at least as much as the reader invested. 

I sent him a letter of thanks a month or so ago after finding what I think was his address online. I’m not sure if he got it, but I hope he knew that one more reader had found his work and found it a treasure indeed.

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“SPORTS!!!!” -- Mario Lopez, Golf in Space, and Michael Jordan's Secrets!

--

By SEAN H. CAMPBELL | January 4, 2016

Today, I saw a link to an article (actually a "listicle," apparently, because language is dead, and nothing matters) at USA Today contending that -- were one to click on said article -- one would be greeted with "101 Incredible Sports Facts That Will Blow Your Mind."

I saw run-of-the-mill data like how Michael Jordan continued to receive his $4 million salary while futzing around with baseball or how Michael Phelps ranks #35 as a gold winning COUNTRY all his own ahead of 97 other entire nations, although this is out of date now since the listicle dates back to the halcyon days of 2014. They even had one that pointed out golf balls have 336 dimples, which is actually two fewer than Mario Lopez.

But then I saw this:

"FEDERER" can be typed entirely with the left hand.

I sat for a moment, wondering if my mind was being blown right then and there.  Perhaps a feeling of -- almost literally nothing -- was a sign of one's mind having been completely and utterly blown. My mind was now locked in an all white room with no discernible corners and everything was completely silent and nothing existed.

More likely, I guess, is that after the writer had been sitting at his desk, head in hands, trying desperately to get to Incredible Sports Fact That Will Blow Your Mind #101 at his editor's moronic request, he looked up at his Roger Federer poster, back down at his keyboard, back to the poster, back to the keyboard, realization began to dawn, the music swelled, and BAM! he had his "Jehovah starts with an 'I'!"-moment, and he was allowed to move to the next trial on the way to the internet's Holy Grail of viral fame, which was probably something like, "The Six Herbal Supplements Your Doctor Doesn't Want You To Know About!" or "You Won't Believe How Broke You'll Always Be!" or "Seven Things Gary Johnson Is Still Wondering About." (Editor's Note: This paragraph-sentence is stupid and way too long.)

Speaking of golf balls: the seventeenth "incredible sports fact" pertained to those that Alan Shepard (whose name the writer misspelled) hit while on the Moon in 1971 (no doubt in a Hollywood backlot, according to the same website about how vaccines are poison and debilitating but largely quelled diseases are a rite of passage for children to be celebrated with Chicken Pox Parties and Polio Galas).

Again, I questioned what lies beneath the surface of these facts when the writer decided not to emphasize or mention the fact that it's really cool Shepard had, you know, smuggled a bespoke golf club onto a rocket or that he is the only person to ever play golf off-world or that at least one of his drives was measured in miles, but instead that (get this!) the golf balls are... STILL ON THE MOON.

A few questions:

1) Why did the writer have any expectation that the golf balls wouldn't still be on the Moon?

2) Is there a theory that golf balls only exist if you're observing them? I mean, that would explain a lot about golf.  After all, we already know that completely gonzo bonkers things like this might happen at the subatomic level with electrons, and textbooks usually depict electrons as being round, and golf balls are round, so... [FOR MORE "SUPER FUN" INFORMATION ABOUT THIS CLICK HERE.]

3) What's this writer hiding?  He knows something.

One thing is certain in my mind: I won't be playing golf again to put any of this to the test.  Golf is evil, and I am terrible at golf.*

Finally, his last Fact:

As any child of the late '70s can tell you, the writer yet again missed the most important aspect of an Incredible Sports Fact That Will Blow Your Mind.  We all know that hands touching is the #1 way of getting Full Blown AIDS, so how Michael Jordan has kept this secret all these years is beyond me.

In closing, here's your incredible and mind-blowing fact about this article: I typed the entire thing with my left hand.

----------------------------------------------------

*also at all other sports

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Serious Note: To My Muslim Friends

Sean H. Campbell

[Note: This breaks a long-standing rule I've had to never again talk about anything political or religious on social media, but so it goes.  I've sat on this for days because I didn't want to "stir the pot," but if standing up and saying what is morally correct and absolutely good makes someone angry, I honestly couldn't care less.  I would like my Muslim friends to know, publicly, that I love and support them however self-aggrandizing or self-righteous this may sound.]

To all my Muslim (American or otherwise) friends, who are incredible, wonderful, loving, beautiful people, I am deeply, deeply, eternally ashamed at what the disgusting, evil, pandering, despicable, racist, horrifying, former cartoon Donald Trump (along with many, MANY others) isn't just implying about you but saying aloud.  He's saying we can't trust you.  He's saying you aren't working with "us" to stop terrorism.  He's saying you aren't one of "us."  

You are one of us.

You are terrified and angry at the extremism that follows ancient, primitive views, just as Christians were terrified and angry when their radicalized members like the Ku Klux Klan did the same thing to African Americans and homosexuals, for instance, and continue to do to this day, any chance they get.

You are terrified because Donald Trump wants to silence the press when he doesn't like what they say.

You are terrified because Donald Trump wants -- in the most un-American way imaginable -- to ban an entire religion's followers (1/6 of the entire Earth's population) from entering this country, which blatantly implies that anyone of that religion already in this country cannot be trusted and should be treated with suspicion.

You've seen this before in history, and you hoped that it would never happen again.  It is happening again, and I will stand with you no matter how many broken, brainwashed, mentally disturbed, homophobic, indoctrinated psychopaths attempt to destroy the world we share one AR-15 at a time, whether they are Trump or ISIS.

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The iProdigal Son Returns

by Sean H. Campbell

I hadn't seen my iPod Touch in nearly two years. I put it somewhere that made perfect sense at the time, and a while later my house was burglarized for a second time in four years during which most of my electronics and other super cool items (like this big telescope I used to have to keep my Total Dork[TM] membership active) were removed for a few days to the apartment of the charming and thoughtful Mr. and Mrs. Joseph Clay and Kayla Clower's apartment or dropped off at a handful of pawn shops for very convenient storage for the last year and a half and wrapped up in litigation and other helpful things.

