The House Next Door

By Jeffrey HillMiss Julie (Bette Davis) is a spoiled young lady who gets entirely too much satisfaction crushing every single taboo she can get her hands on. Not only does she arrive late to a party held in her honor, but then she rides her pony directly up to the hall and enters the ballroom in her riding clothes. Later she attends another ball in a devilish red dress instead of the customary white dress (thus offending 99% of the crowd, particularly the other women). She breaks the “men’s only” rule and enters a bank un-chaperoned. Just about everything that Miss Julie does flies in the face of genteel Southern customs – as if she stepped directly out of a Virginia Slims ad into the antebellum aristocracy. This gal is a hellcat.
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Jeffrey Hill is the art director of The House Next Door and the publisher of Liverputty, where the rest of this article can be read by clicking here.

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1. "Another Study, Another Reason to Drink Red Wine": YES!

["Scientists have found another clue to explain why red wine may be good for you, identifying substances in vin rouge that appear to be associated with increased longevity in parts of France. Researchers have long been fascinated by the "French paradox" -- the fact that French people tend to have relatively few heart attacks despite a rich diet -- and many studies have suggested that a glass or two of red wine every day is beneficial."]

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2. "Critics' Poll(s) Revived, But Not at Voice": Good news from The Reeler blog.

["When it rains it pours on the Village Voice criticism beat -- or at least on the outskirts of that beat: Following the news that internal tumult had snuffed out the paper's annual critics' poll and that interim film editor Allison Benedikt had officially inherited Dennis Lim's old job comes word that Lim is working with indieWIRE to revive a comprehensive year-end survey. The style will evidently not be too different from the list-and-quote format that readers came to expect from the Voice polls; iW is said to have been working overtime for weeks to develop an electronic voting site for invitees, of which Lim said today via e-mail there are more than 100. No specific names were mentioned, but as you can probably assume from Lim's involvement -- to which most observers attribute the longevity and success of the Voice's previous "Take" polls -- the list will be deep and well-connected."]

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3. "DeVito Drunk During Interview?": I'd be drunk too (on red wine) if I had to promote Deck the Halls.

["Danny DeVito appeared on TV show The View yesterday morning still tipsy after a night of heavy partying with pal George Clooney. The star was promoting his new movie Deck The Halls on the show, and admitted he hadn't been to bed the night before. DeVito then cursed his seventh limoncello (a lemon liqueur) from the previous evening and launched into a boozy rant against President George W. Bush, much of which was bleeped out by network censors. The former Taxi star also revealed he and his wife Rhea Perlman made sure to "utilize every surface available" in the famous Lincoln Bedroom when they stayed at The White House as overnight guests of former President Bill Clinton."]

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4. "Make way for the 'Preacher'": The Passion of the Deutch.

["The series was created by Irish-born writer Garth Ennis and British artist Steve Dillon. Mark Steven Johnson, the writer-director behind comic adaptations "Daredevil" and the upcoming "Ghost Rider," is writing the pilot, while Howard Deutch is attached to direct. Johnson also wrote "Grumpier Old Men," which Deutch directed."]

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5. "Violent Video Games May Rev Up Teen Brain": Boy, nothing gets past Fox News. They must've had their red wine today.

["When teens play violent video games, they may get more emotionally revved up than if they play nonviolent video games. That’s according to research presented yesterday in Chicago at the annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA). “Our study suggests that playing a certain type of violent video game may have different short-term effects on brain function than playing a nonviolent -- but exciting -- game,” Vincent Mathews, MD, says in an RSNA news release."]
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"Links for the Day": Each morning, the House editors post a series of weblinks that we think will spark discussion. Comments encouraged.

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By Keith Uhlich

The Complete Jacques Rivette retrospective enters its fourth week at the Museum of the Moving Image (MOMI) with screenings of three of the director's lesser-known 80's works as well as a reportedly seminal masterpiece from the late 1960s. An in-person case will be made for the latter film, L'amour fou (1968), by Chicago Reader critic and Rivette scholar Jonathan Rosenbaum, who wrote in his capsule review:

"[L'Amour Fou] centers on rehearsals for a production of Racine's Andromaque and the doomed yet passionate relationship between the director (Jean-Pierre Kalfon) and his actress wife (Bulle Ogier), who leaves the production at the beginning of the film and then festers in paranoid isolation. The rehearsals, filmed by Rivette (in 35-millimeter) and by TV documentarist Andre S. Labarthe (in 16), are real, and the relationship between Kalfon and Ogier is fictional, but this only begins to describe the powerful interfacing of life and art that takes place over the film's hypnotic, epic unfolding. In the rehearsal space Rivette cuts frequently between the 35- and 16-millimeter footage, juxtaposing two kinds of documentary reality; in the couple's apartment, filmed only in 35, the oscillation between love and madness, passion and mistrust, builds to several terrifying and awesome climaxes in which the distinctions between life and theater, reality and fiction, become virtually irrelevant. In many ways this is Ogier's richest, finest performance, and Kalfon keeps pace with her every step of the way. This film captures the dreams and desperation of the 60s like few others, and you emerge from it changed; it's a life experience as much as a film experience."

L'amour fou was the first of Rivette's features to make use of an extended running time (255 minutes); by comparison, the three other films screening this weekend are a walk in the park, none of them longer than 131 minutes (interesting to note that Rivette has never made a feature film under two hours--we must adjust our preconceptions and prejudices accordingly). I was able to preview the director's masterful adaptation of Wuthering Heights (1985), also called Hurlevent (which translates as "Howling Wind"). From my Slant Magazine review, contributed to the site's ongoing Rivette feature:

"[Hurlevent] is one of Rivette's most stripped down works; emotion is secondary to the film's tight and taut surface (updated to the Cévennes countryside circa the 1930s) where passions flare imperceptibly and a romantic tragedy is performed as if preordained, though this is more than just Céline and Julie Go Boating's haunted house melodrama played straight. Rivette's characters are often held captive by the stage (whether real or imagined), so when Catherine (Fabienne Babe) and her farmhand lover Roch (Lucas Belvaux) run through the fields adjacent to an imposing stone homestead (one of the film's two primary settings), there is a profound sense of meta liberation, of escape beyond the boundaries of narrative (the wind-strewn leaves of grass, counterpointed by the incantatory vocalizations of the Bulgarian choir Le Mystère des Voix Bulgares, might very well be located in the empty margins of the Book of Life). Certain of Rivette's weaker films assume a window-dressed Christian pose (anxiety of influence, I think, from Hitchcock and Rossellini, among others), but here the spiritual inquiry is entirely genuine. The three dream sequences that near-invisibly signal Hurlevent's beginning, middle, and end are as much a holy trinity as they are a thematic backbone; the characters wake from these becalmed and psychologically penetrating visions into a nightmarish reality of Escher-like doorways and windows that lead them over a prolonged and circuitous path to destruction."

Acquarello of Strictly Film School has this to say about Le Pont du Nord (1981), which features the mother/daughter pairing (in service of a seemingly Quixotic quest) of Bulle and Pascale Ogier:

"Integrating the filmmaker's familiar elements of whimsical, quixotic adventure (Celine and Julie Go Boating), integrated - but unresolved - conspiracy (Gang of Four, Secret Defense, and The Story of Marie and Julien), and liberated bohemianism (La Belle noiseuse, La Religeuse), Le Pont du Nord is an effervescent, ingeniously constructed, and infectiously affectionate paean to the city of Paris. From Baptiste's (Pascale Ogier) hopeful sentiment of arrival after encircling the statue of the Belfort lion in Denfert-Rochereau (a symbol of French Resistance against the Germans) that is reflected in Marie's (Bulle Ogier) literal awakening at a random intersection, Jacques Rivette juxtaposes the theme of rebirth against images of Paris in perpetual state of demolition and construction (a state of constant flux and transition that is similarly captured in Jean-Luc Godard's Two or Three Things I Know About Her) that mirrors Marie's own existential state after being released from prison and an unresolved past of radicalism. Rivette further uses the recurring image of spirals - the serpentine form of a sculptured dragon, the weaving of spider webs (that also reinforces the deceptive, "non-mystery" quality to the film), the characters' labyrinthine pursuit of the contents of a mysterious briefcase carried by Marie's former lover, Julien (Pierre Clémenti), the district map of Paris (that Marie observes to resemble a children's board game) - to illustrate, not only the inextricability of destiny, but also the inherent impossibility of starting over."

