Unstoppable

As I've yet to track down a copy of Déjà Vu on Blu-Ray and would prefer to stick solely to that film's considerable merits, I figure I might as well use Unstoppable as an excuse to make a somewhat shameful cinephile confession: I adore Tony Scott. Not his early, more commercially friendly material, mind you, but the increasing chaos of his second-stage work. His work in the new millennium has placed him in the nebulous, bizarre realm between the gauche incoherence of Michael Bay and the sensualist poetry of Wong Kar-wai. Yes, I said it.

Yet where Bay contents himself to roll around in incompetence, stringing together half-narratives out of weightless ultimatums (there's an asteroid! No more questions!), rapid edits designed to mask the formlessness of his shots and a sickening gauze slopped over the whole proceedings -- to say nothing of his cocktail of racial stereotypes and light misogyny -- Scott's films are more tactile and resonant. Though his narratives of late have been just as abstract as Bay's, Scott infuses his films with a focus on emotion, his own lack of clearly defined structure revealing an elliptical plotting than a futile attempt to outpace his inanity.

Unstoppable, then, may be the film to remind people who fell off the Scott wagon when it hit an elevated rail curve in excess of 75 mph. Befitting a movie about a runaway train, Unstoppable is as linear as the path to which that train is bound. Without the narrative-bending worry of time travel to worry about, Scott can devote his full energies and his host of in-camera effects to jazzing up the CSX 8888 incident that occurred in northwestern Ohio in May 2001. But the changes he makes to further dramatize the story bring out some of his pet topics in recent years.

Scott turns the pre-9/11 incident into a post-9/11 one, updating the event to coincide with our altered perspective. And by changing the setting from Ohio to the even more blatantly post-industrial area of southern Pennsylvania, the director creates a blend of the natural and the manmade, the rural areas through which rails run evoking the nation's past and a more prosperous and adventurous time before running into urban decay, the endpoint of America's Manifest Destiny and the rush to industrialize.

When Will Colson (Chris Pine, looking fresh-faced even with his considerable stubble) arrives at his first day on the rails, he finds older workers who've seen that decay get worse over the years. A table of old-timers grumbles over Will's last name, linking him to the union bosses that surely gave this newbie his job through nepotism. Even without that foot in the door, though, Will and other young men likely would have taken their jobs anyway. It's cheaper to start a bunch of rookie labor at entry salary and let them go before benefits accrue than to keep funding the pensions and modestly larger checks of the vets.

Will partners with Frank Barnes (Denzel Washington), who eyes the young man with the same suspicion his friends cast upon the newcomer. Will, the conductor, may be in charge of the freight train they're running that day, but Frank won't let the slightest error go without comment. A Saturday Night Live sketch spoofed the trailer for the film, playing up the overt hints of bromance and grudging-mutual-respect buddy comedy, and Unstoppable certainly contains that element. After hounding Will's ass all morning, the two bond over familial troubles, Frank with his daughters who work at Hooters and care little for their father's admittedly half-hearted attempts to win them over, Will with his estranged wife.

However, Scott's interest in macho standoffs elevates their chatter over mere pablum. Though his explorations of masculinity have never risen above a sub-Michael Mann level, Scott has a keen eye for surveying how men puff out their chests in front of each other; after all, the men in his films always toughen up and preen themselves when dealing with other men far more than they do to woo a woman. Denzel, with his shaved head removing any gray and maintaining the lingering youth of his bright face, teases, almost flirts, with Pine, that adorable young upstart with the most striking pair of baby blues to come along since Alexis Bledel. Part of the reason I never saw Scott's remake of The Talking of Pelham 123 is that the movie that played in my head -- of Scott using Travolta's butch posturing as a means of messing with that latent homosexuality so many see in the actor -- would likely be more revealing than the actual movie, and Unstoppable adds an age component to the mix, creating a faint paternal bond in addition to the usual bromance.

Meanwhile, at the other end of the freight district, the world's laziest train engineer (Ethan Suplee) has the simple task of moving a massive train loaded with enough cars to make it the length, yes, of the Chrysler Building from one area of the storage yard to another. As he only has to move the thing a bit, Dewey does not bother to tie the air brakes on the train, and when he notices a switch up ahead hasn't been activated, he jumps out of the cab to throw it himself. When he moves to get back on, the throttle slips to full speed and he cannot catch up. So now there's a giant train with no brakes barreling down the rails against incoming traffic. Oh, and did I mention that it's loaded with highly toxic and combustible chemicals?

Scott's in-your-face direction works marvelously here, distracting us from the inevitability of the runaway train coming into contact the other trains we see along the way -- the protagonists', a passenger engine carrying school children ironically there to learn about rail safety. He warps the dimensions, rarely giving us a full look at the locomotive and its cargo to emphasize how massive it is. The screech of metal on metal builds in the sound mix, overwhelming the ears and sounding like the beastly howl of a giant monster. When Frank and Will decide to unhitch their cargo and chase after the train in reverse to hook up to its rear and slow the thing down, Scott avoids the dramatic pitfalls that might come with two objects following the exact same path under constant surveillance by always stressing the pain in the men as they struggle to catch up to the speeding bomb. When they hit top speed and still cannot close in, the mounting sense of panic extends to the audience.

Impressively, Scott uses a bait-and-switch to lure the audience into a much tawdrier brand of suspense picture before moving into something much more complex. The trailers advertised the chemical train on a collision course with the one carrying children, but that particular tragedy is averted early on, shifting the focus away from a cheap, exploitative plot to one that calls more attention to the sociopolitical implications of the story. Back at the station, Connie Hooper (Rosario Dawson), the yardmaster, tries to coordinate efforts but is stymied every step of the way by the corporate higher-ups who prove willing to sacrifice lives before profits. While others calculate the human cost of the train derailing on the sharp elevated curve in Stanton that couldn't possibly handle such a massive train at such a high speed, the executives, personified by the company's vice president (Kevin Dunn), cannot even stop thinking about money when considering worst-case scenarios. Thus, the train itself becomes something of a metaphor for a, wait for it, runaway economy, set in motion by those smart enough to know how the components work but too lazy to do the job thoroughly and with integrity, then perpetuated by those who stood to make the most money off the disaster.