I slowly became more and more positive that the iPod was among the number of items stolen and simply wrote it off.  Over the past few months, I began thinking it would be nice to just get a cheap MP3 player that could contain all my CDs (that stands for "compact discs," which is just an ancient delivery mechanism for music that people used to pay for).  This would serve two purposes:

1) It would keep me from getting a new iPhone for a while longer now that I’m out of contract and save me a small fortune since iPhones have no memory unless you spend thousands of dollars.

2) It would be appropriately cantankerous and eccentric and maybe a little pretentious.

So, after a couple months of thinking about it and looking around on Amazon, I found a pretty cool-looking, well-reviewed player from some random Chinese company called “AGPtEK” (that stands for “A Great Product to Entertainment Kids”).  It was a lossless player with 16GB of storage and an SD slot that allowed another 64GB, more than enough to contain all the music I’ve ever bought in my life.  Cool!

I placed the order two days ago, and this morning, the nice mail-lady drove right up, gave a polite tap on her car horn, and handed it over with a smile.  I got a new toy, so I was levitating across the ground, but I might’ve just been skipping.

I unboxed it.  The box looked playfully demonic and was like the dark antithesis of Apple’s packaging.  A coal-black box with a shiny, serif-frivolous font emblazoned within that read aphoristic and anarchic things like, “Life is short!” and “Hate your job? QUIT!”

Oh yes.  This is some savvy sweat-shopping right here, folks.

I plug in the device, and it’s pleasantly clunky but has a very responsive static touch panel and a bright, old-school dot-matrix screen of white graphics on a black screen.  Simple.  Fast.  Works great.  Sounds great.

Then I wanted to play this tiny, rock-solid device through my stereo in the living room to blast some tunes to really encourage (and not annoy at all) Sharalynn while she was knee-deep in some kind of terrifying German file.

Where’s my RCA Y-cable?

I looked in a total of two places.  When I got to the second place, I picked up a pile of papers and saw a small, black, zippered case that read “BOSE” on the cover.

OH YEAH!  That’s the case for the Bose headphones mom gave me!  Maybe the alternate earbuds are still in there.

[Ziiiiiiip.  Open.]

“NO. WAY.”

I run over to Sharalynn, who is probably pasting a digital signature on a document, which is the only thing I understand about her job, place the case down, and say, “Open that.”

“WHAT IS IT?  IS IT SCARY!?”

I imagine she thinks I found a Bose case filled with scorpion babies.  That’s the look on her face.  I’m not sure why she thinks I would ask her to open something like that, but I’m realizing that I clearly need to be a nicer person if she thinks that’s possible.

“Just open it.”She opens the case and there’s a USB cable.

And my iPod.

After a lot of dancing around and celebration, I plug it into my computer as it’s completely dead.

“Your iPod has not been backed up for 101 weeks.”

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Movie Review -- Christian Petzold’s Brilliant WWII Thriller “Phoenix”

Directed by Christian Petzold

Written by Petzold and Harun Farocki

Based on the novel Le Retour des Cendres (Return from the Ashes) by Hubert Monteilhet

Starring Nina Hoss, Ronald Zehrfeld, Nina Kunzendorf, Michael Maertens

Runtime of 98 minutes

by SEAN H. CAMPBELL

The main conceit of Christian Petzold’s new film “Phoenix” is, as the movie itself makes clear, one of reconstruction and re-creation. Nina Hoss plays Nelly Lenz, a cabaret singer who narrowly survives a Nazi death camp after a failed execution left her face mangled and ostensibly unrecognizable even after wildly successful plastic surgery.

“I am dead again,” Nelly tells her friend Lene on the trip back to her apartment. Nelly, long separated from her pianist husband Johnny (Ronald Zehrfeld) during her capture, has found him working as a janitor at a local cabaret filled with American troops. He doesn’t recognize her.  Nelly, devastated that her greatest fear has been realized, does not reveal her identity even after her husband decides she could be useful to him.  Johnny explains that she will play the part of his wife so he might receive her inheritance now that next of kin -- Nelly’s entire family -- has been murdered by the Nazis, an inheritance he intends to split with her.

This idea, of Nelly regarding herself as dying a second death, along with the desperate belief that her husband is loyal, drives what would otherwise have been a much less credible plot line.  Nelly is desperate to be recognized, and when her husband does not recognize her, her subsequent secrecy regarding her identity serves a dual purpose: it allows her to test the limits of her husband’s loyalty and underscores the importance of identity throughout the film.  

The themes of identity and rebirth set during the Holocaust, referenced by the film’s title alluding to the mythical bird that died in flames and rose again from the ashes eternally, is an effective addition to the source material by the filmmakers, especially since loss of identity was part and parcel of the Nazi agenda: strip the Jews of their names and erase them from history.  But does the phoenix recognize itself upon resurrection?  Nelly returns to her home, now destroyed, and flees from her reflection. Her husband sees only a potential resemblance that can be exploited for financial gain, which is even worse than not recognizing her.  “I am dead again” resounds throughout the film.

“Phoenix” is in large part a clever riff on Alfred Hitchcock’s “Vertigo,” but brimming with reversals.  In that film, a good man (Jimmy Stewart) is duped into unwittingly providing an explanation of suicide for the murder of an old friend’s wife only to find he has fallen in love with the woman (played by Kim Novak) who impersonated the ill-fated wife.  Novak goes on about life as her true self while Stewart slips into a heartbroken catatonia.  When he snaps out of it and chances to meet Novak, who reminds him of the woman who drove him to love and madness (but I repeat myself), he cannot help but to make her into the very woman she impersonated.  The fictional history she and the murderous husband fabricated eventually plays out in actuality as Stewart obsessively recreates their time together and, finally, discovers the deception.

In “Phoenix,” a bad man is duped into his own undoing thanks to his greed and total confidence that his wife is dead after having secretly divorced her and given her over to the German secret police.  Nelly gives her husband every opportunity to explain away his actions even at the expense of her closest friend’s advice, a friend who is informed by the knowledge that Johnny not only divorced her but is the main reason she was taken to the death camps after being hidden away.

The film supplies what at first glance might seem like a satisfying end.  Upon reflection, however, the riveting and quiet finale could hardly be more bittersweet.  For most of the movie, as Nelly is coached on how to be Johnny’s wife, as Nina Hoss brilliantly conveys both the bewilderment and devastation of the farcical unreality in which Nelly finds herself, as she slowly transforms into what Johnny could hardly have seen as anything but the wife he betrayed, Nelly hides the two things that would have unequivocally betrayed who she really was.

