LUCK

Even if I didn't want to see this new HBO show, I couldn't miss it. Last night when I turned on the TV and surfed the movie channels, which include ten (eleven if you count the Spanish dubbed one) HBO channels usually with a different program on each, eight out of the ten were showing LUCK!

It's a David Milch creation (full disclosure, Milch and I have known each other since the late 1960s and were good friends for several decades in there though I haven't been in touch with him in years) with Michael Mann as his partner and directing the first episode which debuted Sunday.At his best, Milch creates some of the greatest TV of our era. NYPD BLUE and DEADWOOD being his most successful, both critically, audience response wise, and for my own personal taste (and again, full disclosure, I acted on both NYPD BLUE and DEADWOOD).

I don't know Michael Mann but love his work (though friends don't like it, his version of THE LAST OF THE MOHICANS with Daniel Day-Lewis is one of my favorite movies, despite the revised history, that's one of its charms as it's almost like an old Hollywood version of history, beautiful stars and settings, though Lewis and Madeline Stowe are also terrific actors).

Together they've created in LUCK, as others have already pointed out, a kind of reflection of the times. Focused so far mostly on the limited terrain of Santa Anita racetrack, and the world of race horses and betting and the usual macho (it's Michael Mann and David Milch after all) bump bump competition of male dominated settings.

Lots of good actors starting with Dustin Hoffman as a kind of mob elder who just did three years and looks like he wants some kind of pay back. I wasn't entirely crazy about his character and what he (or Mann and Milch) is doing with him yet (felt even more that way about Nick Nolte's crusty old horse trainer character), but nonetheless he was pretty interesting to watch as always (I preferred the character he played and should have been nominated for in BARNEY'S VERSION).

Richard Farina plays Hoffman's character's driver and muscle, and does his always competent job. But it's the actors I don't know that impressed me most. And despite the fact that I actually find the track and betting on horses boring at best and aggravating at worst (my father made some book and I used to take bets over the phone and playing the ponies was the major sport I grew up around, but my father ruined any interest I had in it as a kid by rubbing my nose in some of the real consequences of getting too attached to the track and the betting), I still have to admit I found the first episode sucking me in and I look forward to seeing where it goes.

SCREEN ACTORS

This was the first year I didn't watch the Screen Actors Awards. I just forgot it was on. I always enjoy the awards shows because I see old friends from my Hollywood days, or people I worked with, or even old lovers now and then, But in the end, I just like live awards shows because people say things and behave in ways that are often unexpected and revealing and often very funny or very moving.

But I have been thinking about movie acting ever since the other night when I was channel surfing and caught a piece of TAXI DRIVER. It was a scene in the restaurant, or diner, where Travis comes in and other cabbies are sitting there and there's a couple of pimp looking dudes at other tables. It's a classic Scorcese scene in many ways.

The thing is, to me a classic is a work of art I can experience over and over again and it still works and even gets better in some ways as I discover even more to appreciate. TAXI DRIVER doesn't do that for me. I don't like watching a lot of it and catching this one scene made me realize why. DiNiro has a reputation for being a great movie actor who transformed himself into his characters etc.

But for my taste, after the revelation of his first few roles where he did seem amazing, in MEAN STREETS and THE GODFATHER, it pretty soon became apparent, to me at least, that he was doing pretty much the same thing over and over again. TAXI DRIVER was just a variation on that and I find it almost painful to watch. And interestingly, just catching that scene, everyone in it seemed to be overacting for my taste, or at least "acting" as in none of them seemed like a real person really in that time and place and circumstance.

Part of it was the writing, which was pretty lame, to me, at least watching this one scene. But giving the lie to any excuse of poorly written or being a different time and style etc. was the performance of my friend the poet and movie actor Harry E. Northup. Harry isn't a big star like DiNiro, and he is a very humble and grateful actor for the career he has had as just a working movie actor. But in fact Harry's character in TAXI DRIVER was unlike any other character he has played in films, and every other character was unlike the rest of them.

Harry's the great actor. His character was so amazingly present and real in the moment of the TAXI DRIVER scene I watched as he smiled and laughed and probed Travis Bickle or whatever DiNiro's character was called about his working way uptown or whatever, that you wouldn't recognize him as the soldier in MEAN STREETS or the lawyer in TOM HORN or too many other movies to name but most directed by Scorcese or Demme or Eastwood, etc.

Having starred in a few movies myself, no matter how low budget or straight to video or never even released they may have been, and been a character actor with much smaller roles in many more films, I know how hard it can be. It's like someone presenting you with a DeKooning one day and a Picasso the next with a couple of little blank parts and asking you to fill them in. You have to fit your creative impulses into someone else's vision, someone else's perspective etc.