To be honest, though, what caught my eye was the masterful and scathing indictment of the "24-hour political pundit perpetual panic conflictinator" as Jon Stewart termed the media in his closing speech at the Rally to Restore Sanity. The use of fake telecasts as a means of communicating plot developments has become increasingly common lately, but Scott plants his tongue firmly in cheek and reveals almost the whole of the film through news. As Dunn's VP and the other executives come up with every more useless measures designed to save money and maybe stop the train too if that would help, the media spends no time trying to get to the truth of their inane actions, accepting a refusal to comment without protest and instead swarming the rail line for coverage. TV station helicopters circle around the train so rapidly and hungrily that one concludes that anyone looking to pilot a chopper for TV news should have military training in advanced flying techniques just to avoid crashing into the other five choppers in the vicinity. Snatches of trite anchor commentary crackles at the edge of the soundtrack as Scott jumps from news footage back to his own look at the action, and we hear fatuous remarks like "That was so crazy!" said with ratings-hungry glee as a man's life is lost in one of the company's abysmal schemes. They sound uncannily like the same pundits who compared night vision footage of the bombing of Baghdad to video games. (I was also particularly amused that Scott made reference to the crutch of news footage as plot device when Dunn throws up his hands in a fit and asks why they can only ever get updates on the train from the news and not their own people.)

Unstoppable may lack the formal daring of Déjà Vu, but it easily ranks among Scott's finest work, a commemoration of post-9/11, average Joe heroism wrapped in the dark comedy of its Ernest Goes to Oklahoma City feel of accidental domestic terrorism. I've wanted to see the film since it came out, but the intervening month has brought a news story that makes the commitment to saving others at the risk of death and lasting injury from toxic fumes all the more apt: I'm speaking of course of the Republican senators voting down health care for 9/11 first responders, denying desperately needed coverage for those suffering complications arising from their acts of selflessness and patriotism. Frank and Will have no reason to risk themselves, the former being edged out to circumvent full retirement benefits, the later brought on solely as cheap labor, but they do it anyway because they would not consider the alternative.

This severity is some of the smartest material to yet appear in a Scott film, but what makes him so endlessly entertaining is that he never devolves into polemics. Fundamentally, Unstoppable has fun with its narrative, taking joy in making vehicles bound to a set route unpredictable. Backup characters like Kevin Corrigan's half-officious, half-amiable safety official and Lew Temple's madman, redneck railroad welder are fantastic and, along with Dawson and Dunn, some rare examples of interesting side players in a Scott film. As for the aesthetics, the washed-out look of muted colors cannot bleach the beauty of his backgrounds, both the forests and the industrial dumps, and they seem even more vibrant when blurred outside the speeding cabs. The only garish element is the yellow safety vest Will wears, which clashes so violently that even Frank demands he take it off in the middle of danger just to avoid insult added to injury.

Scott loves his film grain, and he compounds the hazy look of the movie at the climax by placing a container of actual grain at the back of the runaway train that explodes when the two trains meet, spraying grain over the grain. It's a hilarious, boyish trick that only someone as clever and wry as Scott could pull off in popcorn entertainment, and it's as delightful as any of the more subtle moments in Unstoppable. See it. Otherwise, there will be a hole in your 2010 viewing...the size of the Chrysler Building.

The Night of the Hunter

Charles Laughton's The Night of the Hunter is one of the great works of childhood horror, a Grimm fairy tale as filtered through the Gothic moralism of Flannery O'Connor. But where movies like Pan's Labyrinth and The Spirit of the Beehive focus primarily on the trials and tribulations of youth brought about by a society they can neither control nor comprehend, Laughton's surreal fable is about primal human emotions. As such, it can be as amusing as it is terrifying, occasionally at the same time.

Opening with thunderous and scary music, The Night of the Hunter establishes the dichotomy between its frightening elements and its softer side when the music suddenly evolves into a children's choir singing. Through the lyrics sung in those saintly voices, Laughton plants the idea that the softer voice can be as unsettling as the harsher orchestration, blurring the line between innocence and evil. Instantly breaking from reality, Laughton throws the disembodied heads of children of all races into the sky as a kindly old woman speaks to them, reading from Matthew 7: "Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep's clothing but inwardly they are ravening wolves."

That foreboding melts into the first true scene, which breaks up the sense of childhood idyll of kids playing hide and seek by showing a pair of women's legs laid askew at the top of a cellar when one of the children runs to hide there. We then move to a preacher driving through the West Virginian countryside, engaged in a talk with the Lord. But the bright tone of the man's voice and the penitent image of his upturned head belies the content of his words. He speaks of widows he admits to killing. "Six? Twelve? I disremember," he drawls. The man, Harry Powell (Robert Mitchum), is clearly the false prophet warned of in the prologue, using specifically chosen passages of the Bible to justify his misogyny.

By comparison, the next scene, tracking the poor man driving frantically to his home with cops on his tail, does not seem as sinister, even when we learn the man, Ben Harper (Peter Graves), is fleeing a bank robbery and double murder. He runs with a stack of bills to his son, John (Billy Chapin), making the 10-year-old swear to protect not only his younger sister, Pearl, and their mother but to also guard the $10,000 Ben entrusts to the boy. Sentenced to hang, Ben spends a few weeks in the state penitentiary, where his bunk mate is, why, none other than Harry Powell, convicted of driving a stolen car. After overhearing Ben muttering his guilt in his sleep, Powell tries to con the man into giving up the location of that dough, for the good o' his soul, of course. Once the hangman sees to Ben and Harry serves his 30 days, he heads straight for the Harper home to determine what happened to that money.