The odd-man out among the group appears to be Love on the Ground (1984), a Jane Birkin/Geraldine Chaplin theater rehearsal riff that both Neil Young of Film Lounge and Pat Graham of the Chicago Reader find less than satiating. From Graham's capsule review:

"Another of Jacques Rivette's airy formal riddles (Celine and Julie Go Boating, Le pont du nord), involving role-playing artifice, Borges-like fantasy, and suggestions of the magical in a world that resists decoding. A trio of actors (Geraldine Chaplin, Jane Birkin, Facundo Bo) gather to perform a playwright's work in an old, exotic mansion (the wallpaper interiors suggest Larry Poons run riot), but soon find life and theatricality revising each other strangely. Much expressionist-inspired shadow playing here, with a shaggy story line that somehow hangs on the iconographic contrasts of the female leads: Birkin sinuous and wandering, an indefinable androgyne; Chaplin slight, gamin, and precious (it's not the first time Rivette's located narrative in the physical and feminine). Unfortunately, not enough of it comes together, and Rivette's playful openness occasionally results only in playful tedium."

And from Young's lambaste:

"Insufferably pretentious claptrap from the ever-erratic Rivette - whose last three films have been the sublime Secret Defense (1998), the so-so Va Savoir (2001) and the tedious Histoire de Marie et Julien (2003). Love on the Ground, in which a pair of actresses (Jane Birkin as Emily, Geraldine Chaplin as Charlotte) become entangled in the machinations of mansion-dwelling playwright Paul (Andre Dussollier), is cut from similarly shoddy cloth as Marie et Julien. Or, to be more precise, both are prime examples of what we should perhaps refer to as les habits neufs de l'Empereur: Rivette's status as a giant of modern cinema affords him the license to pass off any old tat safe in the knowledge that at least some critics will fall over themselves to hail the complexity of his genius. ... The final straw (for this viewer) arrives in a typically clunky scene which takes place after Emily and Charlotte have fallen out - or is it their characters within the play who have experienced the schism? Fuming at her rival/enemy Charlotte, Emily seizes an egg between her palms and squeezes hard, sending a jet of yolk spurting over her face - a waste of food amid a picture which is, sadly, a waste of everybody's time."

Of course, Rivette fanboy David Thomson was no less harsh on the director's post-Celine and Julie effort Duelle, which this viewer found to be a consummate and invigorating masterpiece. So perhaps with the benefit of some fresh eyes, Love on the Ground will find a little l'amour of its own.

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"Le Pont du Nord" screens Saturday, December 2nd at 2:00pm. "Love on the Ground" screens Saturday, December 2nd at 5:00pm. "Wuthering Heights (Hurlevent)" screens Saturday, December 2nd at 7:30pm. "L'amour fou" screens Sunday, December 3rd at 4:30pm, with an in-person introduction by Jonathan Rosenbaum. The Museum of the Moving Image (MOMI) is located at 35th Avenue at 36th Street in Astoria, Queens County, New York. Click here for travel directions and here for the full Jacques Rivette retrospective screening schedule.

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By Annie FrisbieIt happens in a moment. Her eyes flick down, she takes a quick peek, and I start laughing. My friend Brian is sitting next to me at the Angelika going, “What? What’s funny? What?” I don’t expect him to understand. It’s never happened to him, never will, the lucky bastard. Vivian Abromowitz has just gotten her period all over her father’s new girlfriend’s tapestry chairs.

There are so few movies that get it right about being a girl; Slums of Beverly Hills, starring Natasha Lyonne as Vivian, absolutely does. Her brothers are annoying, her romantic prospects dismal, and her body is totally freaking her out. As bad as things got for Molly Ringwald in the 80s, you never got the sense that she ever worried about smelling weird, or that she ever got razor burn from using an elderly disposable, or ran out of tampons and had to ask Ally Sheedy if she had one to spare. Since Molly was as close to a real girl as I ever saw on screen growing up, I didn’t stand a chance. My daily life was definitely so much ickier than Molly’s. My greatest fear was that Everybody Would Know how gross I was, even though I went to a school with all girls, who were presumably just as gross as me.

The only other period scene I’d ever encountered was the opening of Carrie, but the problem was that Sissy Spacek’s character was just too weird to relate to, girl to girl. I empathized deeply with her desire to be loved and understood, but in that opening scene I felt the same revulsion that the other characters felt towards her, and I believe this was Brian de Palma’s intent. I didn’t want to inhabit a body like Carrie’s, monstrous and alien. Nancy Allen and PJ Soles would never have something like that happen to them, because normal girls aren’t icky. I always did have the sense, however much I yearned for normal, for clean, that becoming a woman meant acknowledging that horror is intrinsic to life. St. Francis of Assisi called his body “Brother Ass,” which means almost the same thing, but adolescence for men, while fraught with its own perils, lends itself far more readily to comedy than to horror. There are humiliations, but there is no blood.

So it’s no wonder that the next time I felt understood by a movie was when I was watching Katherine Isabelle’s Ginger get her period after getting bitten by a werewolf in Ginger Snaps. In the bathroom stall, with blood running down her leg, she says to her sister, “I have these urges, and I think they’re for sex, but really I just want to tear things to fucking pieces.” Some realities are too hideous to deal with because they’re just so relentlessly inevitable, every 28 days bringing a new opportunity to horrify and disgust. It can make you want to lose your mind, like Fairuza Balk’s Nancy in The Craft, just open your mouth and scream and let people know that there’s nothing scarier than a teenage girl who won’t stop screaming, because there’s always something to scream about. Every 28 days.

But that’s no solution, is it? And that’s why Slums is the only one that truly understands. Vivian didn’t scream. She just dealt with it, even though dealing with it meant that Everybody Would Know that she had her period. Her brothers would make fun of her, her dad would not know what to say, the new girlfriend would be upset, but none of that would change the fact that she just needed to get cleaned up and get through the rest of dinner. Some girls can burn things down with their minds; the rest of us just have to live with the ick.
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By day, Annie Frisbie is Senior Editor of Zoom In Online. By night, she’s the Superfast Reader . This is her first piece for The House Next Door.

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1. "Ayn Rand--Donahue Interview": In five parts on YouTube. Thanks to Alex Jackson of Film Freak Central.

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2. "Activists urge boycott of the 'N-word'": That's that lesbian series on Showtime, right? Please also read Steven Boone's take on the movement.

["Kennedy said that though the movement to end the use of the word is "well-intentioned," one would never hear the most dangerous and reactionary racists use the word. "There is something troublesome going on," Kennedy said, "when this amount of energy is targeted toward people and a phenomenon that in the overall scheme of things is probably marginal." Ironically, the publicity over Richards' tirade may help spur sales of "Seinfeld: Season 7" on DVD, which Jackson encouraged holiday shoppers to refrain from buying. After less than a week on the market, it had zoomed to the 11th most popular DVD selling on Amazon.com.]

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3. "X-Men illustrator dies in Superman pajamas": He better hope Wolverine isn't a pallbearer.

["Wearing Superman pajamas and covered with his Batman blanket, comic book illustrator Dave Cockrum died Sunday. The 63-year-old overhauled the X-Men comic and helped popularize the relatively obscure Marvel Comics in the 1970s. He helped turn the title into a publishing sensation and major film franchise. Cockrum died in his favorite chair at his home in Belton, South Carolina, after a long battle with diabetes and related complications, his wife Paty Cockrum said Tuesday. At Cockrum's request, there will be no public services and his body will be cremated, according to Cox Funeral Home. His ashes will be spread on his property. A family friend said he will be cremated in a Green Lantern shirt."]

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4. ""Sunshine", "Half Nelson" lead indie film nominees": The American art-house world's version of the Oscars, huh?

["The hit road comedy "Little Miss Sunshine" and the acclaimed drug-addiction drama "Half Nelson" led the list of contenders on Tuesday for the Independent Spirit Awards, the American art-house world's version of the Oscars."]

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5. "Let's add homewrecker to Borat's list of credits": Cultural Learnings of Anderson for Make Benefit Glorious Divorce from Kid Rock.

["After the screening, Anderson's friend told the Post, "Bob started screaming at Pam, saying she had humiliated herself" by making the movie, and then, in front of the audience, called her a couple of names usually reserved for women you see walking the Tenderloin early in the morning. "It was very embarrassing," Pammy's friend added. "Ever since that night, it has been icicles between them. ... Bob is just a very unhappy and angry man. There are reasons why she never married him before. Those reasons disappeared while they were together on a boat in St. Tropez, but she knows now that they never went away.""]
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"Links for the Day": Each morning, the House editors post a series of weblinks that we think will spark discussion. Comments encouraged.