And then tonight I was channel surfing again (I do this during commercials when I'm watching the news shows I like to check out) and happened on MOONSTRUCK and was laughing within a minute and stuck around to see it to the end and not only laughed again and again but was delighted with the writing and the acting as stylized as both were because everyone was consistent, in the same story and movie, as opposed to TAXI DRIVER, and yes it had an ending that was tied up like a bow and it was sentimental and romantic and clever and obvious and whatever words critics might throw at it because it doesn't satisfy their cynicism but instead satisfies our need for some pleasure and recognition of the lighter side of what it means to be human and suffer and fear and even despair and then find a way to transcend all that and find some joy and laughter and even love now and then.

So I was happy when I learned that Viola Davis won best actress for her performance in THE HELP, even though that movie was a bit cliched and unrealistic in many ways about the racist realities of that time and place and once again was from the white perspective of the white star (in this case Emma Stone's character) but it was a moving performance and maybe she won because Meryl Streep, the expected winner for THE IRON LADY and Glen Close who obviously made the bigger bid for an award winning performance by playing a man (or rather a woman passing for a man) in ALBERT NOBBS split the vote. But I was happy that someone else, also a terrific actress who happens to be African-American won.

And then to have best supporting actress go to Octavia Spencer, another black woman, for the same flick, beating out the most competitive category for my taste (Berenice Bejo for THE ARTIST, Jessica Chastain for THE HELP, Melissa McCarthy for BRIDESMAIDS, and the best of them in many ways, Janet McTeer for ALBERT NOBBS) also had a sweetness to the victory.

The big fake out in the male categories was not Christopher Plummer for BEGINNERS, he totally deserved it, but George Clooney's performance in DESCENDANTS losing to Jean Dujardin for THE ARTIST. Sort of the revenge of the French after the beating they've been taking as the right's favorite European scapegoat.

The ensemble award went to THE HELP which may have been going too far. But all in all not a bad evening for well deserved winners.

THE ARTIST

I have friends who weren't as crazy about this film as some critics and audiences are, and obviously the Oscar voters too, since it's nominated for best picture. Even French friends (one of the silent movie era aspects of the making of THE ARTIST is that it stars a French movie star, Jean Dujardinm unknown here, and is made by the French filmmaker, Michel Hazanavicius, who wrote and directed it, but it transcends the limitations of foreign films because it's silent, reflecting the universality of all films in the silent era).

I chose to see it with friends in a movie theater even though I received a disc for awards consideration. It seemed that to give it a fair shot it needed to be seen in a setting similar to the only way a movie could be seen back in the day when the movie is set, the end of the 1920s and early 1930s when the transition from silent movies to sound ones occurred.

Some critics have noted that there's a lot of nostalgia in several of the nominees this year, ala Woody Allen's MIDNIGHT IN PARIS (my favorite movie so far I think), especially nostalgia for the old days of movie making, ala THE ARTIST and HUGO.

But it isn't just nostalgia. Not to my mind anyway. Sure, during troubled times, a lot of us look back to a perhaps idealized vision of the past for consolation, I certainly do. That's one of the reasons I watch TCM, Turner Classic Movies, so much. But there are plenty of other reasons as well, like the artistry of black and white filmmaking back when, as well as different styles of acting and behaving and costuming and speaking and much more.

THE ARTIST pays homage to all of that in ways I found actually equally original and contemporary as nostalgic and classic. There are references to many genres of film from the past and from iconic films themselves, such as SINGIN' IN THE RAIN, A STAR IS BORN, CITIZEN CANE, LOST WEEKEND, and tons more. In fact, I found almost every scene had a reference oblique or direct to a great and sometimes not great film from the past.

But there are also elements of filmmaking and film acting and film editing and directing that seemed original and/or reflective of more contemporary techniques and styles, including the use of sound in a dream sequence and the emotional veracity and non-exploitative aspects of some of the love scenes.

At any rate, I left the theater as elated and delighted and satisfied by the movie experience as I've been by  any film this year, including MIDNIGHT IN PARIS, though I left that film in love with love and THE ARTIST in love with Berenice Bejo, the female star and main revelation of this film, along with her leading man and the one who carries the film and makes its conceit succeed, Jean Dujardin.

There are better known American movie actors in smaller parts who shine as well—John Goodman, Penelope Ann Miller, James Cromwell—but the movie depends on the two stars' performances working as both an homage to old style silent film acting as well as to contemporary taste in film acting and they pull it off perfectly for my taste.

But I recommend seeing it in a theater while that's still possible to get the full impact of THE ARTIST's artistry.

ESKOW NAILS IT

My friend the writer/musician and Huffington Post blogger R. J. Eskow does what I haven't the energy to lately, nails the last Republican debate candidates to their own petards (whatever that means, I never knew, but I knew what it was meant to mean and so do you, I would guess). And does it with humor, clarity, reason, logic and actual facts (and links to sources). Totally worth reading and using in your arguments with any Republicans you still argue with.