The first is Nelly’s prodigious and unmistakable singing voice.  The second is the identity-robbing numerical tattoo emblazoned on her forearm by the Nazis (which Johnny had demanded she cut out, which he assumed had been done).  Not since Kubrick’s “Paths of Glory” has a woman’s singing (in a wartime setting, no less) been so cathartic.  In the case of “Phoenix,” though Nelly had gained so much against impossible odds, what she had lost had never been laid so bare.

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Mixcloud Playlist - We Gathered In Spring

This playlist consists of just over an hour of music from various beard-rock gods from Jim James to Midlake to even Thom Yorke.  It’s the perfect companion to a Spring drive with the windows down. Please enjoy.

We Gathered In Spring - March 2015 by Sean H. Campbell on Mixcloud

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Movie Review -- Tommy Lee Jones's haunting and unpredictable "The Homesman"

“The Homesman”

Directed by Tommy Lee Jones

Written by Tommy Lee Jones, Kieran Fitzgerald, Wesley Oliver

Based on the novel “The Homesman” by Glendon Swarthout

Starring Hilary Swank, Tommy Lee Jones, Miranda Otto, John Lithgow, Meryl Streep

Runtime of 122 minutes

by SEAN H. CAMPBELL

“People like to talk about death and taxes, but when it comes to crazy, they stay hushed up.”

Tommy Lee Jones’s new film “The Homesman,” feels at times too theatrical, too tonally and morally askew to identify very closely with it, but that may be the point.  In the almost mythical world of the American frontier, atrocities and hardships stand in high relief against the gorgeous vistas.  The effect is one of alienation shot through with awe.

The film’s plot, a rare feminist perspective for the genre, revolves around a set of circumstances nearly too painful to describe: three women have lost their minds after the unforgiving landscape -- or the base cruelties of their own husbands -- has left them lifeless as statues, and they are soon to be sent away.  The way Jones reveals the source of their madness shows impressive restraint; the scenes arrive throughout the first act with no warning except a shift in color palette to the cool blue haze of dream.  The brutality, mostly involving the women’s children, lacks all sensationalism and manipulation and more than explains the women’s mental states however impossible it may be to face the screen in the meantime.

When no one else is willing to carry these troubled women away from the land and men that broke them, Mary Bee Cuddy (Hilary Swank) accepts the responsibility, a move that shocks the local folk as much as it reveals just how unwilling anyone else is to make the grueling journey from the Nebraska Territory to a willing caretaker (Meryl Streep in a glorified cameo) in Iowa. Cuddy is a spinster in the making, but she is industrious and fastidious, qualities she wields against her oppressive workload as well as her loneliness.  

One man who helps her on her farm from time to time in return for the comforts of a meal is proposed to by Cuddy.  He flatly rejects her on the basis that she is too “plain” and “bossy.”  He is so much against their partnership that he is immediately inspired to head east to find a wife, thus ending their utilitarian partnership in the process.

Not long after the arduous journey has begun, the three mad women bound inside a donated jail wagon, Cuddy comes across a man who has been left atop his horse, a noose around his neck, his execution agonizingly inevitable, his wrinkled and lined face soot-darkened as a meteorite’s impact crater.  After a humorous exchange and a promise from the man, Cuddy accepts him into her party.  The man, one George Briggs (a scene-stealing Tommy Lee Jones), is a claim jumper who, in classic Looney Tunes fashion, is dynamited off another man’s land by locals and sent scurrying like a live-action Yosemite Sam, captured, and left for dead where Cuddy finds him.

From there, the movie becomes more and more unpredictable, and your mileage may vary given Jones’s proclivity towards sudden shifts in tone and story direction, presumably as much a nod to the source material as it is a stylistic choice.  For all that, Jones’s willingness to let the film feel cobbled together and unforeseeable gives what could have been a painfully generic journey an artfulness that is further belied by the unassuming but gorgeous cinematography.

The film asks or inspires many questions regarding the lives of women on the frontier.  Mary Bee Cuddy stands in contrast to the other women.  Or does she?  Hers is a slow destruction as well, formidable as she seems throughout the film.  And what to make of Cuddy seeking an almost desperate partnership with a man she deems merely useful not once but twice in the film, both of whom reject her outright with an almost verbatim refusal?  Perhaps the writers (including Jones) were simply highlighting how essential the bonds of partnership were in that region, that a man would of course seek out a strong woman for such a life as well.  Or perhaps the skeletal view of the story never occurred to them.

At times it feels like a Cormac McCarthy screenplay had he dropped the explicit, heavy-handed philosophizing and embraced pop entertainment’s proclivity towards humor in the face of devastation (McCarthy’s screenplay for “The Counselor” was fascinating but seemed to imply he wasn’t too interested in such a thing).

In one instance of McCarthian plotting (less akin to his screenplay work and instead his unsettling novels), Cuddy and company arrive at a child’s grave that has been violated.  Cuddy insists that she will bury the child again to restore her dignity, but Briggs resolves to continue on, leaving her a horse with which to regroup.  Cuddy’s decency in such a land is not rewarded, and she is brought to the brink of death when a day’s journey circles her back to the very same grave.

In another, Briggs seeks respite for the party at a newly founded inn replete with all manner of amenities and victuals, another stark contrast to the absurdly uninviting land around it.  The innkeeper, a slimy and reprehensible James Spader, denies them any refreshments or hospitality for reasons left intentionally vague.  Briggs leaves enraged.  Later that night, he returns to address the men at the inn one last time.

Heroism is in short supply in “The Homesman.”  What heroism exists is mostly thankless, but Cuddy and Briggs complement each other well, one rubbing off on the other in subtle ways.  In this world, the heroes succumb to the frailties of their hearts and the scoundrels steel themselves to continue on, leaving behind them their own form of muddled and tenuous justice.