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By Todd VanDerWerffWhen it debuted in 2005, the U.S. version of The Office (Thursdays at 8:30 p.m. EST) was held up as an example of how to get a remake almost right. It wasn’t the instant failure of Coupling -- an NBC remake of a BBC series -- but it wasn’t a huge leap forward on par with All in the Family (based on the British sitcom Till Death Us Do Part). Part of the problem was that NBC's The Office -- based on a British classic that put its pitch-perfect cast, headed up by Ricky Gervais, on the map-- was essentially a one-joke concept that brilliantly executed every possible variation on that joke; it ended after 12 episodes and two specials, and there wasn't a dud in the bunch. Thanks partly to the limitations imposed by the U.S. business model -- which requires 100 episodes for a viable syndication sale -- the NBC version seemed more fluid and less focused.

That has mostly changed. If the U.S. Office hasn’t yet bested its UK ancestor, it stands shoulder-to-shoulder with it; different from but equal to its inspiration, it takes elements from the British version that could be Americanized, discards the rest, and turns the format drawbacks of the U.S. model to its advantage.

For instance, in the UK Office, the background characters were just that. They got little character development, popping in to offer a funny line or crucial bit of exposition. The U.S. Office, however, has treated the insatiable demands of its production schedule (22 half-hour episodes per season) as an excuse to develop every character, no matter how seemingly marginal, into a finely honed little archetype. Some bit players have even moved beyond that, particularly Jim (John Krasinski), who epitomizes the American working stiff who holds onto a job he's ambivalent about because he does it well, and because a major career shakeup is too big a risk. Even the U.S. show's most minor character, Creed (Creed Bratton), sports a degree of shading that the more compressed UK Office could not permit. Plus, while the British series was more realistic (the more severe antics of Rainn Wilson’s Dwight wouldn’t have flown in Gervais’ version), the U.S. Office depicts a broader sweep of humanity.

The other way in which the U.S. Office has outstripped its forebear is in its portrayal of the show’s romantic heart -- the subdued flirtation between Jim and Pam (the alluringly dorky Jenna Fischer). The original offered us roughly the same storyline between Tim (Martin Freeman) and Dawn (Lucy Davis, now slumming in a terribly underwritten role on Studio 60), but the end point of that storyline was never in doubt -- Tim and Dawn were going to get together by series’ end, overcoming romantic foils in Dawn’s fiancee, Lee (Joel Beckett), and Tim’s briefly-courted girlfriend, Rachel (Stacy Roca).

The U.S. Office retained the basic setup until this season. Pam, who was engaged to a lout named Roy (David Denman), rebuffed Jim, who turned around met a new girl named Karen (Rashida Jones). But in contrast to the Tim-Dawn dynamic, these developments aren't minor bumps on the road to togetherness, much less pro forma gimmicks meant to prolong the standard will-they/won’t-they dynamic. When Dawn left Lee, we were given little reason to care about his feelings; Lee was simply a jerkish fiance who deserved his comeuppance and then got it. In contrast, while Roy was played as a jerk for the first two seasons of the U.S. Office, he's gained depth this year; he’s still the high school jock gone to seed, but he also seems genuinely committed to winning back Pam through random acts of kindness (like getting her out of insufferable meetings and bringing her lunch). The show also showed, in small details, how the cancellation of a wedding affected both characters, something most TV sitcoms with aborted nuptials can't be bothered to do. (For instance, they’re working their way through the meals they'd ordered for the reception, eating them one at a time.)

More interesting, though, is the burgeoning relationship between Jim and Karen, which has mostly been hinted at (the only physical contact we’ve seen has been Jim’s hand on Karen’s back) and played offscreen (in keeping with the show’s conceit of being a workplace documentary, even if the U.S. version’s longevity makes that conceit less credible by the week). In the UK series, Tim couldn't get serious about Rachel because his true passion was for Dawn (the U.S. version played out this arc in Season Two, with Amy Adams as a spectacularly bad match for Jim). Karen, in contrast, is a carefully constructed character who's meant to win viewers over rather than earning their hate. She plays video games with the guys, she's a bit nonplussed by Jim’s mugging for the camera, and when she wants him, she makes her feelings known with a directness Pam could never muster. She’s an incredibly reasonable alternative to the almost-too-sitcommy drama of the Jim/Pam pairing. Of course thwarted flirtations like the one between Jim and Pam exist in the real world; but how often do they lead to meaningful relationships beyond high school or college, especially when it’s impossible to directly express one’s feelings (as Jim finally did to Pam in the season two finale, leaving her speechless and driving him away)? The Jim/Karen relationship feels surprisingly adult -- a mutual understanding based on two people saying, “Here’s what I want.” If you doubt the the Jim/Karen matchup is richer and more durable, just imagine them groggily sharing coffee over the morning newspaper 10 years from now, then do the same with Jim and Pam. The former makes more sense every time.

This is not an attempt to declare a “side” in the series’ relationship wars (though, apparently, you can buy shirts), nor is it an attempt to make the whole show about its central relationship (the comedy the show turns out is consistently hilarious). Rather, it’s an attempt to get at what The Office really seems to be getting at. The original version was, really, a romance wrapped in a big faux-verite bow. Yes, your job sucks, and yes, your boss is an idiot, but at the end of the day, you’ll find love and realize one or two of your dreams and even that hated boss will find some measure of redemption. The new clash at the heart of the U.S. Office isn’t just between the Jim/Pam and Jim/Karen pairings -- it’s about gradually discarding gooey notions of romanticism that TV often sells us and replacing them with a more realistic ideal. Naturally, no one expects the series to end with Jim and Karen or Pam and Roy together, but for this season, at least, The Office's realism goes beyond its shaky camerawork.
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In its third season, the CW’s Veronica Mars (Tuesdays at 9 p.m. EST) has managed to reinvent itself as a show that’s easy for new viewers to jump into, yet it's still struggling to find viewers, even with the dream lead-in of Gilmore Girls. While I liked the convoluted gymnastics that fueled Season Two’s big mystery, I can see how the sheer volume of information might have driven away the uninitiated, and the show suffered as a result (it plays better on DVD). In response, creator Rob Thomas and his writers amped up the smaller mysteries that drive the individual episodes and created mini-mysteries to drive smaller arcs, the first of which ends tonight.

Unfortunately, the episodic mysteries have always been one of Mars' most uneven elements, and this season is no exception. While the episode with the sorority growing medical marijuana ranked with the series' best hours, the one where Veronica (the still prickly, still great Kristen Bell) fretted about her boyfriend Logan (Jason Dohring) and his mysterious ways was a yawn. The absence of key supporting players (who are used sparingly, as the show doesn’t have a big enough budget to feature them all in every episode) has led to a curiously disjointed feel; it's Veronica vs. the world. And the first mini-mystery -- Veronica trying to uncover the identity of a serial rapist -- has been a mixed bag. It's well-plotted, and original in its insistence that people who seem like college types, from dumb frat boys to militant feminists, are more complex than they seem. But there have been inexplicable lapses in logic, and the portrayal of the feminist group is troubling (why, exactly, did they fake some of the rapes?).

What Veronica Mars does better than almost any current series is give you a sense that it’s building to something big. Tonight’s episode, hopefully, will satisfy that craving by revealing the rapist's identity and shattering the Logan and Veronica relationship (which sounds fine -- Dohring and Bell are better at sparring than appearing to be in love). Despite its lapses, Thomas' series is a snarky triumph -- film noir filtered through 80s teen comedies, then pureed -- and you forgive a lot when it shows Veronica bonding with her father (Enrico Colantoni) or letting her guard down long enough to reveal the girl who wishes she could return to the time when her best friend was still alive.
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Ron Underwood, director of such films as Tremors and City Slickers, isn’t known for his strong visuals, but his B-movie credentials make NBC’s The Year Without a Santa Claus (Monday, Dec. 11, 9 p.m. EST) all the more inexplicable. Underwood and the network have inflated a story that was already too slim for a one-hour Rankin-Bass special into a two-hour movie that meanders through some of the cheapest production values you’re likely to see this year.