Laurence Olivier, Gary Cooper, even Laughton himself considered taking the role of Powell, but Mitchum's casting brings out the maximum potential of Powell's sexual potency. Thirty-seven years old at the time of filming, Mitchum was more than 10 years younger than the other prime candidates, allowing him to project the gravity that comes with age while retaining his rakish looks. Cooper might have been more grave, and Olivier and Laughton's British voices and temperaments could have edged their performances closer to the one Chaplin gave as the misogynistic murderer Monsieur Verdoux. But Mitchum is a sexual monster, as charismatic as he is repulsive, and his screeds against sexual impurity are even more ironic and twisted coming from a man who excites every woman he meets.

His arrival in town, where he poses not as Ben's cellmate but the prison chaplain, sends the folk into a frenzy: Mrs. Spoon (Evelyn Varden), the officious ice cream shop owner, sees Powell as a prime candidate to take the now-widowed Willa's (Shelley Winters) hand to save her from her sinful ways. Though she rails against sex as lustful and something only a man should care about, she clearly reacts to Harry as strongly as Willa herself. Just as Powell himself is the embodiment of false religion, so too does Icey's hypocritical Puritanism force the other characters into dangerous situations. In what seems like days, Powell seduces Willa and the two marry. Willa, being a woman in Robert Mitchum's presence, has to stop herself from bouncing into the bedroom on her wedding night, but Powell angrily refuses sex, dismissing it as a lustful exercise.

Powell's torture of the Harper family is astonishingly complex and disturbing for a film made in 1955. While Pearl's love for Powell is obviously not the same as the sexual longing he engenders in the older women he encounters, she wishes to accept Harry as her new dad, making the pain all the worse when he starts yelling at her in his search for the money. Young John sees through Powell's front, but he too falls prey to Powell's psychological torture, which turns everyone else against him and causes adults to accuse him of lying when he begs someone to believe that Harry is only there for the money. As for poor Willa, she's warped into becoming a mouthpiece for Powell's demented sermons, brainwashed into feeling guilt for her husband's crimes, which the preacher convinces her came about because of her desire for "perfume, clothes and face paint." So addled is Willa that, when she finally discovers the truth, she does not even lash out, accepting this as the price for her salvation. That attitude applies also to her seeming acceptance of her death as Harry slashes her throat for knowing too much.


Laughton, whose homosexual affairs gave him a certain insight into sexual shame in a society that could close in around those whose views on the subject were not sufficiently prudent, brings a deep psychosexual nuance to these proceedings. When Powell heads to a burlesque show in some bizarre, perverse show of fortitude, he reacts to the sight of the woman -- framed as if being viewed through a keyhole, emphasizing the peeping nature of the show -- by jutting his hand into his coat pocket and thumbing the switch on his knife, sending the blade slicing through the fabric. The eroticism is potent, suggesting not only an erect penis but also that the preacher might be slicing through his clothes so he could play some "pocket pool." Mitchum's own voice deepens the character: his echoing, haunting baritone, never more pronounced than here, speaks to pent-up testosterone, a sagging of overfilled testicles begging for release.

When filtered through the expressionistic cinematography of Stanley Cortez, Mitchum's sexual terror magnifies. Through the careful direction, Powell's head takes on a reptilian quality when it drops over Ben's somniloquy, and his painfully arched look upwards suggests that Powell does communicate with some other being, but that the force may simply be a dark voice in his head. That look precedes his murder of Willa, who poses in saintly fashion as she awaits martyrdom for her deliverance (Laughton actually directed Winters to look more "seraphic"), and the scene turns even colder when the camera pulls back to show an impossibly high ceiling as Powell raises his knife. The mind games Harry plays with John condense these grand moments into a more intimate but still melodramatic style. They communicate largely through looks: Powell eyes the boy with suspicion as he tries out a fabricated story of where Ben told him the money was hidden, and the half smirk that tugs at John's face tells Harry, and the audience, that he knows where the money actually is. That giveaway is as suspenseful as anything else in the film, a tell that ensures Powell will hang around.

The sheer atmospherics of the film's horror continue to amaze me. Shots of Powell standing outside the Harper home, his shadow cast upon the wall of the children's bedroom, chill to the bone. One nighttime scene arranges fog shrouding the house as light fails to pass through the soupy mist in such a manner that I wondered if William Friedkin ripped it off wholesale for The Exorcist. Powell's pitch-black suit blends into Laughton and Cortez's deep shadow, further establishing him as a primal, animalistic force of antagonism. Even the more comical moments of Mitchum's performance -- the deliberately ridiculous "LOVE-HATE" tattoos on his hands that he uses for a vapid sermon, his Frankenstein-like amble up the cellar stairs played for physical comedy -- carry an undercurrent of vicious terror owing to the immaculate blocking.

Yet the most impressive aspect of Laughton's direction is how lyrical The Night of the Hunter remains. Rooted in the perspective of the children, Laughton's film attains a childlike purity despite the director's purported hatred of the child actors -- the long-circulated outtakes at last included on home video in Criterion's superlative release show him barking orders at them and even striking Chapin to make his looks of pain more real. The children escape Powell's clutches as he emits an animalistic howl of rage, only for Laughton to contrast Powell's barbarism with actual beasts in nature, seen as John and Pearl row upstream. The real animals, though framed either in the foreground of long shots or in close-ups, do not look threatening even as they communicate their power.

The river trip turns the film from the twisted O'Connor fable into a true fairy tale, one that imposes actual stakes on its protagonists. Whenever they stop to rest, Powell finds them, never directly confronting them but moving around them, preventing them from getting even a moment's peace. And speaking of lyricism: is there any shot so beautiful yet repulsive as the sight of Willa's corpse tied to her Model-T underwater, her hair floating and twisting in the current identically to the reeds around her, the rope that tethers her to an almost comically oversized sinking weight coiling around her like the knife wound that loops around her throat?


The film may take a turn for the simplistic when the children reach Miz Rachel Cooper (Lillian Gish), a kindly old woman who represents true spirituality, but the predictable ending of a good vs. evil tussle cannot undue the subtlety of the statements that continue to be made on religion, violence and greed. Cooper takes the children in to live with the other orphans she's accepted in the hard times of the Depression, and when Powell comes looking for them, Cooper sees through his BS even faster than John did. A midnight siege from Powell pits the wolf in sheep's clothing against the pious servant of God, a tense stand-off that ends in the most unexpected manner: by Powell completely falling apart when Rachel shoots him and causes a minor wound. The farce of Mitchum's volte-face from grave murderer to shrieking coward may actually be the cleverest commentary in the film: like any bully, even the Devil shrinks when fully confronted by those unwilling to back down.