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Movie Review -- James Marsh's beautiful and straightforward "The Theory of Everything"

Directed by James Marsh

Written by Anthony McCarten

Starring Eddie Redmayne, Felicity Jones, David Thewlis, Emily Watson, Charlie Cox

Runtime of 123 minutes

by Sean H. Campbell

A fountain pen rolls over the edge of a student’s desk in a giant lecture hall, and Professor Stephen Hawking, now bent and crooked in his famous talking wheelchair, finds his attention drawn to it.  His instinct is to stand up on the stage, perhaps while still talking, walk down a few steps, bend down, grasp the pen, and return it casually to the student.  He can perform all of these actions, but only in the confines of his own mind.

Stephen Hawking, a Briton with an electronic American accent, is the most famous physicist since Einstein, and his theories have arguably had nearly as profound an effect on the world of physics as Einstein’s General Relativity.  In 1963, Hawking was brought low by a motor neuron disease known colloquially as “Lou Gehrig's Disease.”  His brain and involuntary functions continue to work apace, but his body was long ago immobilized by the disease.  Against the odds, Hawking survives to this day, long after he was predicted to be dead by the mid-1960s.  When a doctor delivers the bleak diagnosis, Hawking’s first question is, “What about the brain?”

All of this and more is documented in James Marsh’s new film “The Theory of Everything.”  Hawking is played with what feels like total authenticity by Eddie Redmayne (“Les Misérables,” “My Week With Marilyn”) and his portrayal of a man who lives so deeply within his own mind that he fails to notice his own body’s gradual deterioration is unforgettable and genuinely moving even as the movie itself is a straightforward (but very handsome) adaptation in the style of the similarly affecting Richard Attenborough film “Shadowlands.”

The film portrays Stephen Hawking as a young genius whose facility with monumentally complex maths is as natural as his proclivity for boisterousness and the pursuit of the opposite sex.  When Hawking’s professor gives his very exclusive group of students a list of ten questions to choose from, Hawking haphazardly procrastinates until the eleventh hour and solves nine, almost lamenting not having time to finish the tenth.  His professor and his peers are gobsmacked.  If Hawking isn’t necessarily socially awkward, he is at least quirky and unexpected, and it is with his own brand of quirk that he introduces himself to Jane (Felicity Jones), a woman who has caught his eye as much as he has caught hers.  

Jane is a poet and intellectual, and perhaps Hawking impresses her with his inclination towards associating mundane phenomena with their scientific causes, in the now classic tradition of our great science popularizers (Sagan, deGrasse Tyson, etc.).  One such example explains how a popular detergent increases the glow of a gentleman’s dress shirt under a blacklight, which must be the nerdiest “meet-cute” since Michael Cera explained Pac-Man’s original name to Mary Elizabeth Winstead in “Scott Pilgrim vs. The World.”

A “night at the carnival” romance ensues, and soon Hawking and Jane are not only in love, but Hawking’s dark news binds them even closer together as Jane unflinchingly resolves to see Hawking through his predicted two years.  “You don’t realize what lies ahead.  This is going to be a very heavy defeat,” Hawking’s father tells Jane, but Jane is determined to fight alongside Hawking while she can.  Two years turns into perhaps much more than Jane could manage alone.

From there, the movie becomes much less a study of Hawking’s accomplishments while increasingly wheelchair-bound and much more about the strain of the sort of lonely and inexorable caretaking demanded for a situation like Hawking’s.  Jane’s mother (Emily Watson) encourages her to return to choral singing, a sort of side-project that might allow her to decompress.  There she meets the dashing Jonathan (Charlie Cox) who becomes not only a family friend with a genuine interest in lending a hand but also, predictably, a love interest to Jane.  There are predictable beats here regarding the negative social response to this arrangement and hints of jealousy and resentment among the major players, but the film doesn’t dwell on this for too long before Hawking seems to present a tacit understanding that Jane should be allowed to tend to her own physical and emotional needs.  Meanwhile, Hawking may be finding solace in his new therapist Elaine.  And so on.

Director Marsh doesn’t seem too concerned with making profound statements and simply lets the story of Hawking and his contributions in the face of every possible obstacle speak for itself.  Perhaps it would have been interesting to see what a stylist like Joe Wright would have done with this material, but art is to be found in Marsh’s unfussy approach as well.

The final sequence is a somewhat typical “rewinding” of all the major beats of the entire film back to the earliest moments, but a sort of profundity does reveal itself here.  Hawking earned his doctorate well after his body had begun to rebel, as evidenced by his long, methodical, and even agonizing walks across campus with a cane in each shaky hand.  He wrote the landmark book A Brief History of Time by painstakingly searching the alphabet at a mind-numbing four words per minute.  This isn’t to say a correlation exists between Hawking’s mental confinement and his ever-burgeoning brilliance, but it is a statement on the triumph of the human mind somewhere on the order of a blind Milton dictating all of Paradise Lost to his daughters after his eyesight had gone.  In this case, however, Hawking had set his sights on answering the greatest question of all, one that he continues to ask to this day.

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Movie Review -- Alejandro González Iñárritu's technically miraculous "Birdman"

Directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu

Written by Alejandro González Iñárritu, Nicolás Giacobone, Alexander Dinelaris, Jr., Armando Bo

Starring Michael Keaton, Zach Galifianakis,Edward Norton, Andrea Riseborough, Amy Ryan, Emma Stone, Naomi Watts

Runtime of 119 minutes

by Sean H. Campbell

Jean-Luc Godard once famously said, “Film is truth twenty-four times a second, and every cut is a lie.”  In Alejandro González Iñárritu’s astonishing “Birdman,” a film with ostensibly no edits, that’s an awful lot of truth.  

Earlier this month, we saw Dan Gilroy take on the slow-moving target that is the news media with his disturbing and entertaining “Nightcrawler,” and now we see Iñárritu skewering the world of showbusiness and all its modern ancillaries, from pretentious and omnipotent critics to the efficacy of viral videos to the unstoppable force of that ubiquitous monolith known as social media.

“Birdman” tells the seamless -- although not real-time -- story of a former action star, Riggan Thomson (a sorely missed and masterful Michael Keaton) whose international popularity has become more of an albatross around his neck than a source of pride, a constant barrier to a more reputable career.  It is in the pursuit of just such a career and legacy that Riggan has staked his fortune on bringing his own interpretation of Raymond Chandler’s short story “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love” to the stage.