Somehow, this project attracted something approaching an all-star cast. John Goodman would seem to be a natural for Santa, but his St. Nicholas is uncomfortably reminiscent of the manic Santa from You Better Watch Out (a.k.a. Christmas Evil). His costars -- Delta Burke as Mrs. Claus, Eddie Griffin and Ethan Suplee as elves are underwritten, and the actors give pretty much the performances you'd expect based on their past work (though Griffin’s character has an odd affection for Dr. Laura, mostly so the producers could get Dr. Laura to cameo, I guess). Harvey Fierstein, Michael McKean and Carol Kane turn up as Heatmiser, Coldmiser and Mother Nature, respectively, and are even less intergral to the remake than they were to the original (they're probably in the movie so they can sing the song, which is the only thing most people remember about the first one). NBC missed the mark completely here; they would have been better off reviving the cartoon.
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Here’s an early heads-up on Sundance’s intriguing new documentary series, One Punk Under God, which debuts Wednesday, Dec. 13 at 9 p.m. EST. While this isn’t quite the revolution in televised documentary that Sundance’s The Staircase was, it’s a largely fascinating examination of religion in America through the eyes of Revolution Church minister Jay Bakker, son of Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker of the embattled PTL Club. The younger Bakker is trying to heal his still-fractured relationship with his mother and father while trying to fund his church (a task complicated by his mix of liberal and conservative politics, which alienates pretty much every source of money). Bakker's attempts to turn his church, which congregates weekly in a bar, into an instrument to spread his faith are largely fascinating; so are are his conflicts with established religious officials who bridle at his views and tattoos, and his relationship with his wife, who doesn't share his enthusiasm for the whole Jesus thing. In the first episode, when Bakker tromps around what remains of Heritage USA, the theme park/resort that was the focus of the scandal that destroyed his father, the sequence becomes a metaphor for a Christianity that dreamed big in the early 80s and found most of its leaders in shambles by the end of that decade. Surprisingly, though, One Punk Under God avoids the expected cheap shots at religious hypocrites. It's about the children of big Christianity trying to reconcile their views with a world their parents inoculated them against; while some have abandoned their faith, others, like Jay Bakker, have tried to incorporate that world into their faith, opening their hearts to the unconventional and odd, much like the man they say they follow.
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House Next Door contributor Todd VanDerWerff is the publisher of the pop culture blog South Dakota Dark.

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By Sean Burns and Andrew Dignan

Andrew Dignan: Hey Sean, how was your Thanksgiving? Even though I'm 3000 miles away from my family, I find the holiday still moves along with the same ebb and flow, encompassing the same old routines. The turkey's always dried out. The Detroit Lions always get blown away. The Black Friday sales seem a whole lot better when you're not fighting with a fat soccer mom for the last X-Box 360 (by the by--fat soccer mom: 1, Andrew: 0). And of course the studios release a slate of cuddly holiday films sure to be kicking around the mall movie theaters through the Christmas season. You know, like the one where a bald Hugh Jackman hurtles through the galaxy in a giant bubble doing yoga in-between snacking on tree bark.

Darren Aronofsky's The Fountain, which is perhaps the trippiest, most psychotropic, big-budget extravaganza since the Johnson administration is both impossible to dismiss outright and, unfortunately, equally difficult to take seriously. Coming six years after the filmmaker's Requiem for a Dream, which--depending on who you're talking to--either established Aronofsky as a pariah or a wunderkind, The Fountain has traveled a notoriously difficult path to make it onto screens in time for turkey day. As a result, I can't help but wonder how much my admiration for the director's past work and the sheer bravado of getting Time Warner to release something so doggedly personal and impenetrable is shading my feelings towards the film. Certainly the film has difficulty standing on its own merits. Set predominantly in the present where Jackman's brain surgeon buries himself in his research to save/avoid dealing with his dying wife (Aronofsky squeeze Rachel Weisz), the film's high-concept storylines set in 16th-century Central America and an indeterminate future feel woven in simply to expand upon the paper-thin characters. Employing something of a Junior High Goth's concept of both love and death, the film can be distilled down to "embrace the inevitability of your own demise and appreciate the time you have," which has been covered a time or two previously without the benefit of Mayan temples and exploding nebulas.

Aronofsky's aesthetic dynamics are still on display, specifically his use of repetition to bridge the three stories and a score by Clint Mansell that builds to a near Wagner-ian furor, but the heart of the film is the relationship between a husband and wife--two characters with roughly one-and-a-half personality traits each whose every line of dialogue can be tied directly into the film's overarching themes of death and rebirth. The director got away with using ciphers in Requiem because the subject was blunt and universal enough (drugs are really, really bad) that character dimension wasn't a large prerequisite. But in approaching something as intimate as this, simply alternating between obsession and resignation doesn't allow for the same sort of empathy by proxy. I doubt you'll see a more straight-faced, ambitious or earnest film this year, but ultimately the film works itself into such a frenzy to say very little. So Sean, as someone who's gone on record as loathing Aronofsky, what's your take?

Sean Burns: Holiday Greetings returned, Mr. Dignan. You might be 3000 miles away, but rest assured, everything's still exactly the same out here on the East Coast. I feel bloated and hung-over, most of my family seems to be angry with me for reasons I (perhaps fortunately) cannot quite recall, and working at a movie theater on Black Friday is a surefire way to sap even the most generous soul of any hope regarding the future of humanity itself. (I dearly look forward to seeing Children of Men this week, just so I may cheer on our inevitable extinction.) As for The Fountain, let me be polite for a change and say that I find it slightly less difficult to dismiss than you do. I'll agree that it's indeed a miracle Darren Aronofsky somehow got a major studio to fund such an audience unfriendly, unsatisfying, undisciplined, self-indulgent wank-off, but on the other hand, you can say the same thing about a lot of bad art, including our new favorite whipping boy Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip.

You've called me out as an Aronofsky hater from way on back, so I guess that gives me license to recycle our usual Requiem argument, which I believe holds true once more for The Fountain. There's a very off-putting, posturing arrogance to this still-young filmmaker's work. He strikes me as having no real interest whatsoever in creating compelling characters or telling actual stories, instead working backwards from shallow, over-arching sophomoric "concepts", all of which are locked long beforehand into rigid geometric camera techniques (watch those cuneiform tracking shots in this outing) and overly-diagrammatic, repetitious editing patterns that all add up to... well they all... umm, okay fuck it--your guess is as good as mine.

As you noted, "drugs are really, really bad“ and if that's enough reason to make any sentient being sit there for two hours enduring the endless, blunt-force trauma of Requiem for a Dream then I'll see you one Kids and even raise you a Thirteen, as far as bullshit, empty alarmist cautionary tales go. The Fountain is indeed a very silly, spazzy film and I think we're all cutting it a little too much slack just because it's so weird and strange when going about its particular silly badness. This is an exquisitely awful movie: It is not so much a story as it is a premise, with Hugh Jackman fighting against Death and getting nowhere in multiple centuries, and the more Aronofsky pounds away on that same one note the less convinced I am that Jackman can actually act his way out of a paper bag--particularly when he's bald and levitating.

Weisz just doesn't register--it's one of those roles where you can tell the filmmaker is in love with her and thus thinks you are too. (Call this the "Ed Burns Casts His Girlfriends Syndrome.") But her "hey whaddaya know" American accent is disastrous, and she simply doesn't have enough presence to fill in the many, many blanks. Jackman is even emptier--it's tough even to tell that the longhaired swarthy conquistador is the same actor as the floating bald-headed Buddha guy, and that's not a compliment. So what exactly are we supposed to take away from all this? The overarching message struck me as the same banal Hollywood formula pieties we already fought over in Stranger Than Fiction. Like all three Darren Aronofsky movies I have seen thus far, everything onscreen--most especially the characters and their unfortunate situations--remain a distant second to the formal (cough) innovations and achievements of one Darren Aronofsky. He earned his rep quick-cut conning a generation that never heard of Bob Fosse, and now he's gone and made his own Solaris For Dummies. Nice to see nobody's buying it anymore.

AD: There are dozens of reasons people might be cutting The Fountain some slack: It could be a response to the immature catcalls at Venice or that the mainstream press has by and large hammered the film as pretentious and dull. I also think there's something of a "Led Zeppelin's lyrics" type of response where it's perceived that anything this mystical and ethereal must have something important to say deep down, so better to show restraint now than look out-of-touch down the road. But personally, I'm pleased simply by the idea of this film fighting for theater space with The Santa Clause 3 and I still want to encourage this sort of filmmaking-without-a-net even if The Fountain largely falls on its face.

We've butted heads over the relative merits of Aronofsky seemingly hundreds of times and this is the first time I find myself inching over to your side of the aisle vis-a-vis how little the man has to say and the energy he expels in saying it (although I'll still doggedly defend Requiem as one of the most effective pieces of subjective filmmaking I've ever seen). The Bob Fosse accusation is more a slam directed at cineastes who've let him slip into semi-obscurity than a slight against Aronofsky though. Considering half the people who visit this site are De Palma fanatics (you and I included) and the guy never met a Hitchcock set-piece he didn't pilfer wholesale, obviously what differentiates something as a rip-off versus an homage remains frustratingly elusive.