I continue to circle around the moods Laughton maintains in the film, drawn as I am to consider each viewing of this masterpiece my first given how well it always surprises me. Walter Schumann's score and the diegetic music contributes to the movie's lyrical qualities. The use of lullabies and playground rhymes is lilting but complex, containing the darker messages of old rhymes. The opening song and the hangman taunt that other children sing to the Harper kids convey iniquitous malice. Powell constantly sings the hymn "Leaning on the Everlasting Arms." Well, sing isn't the right word; he intones it, such a larger-than-life figure that he breaks the bonds of the film and decides to create his own musical leitmotif. Laughton always places the song into the front of the sound mix, even as he rides his horse in the far background as he tracks the children, his chants rumbling around them like a zombie's implacable moan. So integral to the character is that hymn that the climax first pits Powell and Cooper against each other by clashing their takes on the hymn, Cooper singing an alternate version that namechecks Jesus, a choice that makes her higher voice all the sweeter compared to Powell's drone.

The film ends with Powell in custody, and the sight of the preacher being beaten by police brings out lingering feelings of guilt in John, who suffers a flashback to his father's own abuse and frees the hidden money all over Powell in despair. If Powell gave Willa a Flannery O'Connor-esque grace in her death, so too does John ultimately find salvation through the villain who tried to kill him. At his trial, Powell no longer looks like such a vision of primal sin when the townspeople form a mob around him. Interestingly, Laughton appears to view Mrs. Spoon with more disgust than Powell: the preacher may be a monster, but he's honest about it. Spoon just bases her beliefs on the attitudes of the mob, hypocritically acting as the moral leader of a community when she bends instantly to the shift in mood among those she bosses around. It's a bit of satire that speaks to the comedy sprinkled throughout, Laughton's way of crafting a horrific, scary film, then undercutting the power of evil by pointing out its absurdity.

Befitting the dichotomous moods conjured up by the film, The Night of the Hunter itself embodies one of the greatest contradictions of the cinema: it is one of the key examples of auteurism even as it also stands as one of the strongest cases against the theory. The Night of the Hunter could not have been made without the contributions of Cortez, of James Agee (whose 293-page first draft was cut in half before Laughton decided to make his own vision off of it, though vital insights Agee provided remain), and, of course, Mitchum. Yet they were all unified by Laughton and his uncompromising vision, finding the best aspects of each player and marrying them in the way that only someone far enough away from the different elements to see how they fit together could.

No matter how many times I watch The Night of the Hunter, the meticulousness of its detail can still grip me. The perfectly timed drawl of "Children..." as Powell searches the house for John and Pearl, or the dark comedy of John tiptoeing around Pearl's questions about her mother's fate -- "She's gone to Moundsville," John assures her. "To see Dad?" she asks. "Yes, I reckon that's it" -- are still fresh. Made five years before Hitchcock poured out the remnants of his sexual hangups into the Freudian figure Norman Bates, Laughton's film crafted a far subtler, far more graceful look at the devastating effects of sexual repression, and the director couched it within a number of other themes, to boot.

I haven't cracked the surface of the film's delights, its complicated production and the sad denouement of the movie's unpopular release and the utter tragedy that Laughton would never direct again. The Night of the Hunter breaks every stereotype of "old" movies: it's vibrant, unpredictable, layered and as reflexive as any modern film made by the VCR generation (casting Gish is but the most visible example of the debt the film owes to D.W. Griffith, while the visual lyricism draws on German expressionism, particularly in the silent era). Powered by one of the greatest screen performances of all time, The Night of the Hunter never becomes too enamored with its star attraction, maintaining the childlike POV that allows the movie to work as so much more than a horror film. In so doing, it becomes the most lyrical film made in America since Sunrise.

Merry Christmas & Happy New Year

My dear friends,

I'm finally going on vacation! I really hope to rest with my family for a while, recharging the batteries for 2011! Brand new activities starting on January 8th, 2011. I promise a lot of new grammar activities with attractive movie scenes. Meanwhile, don't hesitate to contact me, for I'll be replying all your comments and clearing your doubts . I wish you all a Merry Christmas and a wonderful new year.

The West Wing — Season 6

After the mediocre (at best) fifth season expanded on the worst aspects of Sorkin's time on the show -- overblown storylines, optimism that verged on reality blindness -- and combined them with a sudden lack of clearly defined direction and an inability to maintain a dramatic arc. The new showrunner, John Wells, fumbled the admittedly ludicrous but dramatically tense finale of the fourth season and he spent the rest of the season trying to recover. Eventually, they found themselves in the same position as the last year, with a finale that sacrificed logic for a desperate grab for suspense.

If the central issue of the fifth season was the sudden upswing in major political problems being wrapped up with stupefying expediency, the sixth season of The West Wing hardly inspires much confidence for a return to the unrealistic but at least vaguely plausible political dealing of the show's early years. Setting a new high for Jed Bartlet's capacity as a groundbreaking leader and a new low for understanding of the complexities of international tensions, the writers use the first two episodes to -- I am not kidding -- solve the bitter struggle between Palestine and Israel. There is some small measure taken to acknowledge how absurd this is and how difficult a peace would be to ensure, but after only a few episodes, even the matter of U.S. peacekeepers sent to monitor the situation cease to rate a mention. It is yet another embarrassing development for a show that seems at this point capable only of making plainly clear the thin line between sharply written off-reality and stilted, cockeyed idealism.

But diffusing one of the world's most dangerous time bombs thankfully does not set a precedent for superhuman achievements on Bartlet's part. Instead, it captures, or at least attempts to capture, the uncertainty of a lame-duck session. After winning reelection despite the massive controversy of lying about his multiple sclerosis and then resigning his post for a brief time to hunt for his daughter without emotionally compromising the position of the most powerful man in the world, Bartlet suddenly finds himself staring down his biggest challenge: retirement.