The main problem is that Riggan is not an especially skilled writer, and his play often feels forced or even amateur.  This problem is ameliorated somewhat by the arrival of an almost insufferable “Method” actor played with supreme confidence and a hint of vulnerability by Ed Norton, who rewrites Riggan’s script intuitively on the fly.  Riggan’s fame is slipping, his chances of producing a successful play are increasingly slim, and the entire production is barely held together by a support group of friends and family that sometimes appears to be redefining the word “support.”  Riggan’s friend and producer Jake (Zach Galifianakis, subtly hilarious) and embittered daughter Sam (Emma Stone, wide-eyed and disheveled), for instance, either look on in weary but hopeful expectation or thinly veiled contempt.

The first time we see Riggan, he is floating a few feet off the ground in his dressing room, cross-legged, as if in meditation.  This opening scene occurs without remark and creates a question in our minds regarding the film’s level of trustworthiness that Iñárritu never stops toying with.

This question of whether or not Riggan Thomson is actually a superhero or not is no mere attention-grabbing device to lure audiences into the theater, nor is the technical wizardry behind the film’s creation.  While it may have made pitching the film a bit easier to some executive bean counters at the studio, the question of supernatural goings-on is the perfect framework with which to explore the effects of typecasting, the expectations of heroism in the public eye, and even the madness inherent in becoming lost in a character as an actor.

The film’s seamlessness comes from the brilliant mind of Iñárritu’s cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki, and if the unbroken “shot” (it’s more than several tool-assisted stitchings, actually) that makes up the film implies truth, it is cheekily undermined by a narrative that likely cannot be fully trusted -- unless of course it can.  The painstaking process of sewing the film together into one unbroken shot is further contrasted by the film’s broken chronology in which time’s passing takes place always without warning, lending the film yet more unreality.

Lubezki is a long-time collaborator of the great Alfonso Cuaron and has come up with some of the greatest tracking shots in film.  From the major set pieces in the astonishing “Children of Men” to last year’s technical marvel “Gravity,” Lubezki has shown a facility with the camera that is as unforgettable as it is directly tied to the stories it captures.  Orson Welles showed the value of such virtuosity in the service of plot (and showmanship) with his complex and eternal opening tracking shot in “Touch Of Evil” (1958), and with “Birdman,” Lubezki and Iñárritu explicitly borrow a page from Hitchcock’s playbook; the latter’s suspenseful “Rope” (1948) might actually have been one unbroken take if the limits of a film reel had not existed at the time.

In practice, almost contrarily to what Godard said, long unbroken takes are as much about artifice as they are about capturing what is truly going on, and in that way perhaps a connection can be drawn directly to the theater itself.  Even the most experimental and minimalistic of theatrical productions -- chalk outlines for props, two-dimensional backdrops, etc. --  tend to prove that emotional connections override any expectation of a realistic stage setting.

We watch “Birdman” in awe of the craft, the choreography, the effortless way the actors sync up with their cues yet still seem naturalistic.  We know we are smack in the middle, somewhat paradoxically, of theater at its most cinematic and most mathematical, but all of this serves a deeply affecting character drama about a flawed man who wants to leave something great behind, who wants to have a legacy worth remembering, who has spent the last half of his life running from the ersatz heroism of countless blockbusters towards idea of heroism itself.

The end of the film is -- or at least could be -- ambiguous, but it isn’t cruel because both possible interpretations fit within the thesis of the film, and carry with them their own earned truths.  If we attempt to fly, sometimes we fall, the wax having dripped from our makeshift wings, but, sometimes, we stay aloft.  “Birdman” might even imply that there’s no difference.

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Movie Review -- Damien Chazelle's Thrilling "Whiplash"

Written and directed by Damien Chazelle

Starring Miles Teller, J.K. Simmons, Paul Reiser, Melissa Benoist

Runtime of 106 minutes

by Sean H. Campbell

The biggest mistake one can make when approaching a movie like “Whiplash” — or the much more surreal “Black Swan,” for instance — is to accept its story literally.  Damien Chazelle’s thrilling new film, relentlessly effective in its portrayal of the agony and ecstasy of the pursuit of perfection, is all metaphor.

I certainly wouldn’t dare to comment on the technical virtues of the film’s depiction of jazz, the framework around which the plot is built, but the music is stunning, and, at the very least, the film exudes confidence as it offers a glimpse at the dedication required to approach jazz as a musician.  My knowledge of jazz doesn’t extend any further than a great affection for Miles Davis’s “Bitches Brew” and John Coltrane’s “Blue Train,” but the filmmakers certainly seem to know what they are doing.

Andrew Neyman (Miles Teller) is a drummer who aspires to Buddy Rich levels of greatness and often stays late at the fictitious Schaefer Conservatory in New York practicing his intricate drumwork.  One such night, the school’s most respected music instructor happens upon him, seems to sense a burgeoning talent, and within moments reveals an intimidating and riddling “drill instructor” style rife with homophobic and other explicitly demeaning turns of phrase.  (“Whiplash” became known as “Full Metal Jacket at Juilliard” when it made the rounds at the Sundance Film Festival.)  Andrew, ambitious and brimming with youthful energy, is immediately smitten by the opportunity to receive feedback from a man who might never stop demanding more from him.

J.K. Simmons effortlessly creates this barely-human, demonic persona known only as Fletcher, who is so commanding that, every time he walks into frame, you may find yourself holding your breath and sitting up in your seat in case he catches you slouching.  Perhaps just as impressive is the oppressiveness of his off-camera presence as the various players are pitted one against another, often infuriatingly cut short before a single measure has been played, the tension mounting exponentially as we realize he is watching, literally waiting to pounce and all but tear his cutthroat pupils to shreds.

As Fletcher drip feeds confidence and status to Andrew, at great emotional and physical cost, Andrew’s egocentrism begins to take root.  His father, a subdued and protective Paul Reiser, can only look on as his son descends into obsession.  A dinner discussion with his extended family devolves into embittered chest-beating.  Andrew’s girlfriend Nicole, a radiant Melissa Benoist (“Glee”), is left behind for no other reason than that he coldly posits she will become a hindrance to his own greatness if they continue on together.  This last storyline is especially interesting — and tragic — because the same newfound confidence that finally allowed Andrew to approach her is the same confidence that allowed him to drive her away. Nicole’s sad and futile cross-examination of Andrew gives Benoist a chance to shine in a slight but pivotal role.