Here.

BURT KIMMELMAN'S THE WAY WE LIVE

Among the books I'm reading, I just finished poet and friend Burt Kimmelamn's latest, THE WAY WE LIVE. [full and obvious disclosure: Burt did the interview with me that was recently published in Jacket and you can click on to the right] He's a scholar and professor and a close observer of the details of life as he experiences it.

THE WAY WE LIVE is a small collection of poems that capture those details in quietly lyric ways as seemingly ephemeral as the moments they record. But they're deceptively so. In fact, the poet, who grew up in Brooklyn and now lives in Jersey, has a lifetime of experiences that belie the quietude of his poetry. It's like how really tough guys don't have to act tough, or really smart ones don't have to always be showing off their brains, etc.

Here's two examples of the restrained artistry of the poetry in THE WAY WE LIVE:

Domestic

Cutting board, knife, bread
crumbs in dawn light—she
stood and ate beside
the kitchen sink, then
got back into bed.


Alhambra Steps

Leaving the palace
we descend the steep
stone stairs arm in arm—
you pulling me down,
me holding you up.

MY SOMETIMES MISDIRECTED BUT ALMOST ALWAYS COOL PRESIDENT

I figured everybody had seen this by now. but in case you haven't:


[PS: I love that little humble tilt of the head at the end, it articulates a lot people miss about this guy as a person, not politician.]

MONEYBALL

Okay, so I really need a break from all the politics I've been obsessed with on here lately even though in my real life I always find room for poetry (read some every night) and all the books stacked next to my bed, and music and always movies.

I haven't been posting about some great old movies I've been watching on the usual cable channels, TCM and Retroplex (or whatever it's called) etc. But I also have to catch up on all the discs I've been sent for the movie awards season that I haven't really been that into this year. Maybe it's the films, maybe it's me, but it seems like there just wasn't a lot to get crazy excited about.

But I haven't seen some of the ones getting a lot of attention so I started tonight by watching MONEYBALL, the baseball flick that's really not a baseball flick but a statistics and emerging male midlife crisis over missed or blown or confused or misled or...opportunities...flick.

Brad Pitt is getting most of the attention, as well as the movie itself, as important and award worthy. Pitt's always fun to watch, for me, both as a fan of real movie stars and of great movie acting and the combination of the two, which is perhaps rarer than you'd, or I'd, expect.

Pitt often takes chances (one of my favorite risk-taking performances was his secondary role—to Bruce Willis's—in TWELVE MONKEYS, one of my favorite sci fi flicks, a genre I don't have that many favorites in). But this is one of his less risk taking performances. He may be a little too cute, and incredibly well-preserved, for the role in some ways, that can be distracting, as in what's this guy got to complain about etc. But he goes for it, as he always does, and has moments where he nails a guy who can't get over some wrong choices or failures or missed opportunities or blown opportunities, depending on your perspective and the moment.

But the direction and writing don't support the obvious depth of his character's interior struggle, so all Pitt gets to do is throw things and look like he's trying to control himself when he isn't. But he also looks a lot like he doesn't care which doesn't work and isn't probably what he's going for.

The film has moments that got me feeling that great elation inspiring movies about underdogs winning, or going for it, do, but it also had a lot of flat moments where you wanted something, anything, to happen to fill in the lag. In the end, for me, it didn't live up to its potential. Pitt was like the character he played, Billy Beane, who almost did what he intended and wanted to do but just missed. 

Jonah Hill has a role almost as big as Pitt's so it seems like it should be almost equally as important. But except for his usual I'm just a self-conscious guy who didn't mean to say/do/etc. that kind of mannerism and line reading, and a few moments that were beautifully realized, his character is basically boring.

Phillip Seymour Hoffman is completely wasted as the coach. He has about two or three scenes with a few lines and the rest no lines, and there's no writing or acting to explain what he's doing in the film to move it along. It seems like there's going to be some sort of dramatic conflict with Pitt's character but...it's more of a whimper than a bang.

And Robin Wright has one scene with a couple of lines. One of our greatest film actresses and that's what she gets to do? The girl who plays her character's and Pitt's twelve-year-old daughter, Kerris Dorsey, is terrific, though she isn't really given a lot to work with, and the young actor who plays a catcher turned into a first baseman, Chris Pratt, was a revelation and deserves more recognition.

Another older actor, Vyto Ruginis, was really compelling and so in the moment, any scene he was in came alive in a way the rest of the movie never did. So in the end, it's not a great flick, doesn't deserve any awards unless for the three actors who aren't stars I mention above and even they don't deserve awards but maybe nominations.

But the film, no, shouldn't be nominated for anything in my opinion, nor Pitt's performance, as much as I like watching him. An E for effort for him, but no award or even nomination. there's too many other unrecognized performers who deserve it more this time.

My humble opinion.