Unfortunately, the ennui and mounting sense of regret for policies left undone spreads to the pacing of the season. The first half of the season drags so badly I feel as if I could have watched two seasons of the show's early years in the same time span. Compounding Bartlet's feelings of being trapped in the office is the blatant metaphor of a sudden onset of advanced MS symptoms, leaving Bartlet paralyzed for a time and wearied for the rest of the episodes. Had this occurred sooner, the paralysis would have carried weight, impeding his bold plans for bettering America. Instead, it only exacerbates the feelings of aimlessness, miring the series in a loop that works like so: Bartlet discusses fatigue, Abigail begins edging into decision-making in full-on Edith Wilson mode, the staff gently grumbles about not doing anything, and everyone misses Leo, who had a hear attack, because why not?

Whatever shrewdness might have motivated the writers to suddenly scale back the sense of accomplishment and fire to the Bartlet administration, this exaggerated nonsense makes the already struggling series unbearable. One episode, involving Bartlet accidentally accepting the flag of the Taiwanese independence movement mere hours before he must deal with the Chinese on economic and diplomatic issues, manages to rival the badness of the fifth season's gimmick episode "Access" by simply being bad within canon. In some ways, that's even worse than "Access." (And what the hell was with that officious, and nonsensically British, guy down in archives?). Another story of note includes Josh lightly hitting a Prius while test-driving a gas-guzzling SUV, setting off the dumbest media frenzy in the history of Beltway echo-chamber frenzies. This laziness can be seen all over the place, even in minor details such as dragging Lily Tomlin out on location for the Camp David episode and giving her no lines.

Then, something miraculous happens: The West Wing rights itself, and in a wholly unexpected way. Rather than attempt to find that old spark, the writers finally understand that, after five seasons of dramatic arcs and single-episode issues, the show simply has nothing left to say about the Bartlet administration. Instead, Wells and co. turn their attention to the next generation of politics, splitting focus between drudging White House-centric episodes and vibrant, intriguing and rewarding looks at the campaign trail for the Democrats seeking not only to secure the presidential nomination.

Previously, presidential elections on The West Wing were covered primarily through flashbacks of the staffers coming to Bartlet's original campaign. But those episodes concerned what it was about Bartlet that made the characters decide to throw their time and effort behind the then-governor. Here, the writers focus on the nitty-gritty of the campaign trail, treating the mad house that is the election cycle with the same meticulous, if exaggerated, detail with which Aaron Sorkin plotted the inner workings of the White House through the staff, back before most of these decisions were filtered through the broader prism of the president's involvement.

The desire for the staffers to continue working leads to an ideological split: some stay with Bartlet to try and ensure that his last year is as productive and meaningful as his first seven, while others head out to find the next major player. John Hoynes, the disgraced ex-vice president, feels enough time has lapsed from his public scandal to consider a run, especially since his only real competition is Bob Russell, current VP and target for every joke about dumb politicians that people have saved up since Dan Quayle disappeared from the public eye. Will Bailey, who already aligned himself with Russell when he spotted the shrewd politician underneath the bumbling facade, becomes the vice president's primary campaign adviser in addition to being chief of staff. Donna, as fed up with the drawn-out sexual tension with Josh as the show's audience, also jumps onto Russell's campaign.

But the most interesting development is Josh's decision to hunt down a Texan congressman who had been considering retiring from public service while still young to effect more direct change at home. Matt Santos (Jimmy Smits) has no aspirations to run, but Josh's dealings with the representative nag at him until he heads to Texas to convince Santos to run. For the remainder of the season, Josh toils to make his candidate look like more than a joke as more and more come to believe he's running Santos just to split votes from Russell to benefit Hoynes, his boss before Josh jumped onto Bartlet's ship.

The writers based Santos on then-Senator Barack Obama, and it's remarkable how prescient his campaign is: an also-ran against presumptive front-runners, Santos slowly gains ground when he sticks to pushing issues instead of getting bogged down in the usual attacks (remember when Obama's unwillingness to stay on the offensive was a sign of integrity and not a routinely disappointing display of his reluctance to stand by his beliefs?). His unexpected rise throws the Democratic caucus into pandemonium, preventing a clear choice for nomination when the Republicans immediately fall behind Sen. Arnold Vinick of California (Alan Alda).

At last, The West Wing returns to gripping television. Both the confusing nature of the Democratic situation and the plans of the Vinick campaign make for fascinating stories. Part of this, of course, can be attributed to the actors. Jimmy Smits has always struck me as an actor I shouldn't like until he unloads a heap of talent while you're not paying attention. He looks as if acting excites him more than anything, like a boy wondering onto a set in the middle of classic Hollywood and managing to get on-screen. I almost expect him to stop in whatever performance he's giving and wave "hello" to his mother at the camera, and that eternal, endearing boyishness makes him magnetic. When he combines that with the conviction of belief he brings to Santos, I couldn't take my eyes off him, and I noticed more about this actor I adore than I ever had previously. His physicality matches his acting style: slight pockmarks lay off the side of his still-youthful face, adding a hint of wisdom and calm to his enthusiasm. When Santos walks around New Hampshire before the primaries, insisting on discussing policy instead of simply hunting photo-ops with average citizens, he still comes off as the most likable of the candidates.

At the other end is Alda, whose casting as the Republican senator only compounds the unlikelihood of Vinick's complexity. Not only do the writers at last come up with a conservative character who does not serve as a punching bag for our pent-up frustrations with Bush et al., they picked one of Hollywood's most committed liberals to play him. While Santos struggles to stand by his idealism as Josh attempts to soften him, Vinick has the voice of authority of a longtime politician, sticking to his guns even when it could cost him among the conservative base. His commitment to hands-off policy causes him to butt heads with social conservatives on issues like abortion, and his religious doubts lead him to denounce his castigation among the press for not attending church regularly. Perhaps it is a byproduct of The West Wing's tangential relationship to reality, but Vinick's more libertarian policies actually sound as if they could work. Modeled loosely after Barry Goldwater, Vinick lacks his inspiration's hawkish qualities but shares a commitment to fiscal conservatism over the Religious Right and an unwillingness to simplify or soften his message for the sake of easily digestible rhetoric. If Santos comes off as a man of the people, a young gun who can connect seemingly with anyone even if his beliefs clash with his or hers, Vinick emits an authoritative tone, fatherly without being patriarchal.