But back to The Fountain for a moment. If you look at every film Aronofsky has made, they all seem to address obsessive-compulsive (even when chemically enhanced) behavior and self-destruction, two conceits that don't lend themselves well to sentimentality and swooning romanticism. Much as Jackman's brain surgeon is trying to apply rigid, precision to solving his wife's sickness, I think the film itself is too caught up in its own head-space to work either as a romance that spans time or as a tragedy. We enter Tommy and Izzy's story after their tracks have diverged and we never get a sense of the great love that's dying with her (the film's attempt to bridge this gap comes in the form of Chris Nolan-style flashes of a vital Weisz running through their apartment); the film is so thematically focused that heartfelt conversations between the two invariably descend into lectures on Mayan folklore and astronomy. The film can't conceive of these two characters as anything other than chess pieces moving around the board to make some cosmic point when what they need to be is human beings at their most vulnerable.
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SB: Speaking of people with nothing to say, the new Christopher Guest movie, For Your Consideration, is truly awful. I've felt like the Guest troupe has been running on fumes for a while now, but this picture announces some sort of dark, nasty rock bottom. It's a snide little piece of mockery, one completely devoid of the humanity and specificity we saw in This Is Spinal Tap or Waiting For Guffman.

Catherine O'Hara stars as a has-been actress starring alongside never-was, hot-dog spokesman Harry Shearer in a dreadful looking indie called Home for Purim. (If that title makes you smile then you're in good hands here, as Guest seems to feel that Jewishness is, in and of itself, inherently hilarious.) When some random website predicts an Oscar-nomination for O'Hara, the hype machine takes over and this entire production spirals out of control.

Andrew, as you actually work in Hollywood, so I'll leave it to you to recount the thousands of ways this picture misses some very broad, very easy targets. Instead I'd like to stay with how sour the movie is, and how sad it made me feel. I've had mixed feelings about a lot of the Guest company's previous films, but I was still always rooting for his hapless, medium-talent characters until now. The folks in For Your Consideration are all empty, selfish assholes, and they deserve every bad break that comes their way. The very hint of awards recognition makes them completely insufferable and the film seems deliberately fixated on reveling in their every last ugly-close-up squirm when things don't work out according to plan. All these years after Guffman, Guest has finally made the movie his detractors wrongly accused him of making at the time: poking fun at nobodies for the awful crime of having dreams. It's telling that once The Office and Curb Your Enthusiasm started to beat Christopher Guest at his own game, the best he could come up with in response is an 86-minute episode of The Comeback.

AD: Truly a mean-spirited, ugly little film. Not always a bad thing when it comes to comedy, but laziness certainly is. There is a sad little year-round cottage industry dedicated to tracking a film's Oscar chances from the moment a film is conceived (to wit: Dave Poland over at Movie City News has been crowing about Dreamgirls being a lock to win best picture since Eddie Murphy was cast last January), with quality largely removed from the equation. But Guest really has nothing to say about that, nor the long precession of meaningless kudos-fests that precede the Academy Awards, nor the hundreds of other asinine peculiarities that legitimately exist in the putrid dog and pony show that is Oscar season. Instead this is another go-around with his ever-expanding troop of oblivious losers who improv themselves into a lather hitting the same off-key note over and over again.

I read in this week's Entertainment Weekly that Guest doesn't watch award shows and hasn't read anything about the industry in fifteen-years, a premise that's unbelievable until you actually see For Your Consideration. Not only am I convinced of it now, I'm pretty sure he's never stepped foot on a film set either. Rife with backstage antics that were probably howlers when Desi Arnaz marched them out back in the 50s, the film is proudly anachronistic, going for cheap giggles about how none of these people know what the Internet is, know how to use cell phones or own televisions, and then watching them squirm as they're forced to mince about on TRL or whore themselves out on the talk show circuit. The film depicts its actors as principled babes in the wood until they become shrill harpies surrounded by sycophantic dullards. As you pointed out Sean, these are sad, over-the-hill artists whose great sin is they long for recognition after a lifetime of obscurity. Guest has made a career out of mining the failures and self-important grandeur of those on the fringe of showbiz but he's never invited outright scorn like this before.

The Jewish thing is just craven and indicative of the film's nature to go after the easiest target available. The jabs are delivered just softly enough that no one will really complain (lest they be seen as not having a sense of humor about themselves), but depict the religion as alien and grotesque enough that the middle of the country can work itself into gales of laughter over hearing labored Yiddish or watching a bunch of people in silly hats crank noise makers to block out Hamen's name (my God, has that ever happened outside of Hebrew school?) You want to impress me in the year 2006? Make it Home for Ramadan.
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AD: Playing at the other end of the multiplex, to no doubt a markedly different audience, is George Miller's Happy Feet, which has been cleaning up at the box office for the past two weekends, as cute, anthropomorphic-animal cartoons invariably do. I'm a 25-year old guy with no kids, so unless one of these animated films come with the Pixar or Aardman seal of approval I usually steer clear. But I'd been hearing a low rumble that the film was some sort of subversive masterstroke only pretending to be a kid's flick in the same vein as Miller's Babe 2: Beyond Thunderdome was, so I bit the bullet and endured a chorus of screaming small children to check the film out.

What I got was a shiny-new-penny of a CGI film that makes uneasy bedmates out of March of the Penguins and Moulin Rouge! while still operating under the same rusty conventions as when Dumbo flew. The film veers into terrifyingly morose territory in the final leg (I imagine it might be difficult to drag the little ones to the aquarium after this one) and contains a handful of kaleidoscopic, manic set pieces as our hoofin' hero dives down the face of glaciers and through a series of underwater crevices, but Happy Feet feels strictly from the "plush toys and soundtrack available for purchase in the lobby" school of filmmaking.

There are no doubt cultural parallels to our outsider striving for acceptance against rigid community leaders, but Christ, you could say the same thing about Footloose and that doesn't require you to sit through two Robin Williams ethnic voices or Brittany Murphy's singing. Also, am I nuts or are they just making this thing up as they go along? Everyone may have complained about how creaky Cars was, but those Pixar guys know how to structure a film. Happy Feet plods along from one unmotivated adventure to the next with little dictated by character or action. Everything may work out for our feathered-friends, but I have no idea how or why.

I suppose there are worse things to subject your children to than a small cuddly bird tap dancing to Stevie Wonder (with choreography by no less than Savion Glover), but as an unaccompanied adult forced to endure accusatory glares from parents and having your seatback kicked for 90-minutes, why is this film worth seeing as opposed to one of the other dozen animated films Hugh Jackman is currently doing a voice for?

SB: Well, you seem not to have noticed that this is absolutely the weirdest goddamn thing I've seen in ages, and that includes The Fountain. Say what you will about George Miller as a storyteller, but as in Thunderdome and Pig in the City, the man has a knack for creating fully thought-out, exceedingly bizarre worlds, ones in which the characters don't really stop to explain their odd customs or wacky alien syntax to the audience. Happy Feet made me wish I still smoked weed.

It's also loaded with weird signifiers and subtexts, as the little penguin who is born different and thus can't participate in his species mating rituals, but is a fabulous dancer (gay maybe) is ostracized by the stringent religious order and accused of causing the fish shortage by offending their God with his threatening, unnatural practices. After the little guy brings back actual empirical evidence regarding their environmental problems, the elder churchy folks still stubbornly refuse to believe him and just pray even louder and harder, thus setting up a nice critique of our current, depressing science vs. religion debate aimed at the pre-school through Kindergarten set. And yes, that aquarium sequence you mention is indeed chilling, complete with strange 2001 voices and creepy insertions of actual photography into the film's otherwise breathtaking CGI vistas. That said, I'll concede that the storytelling is on the shaky side. And no argument here: Robin Williams needs to go far, far away for a very, very long time.

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1. "Biff's Question Song": Thomas F. Wilson of Back to the Future fame on all those pesky fan queries.

["What's Michael J. Fox like?/He's an alien./Stop asking me the question."]

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2. "Superman Ultimate Collector's Edition DVD replacement program": From the Digital Bits news wrap-up. Thanks to Ross Ruediger.

["Bonus content was omitted from the Superman III Deluxe Edition in the 14-disc Superman Ultimate Collector's Edition. Furthermore, disc one of Superman: The Movie Four Disc Special Edition did not include the Dolby Digital 2.0 mix. Neither disc is known to be physically defective in any way. Warner Home Video wants to extend apologies to all of our loyal Superman fans who've waited so patiently for these great collections and has taken immediate steps to correct these errors with the intention of standing behind our product 100%. Replacement discs can be obtained by calling: 800-553-6937. The exchange program applies only to purchases of the Superman III Deluxe Edition in the Superman Ultimate Collector's Edition and to disc one of Superman: The Movie Four Disc Special Edition, available as a single title, as well as in The Christopher Reeve Superman Collection and in the Superman Ultimate Collector's Edition."]

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3. "Room to Dream": In which some of the peripheral characters from David Lynch's Inland Empire discuss...

["You're here, right?"]

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4. "Bollywood star guilty of weapons charges": From CNN's news page.