Chazelle wisely keeps his screenplay focused on the seemingly one-sided duel between the film’s two fireworks displays as Simmons and Teller burn and explode like roman candles without warning.  Their interplay is a joy to behold, albeit a joy tempered by the high tension of a genre thriller with twists and turns skillfully interwoven throughout the film rather than left to become some cheap manipulation of the audience.

The film is beautiful in its rhythms and movements, not at all unlike the music that drives it right up to the cathartic and pulse-pounding ending that is as much an indictment of the sentimental beats of countless other competition movies (“The Karate Kid,” “Hoosiers,” etc.) as it is an acknowledgement of their healing powers.  The film feels seamlessly sewn together, meticulously capturing the stunning movements of a skilled performer without losing its sense of time and place, all in impressive synchronicity with the music itself.

The upside of giving yourself over to someone who will never accept less than everything you have to give is that even the smallest gesture of approval offers the purest and most believable form of encouragement imaginable.  The downside is that such an approach may be far more disastrous than any art is worth.  The film perhaps offers something like an opinion on the matter, but you may not be entirely certain of — or comfortable with — the answer.

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Movie Review -- Dan Gilroy's "Nightcrawler"

“Nightcrawler”

Written and Directed by Dan Gilroy

Starring Jake Gyllenhaal, Rene Russo, Riz Ahmed, Bill Paxton

Runtime of 117 minutes

by Sean H. Campbell

Of the two most interesting male performances of 2014, Jake Gyllenhaal’s Lou Bloom may be superior for its originality.  The other, Tom Hardy’s Bob Saginowski (in the excellent film "The Drop"), was an impressive creation that seemed to heavily channel Marlon Brando in “On the Waterfront,” but it may have a more wide-ranging effect (if the movie is ever seen by anyone).  Gyllenhaal’s character seems to allude to Travis Bickle from Scorsese’s “Taxi Driver,” for instance, and what the performance lacks in iconic potential, it gains in Gyllenhaal’s devotion to character consistency and craft.

The opening scene of the film sets the tone for the rest.  As Bloom cuts through a chain-link fence surrounding a restricted area, he is approached by what appears to be law enforcement officer, flashlight in tow, asking meddlesome questions.  Bloom immediately recognizes the officer is a simple rent-a-cop and applies a chameleonic charm to his half-baked excuses for what exactly he’s doing there. He takes note of the guard’s expensive watch, realizes he’s not talking his way out of the situation, and falls upon the guard, presumably killing him.  In the next scene, Bloom is driving away, an expensive watch on his wrist.  One gets the feeling Bloom kills the guard for his watch as much as anything else.

The film’s premise is startlingly simple.  A psychopath, mimicking human emotion and learning the tools of whatever trade he encounters down to the finest detail, descends into the seedy and morally questionable world of “nightcrawling,” scouring police bands looking for a fresh tragedy to exploit, record, and sell to the highest bidder on the nightly news circuit.

He starts low.  Before he happens upon television news, he sells stolen goods.  When he asks the buyer for a job opportunity, the buyer responds, “I don’t hire thieves.”  When he comes across a fiery crash on the highway, something draws him to it, so he pulls over and watches as two policemen drag a woman from the car just in time.  Two sleazy cameramen (one of them Bill Paxton, who does sleaze very well) rush past him to record the most sensational angles as he looks on, clinically.  Off camera, a jetliner flies overhead, and Bloom’s attention is drawn to it just as easily.

Soon, after countless amateur mistakes brought on mainly by his lack of self-awareness, the hiring of an incompetent partner (played by a very effective Riz Ahmed) desperate for money, and even a typical montage quickly showing his progress, Bloom becomes quite adept -- and lucrative -- at this dark business.  The film’s not-so-surprising secret is in how Bloom uses his psychopathy to become one of the most successful nightcrawlers around.

So, what might at first seem like an unforgettable stylistic journey like Nicolas Winding Refn’s “Drive” ends up being an entertaining but shallow procedural thriller with an easy target: the news media.

The movie's central message is one we've seen many times before, and the convolutions of the plot are obviously stacked in the anti-hero's favor to ensure he will succeed as a twisted entrepreneur thanks to a greedy TV producer (Rene Russo) running with footage that no one in her right mind would accept so blithely.  Eventually a bit of Crime and Punishment slips into the film as well, with Bloom as a sort of techno-Raskolnikov being hunted by detectives who intuit exactly what he has done to get this incredible footage that sells for tens of thousands of dollars, but the storyline never feels terribly fleshed out.  The film isn’t about Bloom’s guilt but about the guilt of the news media that gets away with, ahem, murder.

Still, “Nightcrawler” is an impressive and entertaining thriller.  Gyllenhaal’s sinewy, wide-eyed, alien performance alone is worth seeing, and even if director Dan Gilroy chose to shoot fish in a barrel, at least it was for a good cause.

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Hiroshi Yamauchi, Visionary President of Nintendo for 53 Years, Dies at 85

by Sean H. Campbell

“I have no energy left,” Hiroshi Yamauchi told the gaming press in 2002, and one could hardly blame him.  

Over the course of his seemingly indefatigable 53-year reign as president of Nintendo, Mr. Yamauchi never stopped striving to pull his great-grandfather’s company towards relevance, even when his inherent conservatism and steely sense of purpose proved very divisive to the outside world, a theme still very much in evidence with Yamauchi’s successor, Satoru Iwata.  

Of course, with few major exceptions, Mr. Yamauchi’s direction paid off to the tune of billions upon billions in profit.  At one point, Mr. Yamauchi was the richest man in Japan (worth nearly $8 billion) and the majority shareholder of his company.

Beyond merely acquiring profit, however, Mr. Yamauchi also had a keen eye for talent, and an even keener eye for the value of an idea.  Consider software designer and inventor Gunpei Yokoi, who created taken-for-granted concepts such as the directional cross pad on the original Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) controller.  