The caliber of these two candidates makes for riveting television, taking Bartlet's magnetism and splitting between two completely opposed but respectful men. Though the sixth season deals with the tension among Democrats as the race for nomination is too close to call even heading into the Democratic National Conference, one instantly hopes that the final race will pit Vinick against Santos, for the two of them continue to display such honesty that I would set aside any hopes for truly realistic politics just to see what it might be like if two candidates would conduct themselves honorably and truthfully. So enraptured was I by the pair of them that I never stopped to consider that, in real life, we finally got one such candidate in the last presidential cycle, only for him to sorely disappoint on many of the core issues that defined the courage of his beliefs.

If Santos brought up the Barack Obama connection openly, the end days of Bartlet's administration blurred the line of who might best embody our current president. Though Bartlet is entering his final year of a second term having accomplished much, the single year we see in this season mirrors the two Obama has presided over since taking office: Bartlet is besieged by compromise and regret, unable to get anything past a partisan Congress (though at least Bartlet has the decency to be gridlocked by a Republican majority and not a small but militant minority), and idealism takes a back seat to politicking. If the writers called Obama's meteoric rise three years ahead of time, they also anticipated the cynicism that would take foot when certain things beyond the leader's control spiraled out of control and some of the policies he enacted to right them only made matters worse. After suffering through a season I originally pegged as mediocre but not entirely terrible before revising my opinion to something even less positive, I needed to see this shift from dragging plots to ahead-of-the-curve projection. Though it appears as if The West Wing will never return to its original format before its finale in the next season, I no longer mind. By changing course, it saved itself, and I can at last look forward to completing a series that instantly leaped into the high reaches of my favorite programs when I dove into its mesmerizing early seasons so long ago.

Cemetery Junction

Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant, perhaps the most influential comedy writers of the new millennium, have crafted two of the most mature, deeply felt, perfectly paced television comedies in the medium's history. When it comes to the cinema, however, they have a frustratingly childlike view: something about the size of a theatrical screen in relation to that of a television that makes them feel as if they must project something bigger and broader. They both said they wanted a movie to be seen in a theater, not as a DVD, but that ignores the massive shift in the moviegoing consciousness that began when VCR prices dropped in the 80s and has exploded with the advent of the affordable home theater.

That desire to live up to the grander size of the films that inspired them softens the numerable pleasures of Cemetery Junction and turns what could have been a masterful evocation of the duo's extremely natural, extremely cringeworthy style into a modest success that proves entertaining but frustratingly out-of-reach.


And yet, I liked it. Gervais and Merchant's television series were explorations of their fears, of being trapped in a dead-end life (The Office) and of selling out all integrity for a hint of fame (Extras and aspects of The Office). Cemetery Junction traces those fears to their roots, in Gervais' childhood home in a working-class section of Reading. There, the women grow up to be housewives, and the men follow their fathers to the factory.

Terrified of this endless cycle, Freddie Taylor (Christian Cooke) surreptitiously sneaks to the nicer side of Reading to apply for a job at a life insurance company run by Mr. Kendrick (Ralph Fiennes), a man who grew up in the same area as Freddie but managed to fight his way up the ladder. Specifically, Freddie envies the man's wealth, and Mr. Kendrick looks grimly amused at the boy's pluck, a hint of flattery tempered by the suggestion that the man finally his deepest wish: to become a legend back home.

The rest of the film pits Freddie's attempts to step up to the first rung of the corporate ladder while his friends, Bruce (Tom Hughes) and Paul, aka Snork (Jack Doolan), try to prevent him from even climbing that high. They continue to drink all day, get into fights and, in Bruce's case, bed as many women as possible -- poor Snork just never can play his cards right with the ladies. Freddie's ambition is interpreted, somewhat correctly, as bourgeois affectation, and his buddies love to cut him down, asking why the jobs in Cemetery Junction aren't good enough for him.

If The Office launched cringe humor into the mainstream, Cemetery Junction dispense with the humor and keeps the discomfort. These characters have not yet lived enough to draw dark comedy from their lives, simply stewing in misery. Underneath Bruce's rakish self-confidence is a deep bitterness over being abandoned by his mother, which he blames on his dad for not "being a man" and killing the bloke who destroyed their family. Were Paul a twentysomething today and not 1973, he would certainly have been at Wernham Hogg or some company like it, desperately puffing out his flabby chest (complete with a tattoo of a bare-breasted vampire that looks as if it were drawn with a pencil) in a vain attempt to impress people who hate his jokes and everything else about him as well. Gervais and Merchant try too hard to give Paul all the David Brent-esque lines, but it is when he stops trying to be a jokester and actually acts serious that he is most unsettling.

Worst, and therefore best, of all is Mr. Kendrick, a rotted soul who vigorously pursued a way out of Cemetery Junction and now has nothing to enjoy. He traps his wife (Emily Watson) in their lavish prison, preventing her from following whatever dreams she may have had to ensure his dominance. At a trumped-up banquet the company holds each year, he can barely contain his contempt for others, and his half-hearted go at honoring a retiring employee who devoted his entire life to the company is one of the most savagely dark and heartbreaking moments in the Gervais-Merchant canon. Mike (Matthew Goode), the best salesman at the company and fiancé to the boss' daughter (Felicity Jones), follows in Kendrick's footsteps, conniving old pensioners out of their money and disregarding Julie's dreams of becoming a photographer. An early promo for the film featured Gervais with Merchant speaking directly to the audience with Fiennes between them. Naturally, the way they brought Fiennes into the conversation was through Schindler's List, asking "Lot of laughs making that film?" What's funny is that Fiennes essentially plays Kendrick as Amon Göth, ignoring that he's in a nostalgic, lightly comic drama.