["Bollywood actor Sanjay Dutt was convicted on Tuesday of weapons charges in connection with a series of 1993 bomb blasts in India's worst terror attack. At the same time, Dutt was found not guilty of the more serious conspiracy charges in the 1993 bombings that killed 257 in Mumbai and wounded hundreds more. The Bollywood star had been charged with conspiracy, illegal possession of arms and trying to destroy evidence connected with an attack which shook India's financial and film capital."]

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5. "Soderbergh Gets the Bronx Cheer": Well, he'll always have Paris.

["New Yorkers are a tough crowd -- at least when it comes to Steven Soderbergh's latest picture. The director got the Bronx cheer at a DGA New York screening of "The Good German" followed by a Q&A Saturday night. The people who showed up seemed either familiar with Paul Attanasio and his adaptation of the book and/or intrigued by the movie's theme that depicts the post World War II race to nab German scientists between Russia and the U.S. The negative reaction seemed to stem from the film's emulative stylization and the uneven acting."]
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"Links for the Day": Each morning, the House editors post a series of weblinks that we think will spark discussion. Comments encouraged.

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1. "When Nostalgia Works": Estevez vs. Altman via Rosenbaum

["After seeing this movie's premiere at the Venice film festival I defended its guts and intelligence to a French critic who described it as "sub-Altman." I see it as "sur-Altman," especially if compared to Nashville, another film with 20-odd characters that concludes with a cataclysmic and seemingly unmotivated assassination. Despite its reputation as an exuberant classic, Nashville knows zip and cares even less about country music or the city of Nashville (where it was shot) -- which doesn't prevent it from heaping scorn on both. It even ridicules a dowager who tearfully reminisces about John and Bobby Kennedy, and it shamelessly encourages viewers to share its contempt for the rubes. The relentless cynicism that Nashville brandishes as proof of its hipness ultimately gives way to glib, high-flown rhetoric in the climactic repeated shots of an American flag filling the screen while a nihilistic pseudocountry anthem, "It Don't Worry Me," builds to a crescendo, asserting the concert audience's unembarrassed cluelessness."]

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2. "Rock Concert To Honor Princess Diana": Helen Mirren and Justin Timberlake will duet on SexyBack.

["British Princes William and Harry are planning a charity rock concert next year to honor the memory of their late mother, Princess Diana. The concert, to commemorate the 10th anniversary of Diana's death, is being planned for the new Wembley Stadium, and could feature appearances by Madonna, Beyonce Knowles and Kylie Minogue, the Mail on Sunday reported. A tentative date of July 1 has been set. That's when construction of the nearly $1.5 billion London stadium is expected to be completed."]

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3. "'Nativity Story' is First Feature Film to Premiere at Vatican": I hear the after-party was killer.

[""The Nativity Story" is the first feature film to premiere at the Vatican with some 7,000 people to screen it. The movie describes Virgin Mary's pregnancy and the trip she and Joseph undertake to Bethlehem, the town of Jesus Christ's birth. Current Pope Benedict XVI did not attend, but a number of cardinals did, along with local dignitaries."]

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4. "South Korea to kill cats and dogs over bird flu fears": *sniff* ;-(

["South Korea plans to kill cats and dogs to try to prevent the spread of bird flu after an outbreak of the deadly H5N1 virus at a chicken farm last week, officials said today. Animal health experts, however, suggested it was “a bit of an extreme measure” when there was no definitive scientific evidence to suggest that cats or dogs could pass the virus to humans. Quarantine officials have already killed 125,000 chickens within a 1,650-foot radius of the outbreak site in Iksan, about 155 miles south of Seoul, the Agriculture Ministry said. Officials began slaughtering poultry yesterday, a day after they confirmed that the outbreak was caused by the H5N1 strain."]

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5. "Spike Lee Boosts Sports Journalism With New School": From today's IMDB news wrap-up.

["Moviemaker Spike Lee has launched a new initiative at his former college in a bid to flood journalism with African-American sports writers. The sports fan is a member of the board of trustees Morehouse College in Georgia - a private, historically black liberal arts school - and used his weight to prompt a new journalism school and curriculum. Lee insists newspapers need more black sports writers to match the growing number of African-Americans playing professional sport."]
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"Links for the Day": Each morning, the House editors post a series of weblinks that we think will spark discussion. Comments encouraged.

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By Barry Maupin"You're telling me how I can’t do it, not how I can," freshly minted Mayor Tommy Carcetti (Aidan Gillen) snaps at a city accountant who lists the impediments to giving the police a raise. Carcetti ambushes the offices of Baltimore's various public works departments (one lounging around to the sounds of Men At Work) and orders respective remedies for an abandoned car, a playground hazard, and a leaky hydrant without disclosing specific locations, sending panicked city employees scurrying in search of a problem. He shows up at a police roll call to personally announce a pay hike and the termination of meaningless monthly quotas for arrests and citations (unlike the other city workers, the beat cops remain undeterred by the mayor's eminence, pelting each other with verbal spitballs and sassing the new initiative's staying power). Col. Cedric Daniels (Lance Reddick), tapped by Carcetti to make over the homicide division, joins his girlfriend, Assistant State's Attorney Rhonda Pearlman (Deirdre Lovejoy), in addressing the detectives with the promise of "certain enhancements" and an ear for new ideas. "A new day," Sgt. Jay Landsman (Delaney Williams) muses with a twinkle of skepticism as his colleagues swarm the new bosses with congratulations. "They make a nice couple anyway."

Carcetti's momentum hits an early snag after a bad stop and search of a connected reverend by Sgt. "Herc" Hauk (Domenick Lombardozzi). Two factions of matching stature make the penance a lose-lose calculation: go soft and rankle the black church scene or fire Herc and lose the rank-and-file cop. "It’s a balancing act," Carcetti's chief of staff, Norman Wilson (Reg E. Cathey), interprets for Deputy Commissioner Rawls (John Doman), who shovels the chore to Daniels with an artful rendering of his own. "City Hall just wants someone to do the right thing, whatever that is." Daniels clicks his pen and digests the burden that grows with his rank.

Rawls does Carcetti's bidding on the mistaken notion that he's in line to succeed Commissioner Ervin Burrell (Frankie R. Faison). When Col. Stan Valchek (Al Brown) refers to Daniels, however, as "The anointed," Rawls' bewildered look sends Valchek into a fit of derisive laughter. Valchek may be the only one in the department who can read the tea leaves better than Rawls, who suffers a blind spot when it comes to his own liability. "It’s Baltimore," Valchek reminds him. "You ain't one of the natives, are you?" Daniels' verdict on Herc (sensitivity training and extra duty), on the other hand, won't generate much political suction with the ministers, an opening Burrell exploits in his play to hang on. He drops the police rulebook on Carcetti's desk and with it his own greatest strength: digging for dirt. Burrell suggests firing Herc for something other than the car stop to appease both parties and save Carcetti the fallout. "The man has worked narcotics for six years," he lays out, "and in narcotics, there are no virgins."

The quartet of eighth-grade boys at the center of The Wire have their own way of dealing with bad police. When Officer Walker (Jonnie Louis Brown) shoos the boys from the sidewalk where they're enjoying some Chinese food, the cumulative ill will from Walker's outlaw brand of justice inspires some like-minded retribution. Michael (Tristan Wilds) concocts a scheme to turn Walker's lust for the chase against him, and the boys gather to perpetrate it in a scene that charts the full range of the group dynamic. Randy (Maestro Harrell) stalls in his house, then encourages a silent Dukie (Jermaine Crawford) to bail on the plan to save himself the dishonor; Namond (Julito McCullum) taunts Randy's delay, cloaking his own fear in bluster; Dukie looks at the ground as they walk, speaking up only to defend Michael's judgment when Namond questions it. When the trio arrives at Michael's house, Namond casts a sideways look to see if one of the others will back out. Michael challenges Namond with a choice of masks and Namond grudgingly takes one as he did in school earlier in the day—a blind backward plunge standing in as an act of courage.

At the plan's climax, while Namond has Walker facedown in an alley at gunpoint and prepares to dump a bucket of paint on him, Michael improvises a further indignity, pulling the bandana from his face as he steals Walker's ring. Michael is the fifth person to come into possession of the ring this season, its forcible transfer less a function of its monetary value than as a declaration of the upper hand. For Michael, the theft—like the exposure of his face in the act—speaks to his growing sense of power to affect events in his favor in the aftermath of his abuser's violent death.