Almost twenty years before Mr. Yamauchi dared to unleash the NES in the West after the devastating crash of the gaming market in 1983, Mr. Yamauchi observed one of Mr. Yokoi’s inventions: a lattice-hinged, extending and grabbing arm that Mr. Yamauchi dubbed the “Ultra Hand.”  Nintendo sold one million units that year in Japan.

And so Nintendo was on its way from the handmade karuta and hanafuda cards (you can still buy these today,124 years later) to toys, the notorious and short-lived love hotels, a taxi cab service, and even, in 1992, the ownership of the Seattle Mariners.

In 1981, Mr. Yamauchi was faced with what was likely the defining moment for the company.  During the video game boom of the very early 1980s, Nintendo attempted to capitalize in the arcade sector.  Along the way, Nintendo found it had a hit on its hands in Japan with the game “Radar Scope,” the first game that wunderkind Shigeru Miyamoto helped to develop.  The newly christened Nintendo of America placed an order for 3,000 cabinets, but the manufacturing and shipping process was so slow that the game’s star had already faded, and the weight of these obsolete cabinets would have sunk Nintendo in short order.

Mr. Yamauchi, again relying on his instincts, tasked the relatively unproven Mr. Miyamoto with righting the ship.  So, Mr. Miyamoto set about creating a new character, drawing inspiration from “King Kong” and “Beauty and the Beast.”  Mr. Miyamoto’s standards of excellence were already apparent at this early stage as he had his designers continually rebuild the game nearly from scratch (a philosophy now known at Nintendo HQ as “Upending the Tea Table”).  The resultant product, “Donkey Kong,” was retrofitted into two-thirds of all the “Radar Scope” cabinets, and history was officially made: It became the most pervasive and recognizable pop culture phenomenon since Mickey Mouse: Mario.

It wasn't until two years after the aforementioned games market crash, which had understandably left retailers in the West more than a little gun shy about embracing yet another home console, that Yamauchi put his instincts to their next biggest test.  And again, the three-pronged attack of Mr. Yamauchi’s instincts and direction, Mr. Yokoi’s hardware genius, and Mr. Miyamoto’s creative explosion proved unstoppable, and the Nintendo Entertainment System (Famicom in Japan), replete with a game called “Super Mario Bros.,” took the West by pixelated storm, eventually selling 62 million systems around the world and spawning a long line of quirky and universal gadgets, tumultuous though times often were.

Indeed, Mr. Yamauchi’s business acumen was sometimes tinged with, by many accounts, recklessness and an icy detachment.  One legendary example is found in the nightmarish failure of Mr. Yokoi’s intriguing and borderline debilitating “Virtual Boy,” a parallax 3D “handheld” device that was almost as stunning to behold as it was painful.  Decades after so many successes, this was perhaps Mr. Yokoi’s undoing at Nintendo.  The Virtual Boy, allegedly rushed to market by Mr. Yamauchi before Mr. Yokoi had finished testing, was discontinued less than a year after release.*  Mr. Yokoi left Nintendo soon thereafter, having long planned to retire, but not before designing the massively popular Game Boy Pocket.  Mr. Yokoi was killed two years later in a horrifying highway accident.

The incredible legacy of Mr. Yamauchi is unlikely to be matched in an entertainment sector ever again, especially considering that economic woes and the rise of smartphones have made both traditional hardware and typical pricing schemes increasingly controversial.  With more than four billion games sold just by Nintendo itself, that’s not far from one game for every human on the planet.  Not bad for a man who professed no interest in video games even as he was helping to write all the rules for the entire industry.

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(*Personal note: my family purchased three of the Virtual Boy systems at a local toy store on clearance, marked down from $180 to $30; except for the nosebleeds and a few truly rotten games, we were pretty impressed by the machine’s depth; “Wario Land” alone was worth the [lower] price of admission, and was fairly easy on the eyes, all things considered.)

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"Better Call Saul," the "Breaking Bad" prequel, free from Development Jail

The series would be a prequel to "€œBreaking Bad"€ and follow the morally compromised lawyer Saul Goodman, played by Bob Odenkirk. -- The New York Times

by Sean H. Campbell

Warning: bad legal puns incoming. At the risk of continuing to appear to be a "Breaking Bad" fan site (hey, sue me!), here's the verdict on the much-deliberated prequel series "Better Call Saul" based on the hilarious and incredibly corrupt (also, reliable!) criminal lawyer character. The terrific Bob Odenkirk deserves a starring role of this magnitude, so justice is clearly being done. If it's even half as good as "Breaking Bad," we'll have another obsession, although the jury is still very much out.

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Capsule Movie Reviews -- Woody Allen's "Blue Jasmine" | Lake Bell's "In A World..." | James Ponsoldt's "The Spectacular Now"

by Sean H. Campbell

Woody Allen's "Blue Jasmine"

Another comic drama from the tireless master of neuroses and the human condition. Cate Blanchett gives what is easily the best performance of the year so far, and though the story is more dramatic than comic, it has quite a few hilarious and biting lines in the classic Allen fashion that you'll be quoting. Blanchett's riches-to-rags character Jasmine French is a masterful depiction of a woman adrift in a sea of guilt and shattered expectation. The equally strong supporting cast with the likes of Sally Hawkins, Andrew Dice Clay, and Louis C.K. makes this devastating and very funny film beyond essential.

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Lake Bell's "In A World"

Bell makes her directorial debut in this hilarious and whip-smart comedy about a young woman who finds herself battling her own wildly self-centered father (Fred Melamed) in a voice-over bid for a major new movie "quadrilogy"* (ugh, that "word") that the execs hope to promote with the now-dormant "In a world..." phrase made famous by the late Don LaFontaine.  Bell, who wrote and stars in the film, is a keen observer of both speech patterns and the vapid entertainment that passes for feminist art in the mainstream.  Geena Davis has a very brief cameo and speech that had women cheering "Amen!" in my audience, and the film's tone reminded me of Woody Allen and Albert Brooks.  Also stars Rob Corddry, Michaela Watkins, Demetri Martin, Ken Marino, Tig Notaro, and Nick Offerman.  [*Please, let's drop the word that admen made up for the "Alien" box set years ago and use the word we already have: "tetralogy." Fight the good fight.]

