Mansquito - now in 3-D!

Mansquito is my fave!

Dad and I saw Unstoppable this afternoon (and it was rather weird to realize that we were probably the only patrons in the entire five-screen theatre at 1:00 on a weekday afternoon). The movie was rather good! Not a big thinking film, but it did what it was supposed to do well--gave you good suspense, decent portrayals of thinly drawn characters, and lots of action. I really liked Chris Pine, especially, and this might have been Rosario Dawson's best role in recent years.

Dang, I lost a long post. Let me try again.

I nabbed two movies on cable which had long been unavailable and seem to have slipped from memory.

Both movies were made in 1987, based on major literary works, featuring distinguished casts. And yet neither was released on DVD until 2009.

I've been meaning to see Ironweed for a long time, since I'm a Tom Waits fan and was curious about the novel (Pulitzer Prize winner by Wm. Kennedy). It's set in the Depression in Albany, New York and features Jack Nicholson and Meryl Streep in the lead roles.

It's really a beautiful movie, and despite the subject matter (bottom rung alcoholics on the bum during the Depression), it's not a depressing movie. It is filled with regret, though, as these people are haunted by their pasts.

The performances are incredible. Nicholson was rarely this subtle or nuanced again. And this performance ranks with the best that Streep has ever done. At one point her character sings the song "Me Pal" at a saloon and it's mesmerizing and heartbreaking.

Fantastic supporting cast too including a very young Nathan Lane, Margaret Whitton (best known as the evil team owner in Major League and the cheated on wife in Secret of My Success) and especially the actress who played Annie, the abandoned wife of Nicholson's character.

I was looking at her face and I couldn't recognize her but suddenly it struck me that this woman must have been a great beauty in her youth. And indeed it was Carrol Baker, who had played the title character in Baby Doll in the sixties.

Apparently the DVD that came out in 2009 is quite crappy and taken straight from a videotape. The print used on cable was quite good though, so I recommend you nab it that way if you can.

It's really a gorgeous, and moving film.

The other movie was John Huston's last film, his adaptation of James Joyce's The Dead, starring his daughter Anjelica, script by his son Tony.

It's Joyce's most famous short story and one of the masterpieces of the English language. Again it's very beautifully mounted and shot, and watching these 80s movies I realized how much I resent all the color correcting technology they use in film these days. You never really see natural light or colors anymore in film.

If you're not familiar with the story, its set in turn of the century Ireland, upper middle class family at a big Christmas party. And it ends with the sad, sad story of young Michael Furey as Anjelica's character, Gretta, relates it. Then the ending, which is one of the most beautiful passages in English, perfectly modulated in imagery and rhythm, done as a soliloquy.

Again, very moving and beautiful.

And both films sort of lost from memory. Or at least only known by those who saw them when they came out.

Have you read Ironweed, David? I have the sense that people who read the book first had a different reaction to the film than you did, and most of the people who lined up to watch the film were people who read the novel, which is why it fell flat on its release.

No, Tom, I haven't read it.

I know the movie flopped. I think it also suffered in comparison to Barfly which also came out that year to greater acclaim.

It probably helped to see it without the burden of expectations.

Here's a lovely, contemporaneous review of The Dead.

Here's the last paragraph of "The Dead":

A few light taps upon the pane made him turn to the window. It had begun to snow again. He watched sleepily the flakes, silver and dark, falling obliquely against the lamplight. The time had come for him to set out on his journey westward. Yes, the newspapers were right: snow was general all over Ireland. It was falling on every part of the dark central plain, on the treeless hills, on the Bog of Allen and, farther westward, softly falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves. It was falling, too, upon every part of the lonely churchyard on the hill where Michael Furey lay buried. It lay thickly drifted on the crooked crosses and headstones, on the spears of the little gate, on the barren thorns. His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.

I can almost recite the last sentence, but he loses me at "his soul swooned slowly." No, sorry.

I can almost recite the last sentence, but he loses me at "his soul swooned slowly." No, sorry.

It's definitely a chancy sentence that errs on the side of cheese. But I can forgive it as he was quite rapt in the rhythm there.

But it caught me short reading it too.

Purple prose alert! Purple prose alert! (Isn't there a whole thing about purple prose in Portrait of the Artist? "Madam, I never eat muscadel grapes" ?)