Michael rides the unbeatable vibe when he throws down with a group of boys tormenting Randy for snitching. As the fight erupts, Dukie races back into school to alert Prez (Jim True-Frost), their math teacher and the only authority he trusts. When Prez, a former cop, breaks up the fight, his disturbed look is for more than the blood on Randy; Prez knows he's the one who put Randy in this mess by getting him to tell the police what he knew of a murder. Randy is so defensive about the snitching charges that he thinks he needs to justify his actions even to Prez, who—beginning to sense the perilous atmosphere he helped create—tells Randy not to say another word. "Will that make it better?" Randy asks hopefully. Det. Bunk Moreland (Wendell Pierce), the lead on the murder investigation, comes to Prez when he discovers the root of Randy's silence and accuses Prez of siding with the criminals. "No," Prez shoots back, "I'm siding with my kids." Only the avuncular presence of Det. Lester Freamon (Clarke Peters) coaxes the necessary details out of Prez.

Lester once mentored Prez in the Major Crimes unit, which is now being reconstituted under the supervision of Daniels, who lures a bitter Lester back into the fold with the promise of carte blanche control. "Motherfucker, as far as I'm concerned, you are the Major Crimes unit," Daniels clarifies. Lester pays a late night visit to the empty building which houses the unit's current incarnation and studies the pictorial hierarchy of the drug organization of Marlo Stanfield (Jamie Hector), the photo array and the investigation abandoned in place. In a back office he finds a box of returned subpoenas issued to prominent real estate developers for a case he spent months building. Lester puts his feet up on the lieutenant's desk and reads the names, an image intercut with shots of the same developers pitching and grinning with the mayor at a benefit. Lester grabs the box and leaves, shutting off the lights. He pauses for a moment, then flips the lights back on as a sly announcement of his return.

Meanwhile, Lester is helping Bunk pick through the mess of his case left by Herc, who debriefed Randy and discarded his testimony as useless before letting his identity slip out to the street. "The thing right now is for you to remember everything you did on this case," Lester prompts Herc. "From the beginning." Herc dreads the prospect—not just the idea of having to regurgitate all his blunders, but to Lester. Herc details a car stop of the suspects that yielded no weapon other than a nail gun, a triviality to Herc. Lester accompanies Bunk to the playground Prez mentioned from Randy's account, where he surveys the vacant buildings on all sides, their windows and doors boarded up with rusted fasteners. One door is sealed off with fresh spikes, sending Lester to fetch a crowbar with which to pry open the victim's tomb.

Lester isn't the only threat heading Marlo's way. Omar Little (Michael K. Williams) and his boyfriend Renaldo (Ramon A. Rodriguez), who specialize in robbing drug dealers, trail Slim Charles (Anwan Glover), trying to gauge his connection with Marlo after seeing the former adversaries together. They track Slim to the electronics shop of yet another big-name player in the drug trade, Proposition Joe (Robert F. Chew), stirring Omar's concept of the pending caper's potential. Renaldo begs to abort the stakeout so he can use the bathroom, running afoul of Omar's disciplined methodology. Omar produces a roll of toilet paper and some philosophical advice: "Whether you squattin' down or sittin' on the porcelain throne, don't really change the moment now, do it?" Later, they follow Joe and Slim to the Holiday Inn conference room and a gathering of the "New Day Co-op," a coalition of Baltimore's major drug dealers. "Oh, do tell," Omar savors at the sight of Marlo coming up the sidewalk as well. "The world done came full circle." The target is still Marlo (a consequence of his framing Omar for a murder and then putting a jailhouse bounty on his head), so Omar and Renaldo sneak up on Joe at his shop with guns drawn and demand that Joe serve up his new partner. Joe's cooperation is cinched when Omar threatens to reveal that Joe once tipped him off to Marlo's lightly guarded poker game. Omar insists on a simple plot to better distill the network's exasperating complexity, so Joe proposes to apprise Omar of the time and place of a major delivery to Marlo, with his nephew, Cheese (Method Man), as go-between.

Halfway through the episode is a beautiful one-off scene in a fast food joint, a hymn to an old-school ethic. Officer Jimmy McNulty (Dominic West) spots young street hustler Bodie Broadus (JD Williams) in a back booth at an off-brand eatery and veers over with his takeout for a seat. Bodie shrugs assent and admits to laying low from the heightened police presence. "Not a good day to be cross-eyed in West Baltimore," McNulty concurs. "Y’all behind in your quotas or some shit? What the fuck?" Bodie pries. McNulty explains a cop got jumped the night before. Bodie already knows about Walker. They share a stifled laugh. Like Bunk and Omar, McNulty and Bodie form an unlikely kinship; a chance encounter on a street corner early in the season ended with McNulty practically patting Bodie on the back for escaping the wrath of Hamsterdam with a plea of entrapment. McNulty gets a burglary call on the radio. "Don’t go making any furtive moves," he alerts. "No doubt," Bodie nods through a mouthful of fries. "Don’t break a pencil point." They part, a pair of refugees from another day.

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By Matt Zoller Seitz
Part sci-fi head trip, part swoony romance and part pop-philosophical manifesto, The Fountain is a gusher of poetic imagery, extravagant yet controlled. Hugh Jackman plays three incarnations of a hero: a conquistador trying to find the Fountain of Youth, a present-day cancer researcher who's in denial over his wife's impending death, and a 26th century astronaut piloting a translucent starship into a disintegrating nebula believed to be the gateway to the afterlife. But because the tales are not merely intercut, but densely interwoven -- with images from one section being quoted, alluded to or expanded upon in another -- The Fountain feels less like an anthology of thematically similar short stories than variations of the same narrative developed on parallel planes. When the movie cuts away from one period, you feel as though the story is still moving forward even though you're not there to see it. Every scene -- indeed, every shot -- has been composed, designed, blocked and lit for maximum aesthetic oomph. You can envision the storyboards pinned on a production office wall, each drawing accompanied by a typewritten sheet explaining why every creative touch, however seemingly small, is integral to the film's vision.

But the go-to lazy critic phrase "Every frame is a painting" won't do here, because it implies the possibility of absorbing what's in front of you while it's in front of you, and this film makes such perceptual spelunking impossible. Writer-director Darren Aronofsky's imagination apparently has just one mode, fast-forward; like his first two features, Pi and Requiem for a Dream, The Fountain unreels like the longest and ripest of movie trailers; Aronofsky and his regular editor, Jay Rabinowitz, hold each image long enough to register, but rarely long enough to penetrate and astonish. Aronofsky's pedal-to-the-metal approach suited Pi, an enigmatic mathematical-philosophical puzzle, and Requiem for a Dream, which might be the greatest drug movie ever because its form is dictated by the character of addiction, which prizes the satisfaction of appetite over everything else. But The Fountain is, in theory, a much more introspective movie -- a romantic-philosophical-spiritual quest -- and as such, Aronofsky's approach seems as counterintuitive as zipping through St. Peter's Basilica on rollerblades. Though the film's 96-minute running time might sound like a plus, there were many points when I wished The Fountain wasn't in such a hurry. A film on themes this universal is entitled, even obligated, to linger -- not on every moment, but on moments that put allusions and foreshadowings and visual rhymes aside and concentrate on the hero's feelings at the moment he feels them.

But would a more relaxed, meditative approach have revealed greater depths? I doubt it. The Fountain isn't as conceptually rich or as philosophically complex as Solaris or 2001 or even The Life Aquatic (to name three movies that strain after cosmic significance). And it's not as achingly emotional as A Prairie Home Companion, All That Jazz or the dumb but powerful Somewhere in Time, to name three films about death, love and the limits of mortal control. The Fountain's express-train-to-profundity approach seems more like cover for a movie that's not as fully conceived or fully felt as it could be. I don't doubt it was a deeply personal project for Aronofsky; he spent six years struggling to get it made. But what's onscreen too often struck me as theoretical and not lived-in. Aronofsky's prismatic story is rooted in primal emotions and sutuations -- a man's grief over his wife's death, his guilt over not appreciating her in life, and his obsessive five-century quest to defeat death and find a way to reunite with her. On paper, that's one of the most imaginative illustrations of Elisabeth Kubler-Ross' second stage of grief -- denial -- in movie history. Unfortunately, while The Fountain is dazzlingly constructed (dazzling in the sleight-of-hand sense; more on that in a moment) what's onscreen feels like a reconstructed version of a legendary movie that was lost or butchered. It's a movie comprised of indicators of emotions rather than actual emotions -- an outline of a heartbreaker.