The genius of Kendrick's incessant, endothermic attitude stands out even more when compared to some of the more misjudged elements of the film. Paul's one-liners are too offensive for their own sake, to the point that he becomes predictable and the filmmakers lose the element of surprise that made Brent's outbursts so wild that the laughter caught in the throat because you'd swallowed your tongue in shock. Back home, Freddie sits at the table with his family, including his dad (Gervais) and grandmother (Anne Reid), as the poor boy must endure the lazy stream of racism that trickles from his elders' mouths. It's certainly a true-to-life touch, but Gervais and Merch overplay their hand, turning what could have been a funny group into a tedious array of reactionary caricatures.

The entire movie is a tug-of-war inside each character between the desire to get as far away from Reading as possible and the awareness that wherever one goes, it will still be the same. One can see Julie's future in her mother -- Watson's eyes brilliantly convey a deep pain that she has learned to resist but has never gotten used to -- and Bruce's beleaguered father shares more with his son that Bruce knows. But it all feels so generic at times, livened only by fleeting moments, never even full scenes.

The manner in which the film can move from engaging to eye-rolling in an instant is best exemplified by that awful "winner's ball" Kendrick throws to make door-to-door insurance salesmen feel like major stockholders in a Fortune 500 company. Paul manages to get himself on-stage with the band to sing a rousing version of Slade's "Cum On Feel the Noize" that somehow wins over the conservative old businessmen and their wives in attendance. Then, to transition from this joyous break from reality, the film awkwardly slams back into squirm humor as Snork, high on the attention, relates an obscene joke he heard earlier. Gervais and Merchant have the ability to portray comedy from the abyss and to capture an optimistic sense of romance and joy. They've even combined the two, but that only works when they start in the darkness and gradually find their way to the light. Cemetery Junction wants to be light and gently anti-nostalgic, making its odd dips into cringe -- even the gags that work -- feel out of place.

The filmmakers said they based the idea of the film on the lyrics of the Bruce Springsteen song "Thunder Road," which goes a long way toward explaining the massive potential in the film and its shortcomings. Springsteen's songs, one of the purest rock songs ever written, captures an intangible through the power of suggestion: Cemetery Junction is too autobiographical, too narrowly defined, to have the same pull. Yet certain touches resonated with me, like the local police sergeant who has such a rapport with the local rascals that he'll enjoy a pint with them before they get so drunk he has to lock them up. Having convinced the BBC to let them direct their first project despite no prior experience, Gervais and Merchant have clearly grown visually since then, and the half-sepia, half-smoggy cinematography courtesy of Remi Adefarasin is both beautiful and compressing, finding a better mix between the appealing and the repellent than the writing. Overall, the sweetness of some of the performances and the occasional flashes of humor that won out barely won me over, but I found myself too often wishing the film had been less "Thunder Road" and more "Backstreets."

New Moon: Present Perfect x Present Perfect Continuous

The Twilight saga is attractive to students and provides us with different sources for activities. I like it a lot. It is my teen side speaking out loud! I used this scene to practice the difference between the present perfect and the present perfect continuous forms.




WARM-UP QUESTIONS:

1. Have you ever suffered because of a broken heart?
2. How do you react in those moments? Do you prefer to stay home by yourself or go out with friends to have a lot of fun? Explain it?
3. what is worse? To dump or to be dumped? Why?

I. Watch the movie segment and complete the blanks with either the present perfect or the present perfect continuous form of the given verbs. When both are possible, use the continuous form.







1. Bella _________________ (feel) sad for several months.

2. The weather ______________ (change) significantly in this period of time.

3. Both her boyfriend and her best friend, Alice, _________ (leave) Bella alone.

4. The tree leaves ___________ (fall).

5. It ____________ (snow) several times in December.

6. Bella _____________ (miss) her boyfriend all this time.

7. According to Bella, a huge hole ___________ (punch - passive voice) through her chest.

8. She ___________ (cry) several nights since October.

9. She _____________ (write) emails that Alice ____________ (never - receive)

10. Bella's dad ____________ (be) worried about her.


II. Talk to a partner:


1. What should Bella do in order not to be so sad?

2. Is Bella right to react the way she did or is it better to go out with friends and forget about her boyfriend?

3. What would you do if you were in Bella's shoes?

4. Have you ever felt like Bella? Talk about it, if you wish.


WORKSHEET

MOVIE SEGMENT DOWNLOAD - NEW MOON


Answer key:


I. 1. has been feeling / 2. has changed / 3. have left / 4. have fallen / 5. has snowed / 6. has been missing / 7. has been punched / 8. has cried / 9 . has been writing - has never received / 10. has been

Steven Spielberg: Always

Considering what an omnipresent force Steven Spielberg has been in the cinema since he broke through with Jaws in 1975, the relative anonymity of his 1989 romance Always engenders concern before one even pops it in the DVD player. There are underrated Spielberg films, sure, but unseen ones? The only Spielberg movie post-Jaws that I had not seen before this retrospective, Always was both my most eagerly anticipated watched and my most feared.

The film itself deserves neither reaction. Though my initial response in the film's early minutes bordered on total revulsion with its sub-1941 humor, Always pulls itself out of its tailspin ironically as its protagonist dies in a plane crash of his own. The pilot, Pete (Richard Dreyfuss), flies a converted A-26 bomber designed hold water for putting out forest fires that seem to rage every day in the same area. He's the best, and most reckless, flier in the squad, and invariably he returns to base to find his pilot wife, Dorinda (Holly Hunter), thrilled that he made it back alive and pissed that he seemingly does his best to do the opposite.

Their relationship is playful but deep, like two best friends who finally realized how right they were for each other. Pete constantly cracks funny jokes to make up for his somewhat boorish nature, while Dorinda's endless stream of corny one-liners balance a tough but bubbly personality. Pete can make a big show of her birthday despite getting the day wrong, mounting an increasingly impressive set of gestures that would only piss Dorinda off more. And then she can turn around and forgive him when he gets her a sparkling white dress -- "Girl clothes!" she says with her mouth so wide open in joy that whatever dirt she might have had left on her from the day rolls off her face. While much of the quasi-slapstick of the first act falls flat, Dreyfuss and Hunter convey such chemistry that they distract from a number of huge flaws around them. They're just so damn goofy that their adorable quality wins out.