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James Ponsoldt's "The Spectacular Now"

Based on the novel by Tim Tharp, "The Spectacular Now" is that rare coming-of-age story that isn't completely farcical and built for the lowest common denominator.  The movie is funny and witty, but it's also emotionally resonant, thanks to some smart writing and an impeccable cast.  Shailene Woodley, who wowed in the wonderful "The Descendants," takes a big leap forward as the saintly Aimee Finecky (whose surname could not be less apt).  She falls in love with self-described "life of the party" Sutter Keely (Miles Teller), who is still hung up on his ex (a beautifully fractious and indecisive Brie Larson) but who has found himself unexpectedly taken with the brainy and overlooked Aimee.  As good as Woodley is in her role, Teller is the main surprise after having been mired in the kinds of teen comedies "The Spectacular Now" makes every effort to undermine.  His devil-may-care, friend-to-all persona turns out to be a construct that has helped to steer him away from all responsibility, and the root of this problem -- some mysterious "daddy issues" -- proves to be quite powerful, thanks in large part to yet another great supporting role from Bob Odenkirk and Kyle Chandler's best work yet.  Also stars the great Mary Elizabeth Winstead.

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The old and the new. [The Royal Theater, Danville, IN]

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TV Exhibit -- Breaking Bad, Final Season, "Confessions" [Review]

Directed by Michael Slovis

Written by Gennifer Hutchison

Original Air Date -- August 25, 2013

by Sean H. Campbell

As Hank and Marie watch the “confession” Walt handed them after an awkward meeting at a hilariously inappropriate restaurant, two things were going through my mind.  The first is that writer Gennifer Hutchison threw a spectacular curveball by turning Walt’s confession tape into a total indictment and reversal for Hank, and our realization of what Walt has done directly mirrors the reaction we see on screen again.  The second is that Walter White truly is one of the sleaziest, most underhanded, most duplicitous characters in television history.*  

As a viewer, I find my ability to root for Walt after all he’s done slightly terrifying; we really want to believe that Walt is sitting down in front of that camera finally to set the record straight, although nothing in Heisenberg and his past would ever suggest this as a remote possibility.  (Perhaps our inability to give up on Walt is Robert Louis Stevenson’s fault.)  I even found myself imagining, when Walt was weeping into the camera for what Hank had “forced” him to do, that his tears were so convincing because it pained him to set such a devastating trap for Hank.  But set the trap he did, and the Heisenberg we know doubtlessly relished the gambit.

The writers continue to put together scenes that we genuinely want to see play out,† and our expectations are anticipated and leveraged at every turn.  Consider the scene where Jesse and Saul meet at a remote location (Saul, ever the keen observer, says, “Jesus. It’s always a desert.”), where Walt uses his Dad Voice, dreamily explaining to Jesse just how great his life will be when he gets to hit “restart” at so young an age and wake from this “bad dream.”

The parental, wistful tone that Cranston adopts -- and has so many times before -- is stomach-churning at this point, and Jesse’s comatose emotional state finally begins to crack, not least of all because it’s clear that any disagreement regarding this obvious order will likely end in his death.  Jesse almost dares “Mr. White,” still a real father figure to him, to be honest saying, “Tell me you need this!”  The suspense wrung from the scene as Walt walks forward to embrace an incredulous Jesse is suffocating; Jesse’s face clearly indicates he knows what Walt is capable of, but the embrace is surprisingly cathartic.  Walt may even have let a barrier or two down, although we can never really be sure.  His carefully laid plan to remove Jesse still has to be put into action, after all, and now Jesse’s under Walt’s wing again.

We think back a few scenes to the interrogation room when Hank fires a direct hit, one that might even have worked if he hadn’t also been the one who sent Jesse to the hospital after beating him to a pulp (“So long, Rocky!” Saul says as he forces Hank and the police to leave the interrogation).  Hank says, “He really did a number on you, didn’t he?” and we know exactly what he means.

What Walt doesn’t anticipate is that he is just about to make a wrong move, and Jesse is not only slowly coming back to life but about to come completely unhinged.  (Watch Jesse in Saul’s office as he sends him on his way to begin his rebooted life; Aaron Paul’s detached mistrust is masterful.)  If there’s one thing that Walt isn’t used to, it’s being unable to anticipate his next move.  

When Jesse realizes his weed has not only been pickpocketed but replaced by simple cigarettes, he realizes just how deeply he has been double-crossed and manipulated in the past (re: ricin), goes completely nuts, nearly kills Saul and Huell and anyone else who isn’t totally straightforward with him, and the episode ends suddenly and much too soon with Jesse angrily shaking every last gallon of gasoline he has on some poor camera operator throughout Walt’s house.

Meanwhile, thanks to a warning from Saul, Walt is fully panicked, and his brilliantly calculated confession-trap is forgotten.  Jesse is now completely unleashed, his rage directly linked to a mountain of betrayals and his own misdeeds, and Walt knows he’s gone too far this time.  When you see Walt go for a gun and not an elaborate, nuanced scheme, you know he’s in real trouble.

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Broken Musings [and footnotes]:

*Who else even compares?  George Costanza?  I can already see Jason Alexander playing Gale Boetticher in the inevitable “Breaking Bad” musical.

†As I wrote this, I thought, “Well, isn’t that what writers are supposed to do?  Create scenes we really, really, really want to see?”  But, how few do it this well?  How many gleefully throw characters together and watch the sparks fly?

Seeing Walt in his Mr. Rogers sweater at the “Office Space”-style Mexican restaurant was more than a little hilarious.  The waiter trying to sell them on table-side guacamole at the worst possible moment was even funnier.

Junior’s back!

Todd (Jesse “Matt Damon” Plemons) and his recounting of the elaborate train heist is classic, final season myth-making.  That really was a terrific episode, and it’s very gratifying to watch a show that knows its strengths so well.

I found this double exposure photograph of Richard Mansfield, the first actor to portray Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde in 1887, not only intriguing but very apt.

Reference:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strange_Case_of_Dr_Jekyll_and_Mr_Hyde

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_Freight

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With the Essential The World’s End wrapping up Edgar Wright, Simon Pegg, and Nick Frost’s excellent Cornetto Trilogy, The Conversation looks back at how the three films work as a unit.