No one can accuse the film of lacking ambition. The 26th century thread, which has the trippy majesty of a Heavy Metal story, finds the astronaut Tom (Jackman), a pale, bald dreamer, heading toward a dying nebula. His spaceship looks like a soap bubble but functions as a greenhouse; the bottom half of its interior is a hemisphere of earth and nutrients, providing sustenance for Thomas and a mystical gnarled tree whose significance will become clear as the movie unfolds. As he travels, he passes the time by meditating in zero gravity, air-kissing the tree bark (its tiny tendrils, charged by static electricity, straighten and reach for Tom's lips like neck hairs awakened by gooseflesh) and practicing tai-chi (a lovely image, with Tom's graceful figure silhouetted against a starfield that seems to be falling like snow behind him). Tom also cuts pieces of bark from the tree and cooks it down into a drug (the closeups suggest the smack preparation scenes in Requiem) and has conversations with a ghostly woman (Rachel Weisz) who keeps entreating him to "finish it." These rituals feel familiar, even warm, although we don't yet know their scientific or emotional significance. Aside from the ghost woman's appearances -- which despite their enigmatic presentation, have a thudding, Six Feet Under literalness -- you may feel a rush of anticipation.

This sense of promise can also be felt in the movie's 15th century Latin American sequences, which find Tomas (Jackman), a conquistador, searching for the source of immortality in order to save Queen Isabella (Weisz) from death at the hands of the self-flagellating, heretic-killing religious fanatics who've taken over Spain. Like all three sections, this one is conceived in the broad-stroke terms of a hallucination (or a silent movie). Tomas and his men penetrate the vine-choked base of a temple and enter a narrow stone passageway that proves to be a trap; natives surround and decimate them, leaving only brave Tomas to push forward, hacking his way through bushels of enemy soldiers until he reaches the base of a ziggurat's terraced side. If Matthew Libatique's voluptuously dark, grainy photography and Clint Mansell's pulsating synthesized score didn't clue you in that you're watching an allegory, the next sequence of shots leave no doubt: from Tomas' POV, the ziggurat seems to stretch upward forever, practically disappearing into starry sky, and when Aronofsky cuts to a long shot of Tomas' antlike figure climbing toward the structure's peak, toward a duel with a soldier guarding the fabled Tree of Life and its immortality-bestowing nectar, the image is so storybook that it earns a grin. It doesn't look real and it isn't supposed to. Like the analog special effects in Bram Stoker's Dracula and the Quay Brothers' films, with their forced perspectives and baroque textures, this sequence's effects are more emotionally than physically convincing. They're allegorical images, a simple and evocative as Tom's Glinda-Good-Witch-of-the-North spaceship and the shimmering galactic panoramas it traverses. The latter, created by English photographer Peter Parks, are not CGI images, but macro closeups of chemicals in a petri dish; versions of the starfield appear elsewhere in the movie, pulsing in the sky over the 15th century matte-painted jungles or writhing on a microscope slide. These handmade effects are both comforting and unnerving; they're dreamscapes.

The whole movie is a dreamscape -- or at least it strives to feel that way. Aronofsky segues from one version of the story to another so subtly that it takes you a minute to realize what period you're in. The present-tense narrative, which finds driven scientist Tommy (Jackman) running experiments on a monkey as a Hail Mary attempt to cure his brain cancer-stricken wife, Izzi (Weisz again), is photographed in smoky gold hues, as if Tommy's whole world is trapped in amber. The hero is running from the hard reality of his situation; his marriage is an hourglass, and while the sand is running out, he's taking wild risks in the lab, testing the patience of his by-the-book supervisor (Ellen Burstyn) and bossing around his mostly colorless subordinates. It's an obvious setup, very Hollywood Screenwriting 101, reminiscent of the early 90s subgenre of yuppie-prick-laid-low movies in which a workaholic who neglects his family is forced by tragedy to stop and smell the roses. Tommy is a Type A movie star hero -- a jerk whose dictatorial obliviousness is indulged because of his domestic tragedy, and because he's a handsome, sensitive genius. Would his wife Izzi's death have been any less of a tragedy if he'd been shown as someone who truly appreciated Izzi when she was healthy and spent quality time with her both before and after it became clear that she was a goner?

"Death is a disease just like any other," he announces. "There is a cure. I will find it." Talk like this should have word balloons around it. But though I wish I could make a case for Aronofsky as an auteur who's a better director than dialogue writer, there are too many touches in The Fountain that irritate for reasons that have nothing to do with the words coming out of the actors' mouths -- like having Izzi write a novel (unfinished) that we ultimately discover is the conquistador segment of The Fountain. When workaholic Tommy finally gets around to reading it, he's so moved by it that he completely changes his attutude toward Izzi's illness, and begins confronting it rather than evading it. But the story is so reductive that it's vaguely insulting to Tommy, and on top of that, it confuses the issue. In the Spanish sequence, the Queen specifically asks the Conquistador to leave her in order to go on a quest, but in the present-day sequence, Izzi just wants Tommy to be at her side, even though she's too much the nobly suffering spouse to come right out and say so. You have to wonder, did Izzi write this novel to let Tommy off the hook for spending all that time in the lab?

Izzi's saintly, crinkly-smiling character (or lack of character) is a major problem. In the present day story -- and in the Conquistador story as well, where she takes the form of Queen Isabella -- she's held up as a Feminine Ideal, not so much a woman as an emblem of warmth and decency, suffering nobly and waiting in vain for her genius-in-denial hubby to catch up with her on the emotional evolution scale. During the film's first half, I kept hoping that Tommy's idealization of Izzi would ultimately be accounted for -- that her illness would not simply pull Tommy closer, but force him to see her as a flesh-and-blood person rather than a distant ideal of the Good Wife and the Good Life. No such luck. She's a symbol rather than a person and she remains so throughout. (Weisz isn't distinctive enough to suggest depths that aren't there in the script; like costar Jackman, she's skillful and likable but not especially daring.) The abstract quality of the Tommy-Izzy relationship drains the lifeblood from the movie. It makes you think the worst -- that Aronofsky doesn't feel what he's showing us -- because no true romantic would write a love story so disconnected from life as it's actually lived.

The fulcrum of the present-day story is a scene where Izzi stops by the lab and asks Tommy to join her on a walk through the season's first snowfall. He refuses, of course, and we keep seeing his refusal replayed over and over throughout the picture; it's Aronofsky's version of the ferry boat monologue from Citizen Kane. But the specificity of this regret is unconnected to anything real; like the Izzi-Tommy relationship in general, it feels like a screenwriter's device. There's one shot in the present-day sequence that communicates the sense of love and grief and devotion Aronofsky seeks to conjure: a first-person POV shot of a smiling, healthy, flirty Izzi running away from the camera -- i.e., away from Tommy -- that's not tied into any specific event or situation. It's just an image in his mind, and it's nearly as powerful as some of the pastoral flashbacks in The Thin Red Line.

But think of how much more powerful it would have been if we'd been given more time to observe Tommy without Izzi. She's in the movie continuously as a symbol, a ghost and a plot device, which means we rarely sense her absence -- and that's a catastrophic mistake, because absence is the fuel of grief. There should have been more small, lonely moments in The Fountain -- moments where we saw Tommy looking around at situations where he was accustomed to seeing his wife and then having to accept that she wasn't there anymore, or perhaps discovering seemingly insignificant objects that drove the reality of his situation home. (As Billy Joel sings in "Souvenir," "A picture postcard/A folded stub/A program of the play...") The image of a man smelling his dead lover's shirt in Brokeback Mountain is no less blunt than anything in Aronofsky's film, but it's so honest and recognizable, so real, that you can't help connecting it to your own existence and being moved. The Fountain has moments like that, but because Izzi isn't merely an abstraction, but an abstraction who never stops hanging around in the story and giving the hero advice and instructions ("Finish it"), you don't get a chance to miss her, much less grasp a loss so great that it would spur Tommy to spend centuries trying to undo it.

As in Requiem for a Dream, Aronofsky builds toward near-simultaneous, parallel climaxes, but only one of the three really resonates -- an O. Henry twist in the Conquistador sequence that has a hint of Old Testament perfection; it grants the hero's wish (in all three segments of the story) while thwarting it. Jackman's expression is just right -- it mixes rage, shock and astonishment, and finally, a sort of beatific acceptance of the fact that he's part of something larger than himself, indeed larger than his species. But the hard-edged rightness of this climax is effectively cancelled out by the soupy conclusion of the 26th century storyline, a straightforward wish fulfillment lacking the ironic undercurrent that makes the end of the Conquistador section so right. The film's intricate structure -- images echoing images, situations repeated like pop song refrains -- at first seems open-ended and mysterious, and therefore promising. But that promise ebbs as the fortune cookie profundities pile up ("Every shadow, no matter how deep, is threatened by morning light"; "Our bodies are prisons for our souls"). Soon enough you realize Aronofsky isn't just trying to stimulate questions about the great imponderables, he's actually playing guru and giving you the answers, and the movie you're watching is essentially a store-bought bereavement card blown up to bigscreen dimensions. Oh, well; it's the thought that counts.

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