A harrowing crash-landing that opens the film -- a misplaced scene that generates no tension -- Dorinda and the couple's friend Al (John Goodman, who inexplicably serves as a pilot of a plane with a cockpit he could never fit into) encourage Pete to give up this dangerous gig and take up a cozy position over in Flat Rock teaching the pilots who will eventually be sent to put out this incessant conflagration. The moment Dorinda, back home with Pete, launches into a monologue so intense and prophetic it may as well be a soliloquy delivered past her husband instead of to him, the film turns from its weak comedy to something more serious. So sudden is her change that Pete looked as stunned as I felt, and his cavalier attitude breaks in the face of her overwhelming fear. Then, of course, comes one last run, an emergency situation that requires Pete's skill.

For all the pyrotechnics involved, Pete's last flight feels oddly serene, an initially incongruous mood that works when Pete dives his plane over Al's to drop his payload on Al's burning engine and winds up setting his own plane on fire. Pete's last look is, as ever, lighthearted, a "What, me worry?" grin that disappears in a fireball. In a flash, Pete is gone, cutting his life short just as he was getting worthy of the audience's attention.

Ah, but when Pete shuffled off his mortal coil, it appears to have stuck to the bottom of his shoe like a rogue strand of toilet paper. He comes to in a strangely lush and untouched area of the charred forest where a old but beautiful woman (Audrey Hepburn, in her final big-screen part) waits and even cuts Pete's hair -- his first words after he fully comes to terms with his death are "Keep the sideburns." The woman, Hap, informs Pete that she was his guardian angel, and that he shall now counsel others, speaking around the next generation of pilots as the nagging voice in the back of their heads that advises them. Turns out he's going to be that instructor after all.

Here, Always fully picks up. Pete, rascal that he is, heads to Little Rock to guide the pilots, discovering Al has taken the open slot he wanted Pete to fill. He proves as impish in death as he was in life, shouting suggestions for pranks into the ears of those in his vicinity. At last, the comedy in this movie becomes funny, and even if the film suddenly suffers a severe lack of direction, the performances and dialogue ramps up and makes the proceedings tolerable.

To quickly bring together the various plot elements so as to avoid further summary and simply to cut through the meandering, the rest of the film plays thusly: Pete settles on being the angel for an ambitious young stud, Ted (Brad Johnson, who looks a bit like Josh Brolin only without that pesky talent), who appeared earlier in the film when all the pilots wanted to dance with Dorinda and he stared with that lovesick look in his eyes. Dorinda, Ted and Al end up in the same place, and Dorinda slowly starts a relationship with Ted. Pete has to watch this, because apparently one must be tortured into giving up one's vestiges of life before entering heaven. Or maybe God just likes cuckold porn.

OK, OK, I'm simplifying, but Always is such a vexing film. For everything it does right, something else drags, misfires or fails to find any concrete tone. Certain touches have a cleverness, even grace to them -- Pete and Dorinda classing it up by drinking their beer from champagne glasses, incorporeal Pete tricking Al into smearing his face with oil, Dorinda starting to write a "d" at the end of "Peter" so Ted's name appears in her husband's -- and the earnestness of both its romances are touching. But it's trying to be so many movies Spielberg loved as a kid that Always has all the structure of Jell-O. By the same token, Jell-O never falls apart, and the same holds true for the film.

If any one aspect of Spielberg's filmmaking has most caught my eye in this retrospective, it's the director's gift for lighting. When Dorinda jolts awake after having a nightmare of Pete dying, Spielberg cuts to Pete standing by a window in the pale moonlight, his bouncy countenance grows cold and distant. Compare that to the overwhelming orange that engulfs the frame when Pete, Al and, in the end, Dorinda, fly into the forest fires. Always is loosely based on the wartime melodrama A Guy Named Joe, and the explosions of cracking, spitting wood and sudden gush of heat allow the characters to feel like war heroes even when Al tries to get it through Pete's skull that what he's doing is not the same as charging into battle.

My favorite shot of the film captures Pete's attempt to let his wife move on as Dorinda sits in a crash-landed plane having stolen Ted's plane not only to prevent harm from coming to the second man she's loved but in a subconscious effort to kill herself in the same manner that took her husband. As Pete, finally matured through death, urges her to continue living and to find love again, Spielberg places Dorinda in the foreground with normal flesh tones and Pete just behind her. Yet the blackness that dominates the surrounding frame and the colder light on Pete alters the perspective, distancing Pete even as he sits right behind her, as if the director placed Dreyfuss in the background and used a telephoto lens to crush him against Hunter, emphasizing how close the couple are even in death but also Pete's decision to at last leave this world and free his wife. Always itself may be a mixed bag, but this is one of my favorite moments in any Spielberg film.

As a throwback to the melodramas of his youth, Always never manages to tie together its clashing moods of high romance, farce and intense longing, attitudes that those films could inexplicably contain. Though he fills the first act with broad sights such as the men on-base clamoring to wash their hands to dance with Dorinda in her beautiful dress, Spielberg cannot commit to the full spectrum of emotions expressed in a melodrama, afraid to go that far in a time when big and bold acting had long ago fallen out of style. Still, there's something to be said about the quiet delivery of a sappy line like "It's not the dress. It's the way you see me," a decision that makes the corniness of puppy-dog love into something deeper. Always features Spielberg's most subdued direction to this point, but here's a film that could have used his bombast. He was on the cusp on launching into his biggest attempt to be considered a serious filmmaker, but Always marks the first of a handful of entertainment features that exponentially grew in size as he temporarily purged himself of his desire to show people a good time. For that reason, Always marks yet another pendulum swing in the career of a director who could only oscillate so frantically between serious and lightweight because he's so good at both.