The House Next Door

1. "2 killed in Bangkok blasts; New Year's events canceled."

[BANGKOK, Thailand (CNN) -- Thai authorities have canceled all major New Year's celebrations in Bangkok after at least seven explosions ripped through several areas of the capital, killing two people, police and hospital officials say. At least 12 other people were wounded in Sunday's attacks, which appeared to have been coordinated, and took place hours before New Year's Eve celebrations at midnight (noon ET). Major events in Thailand's second largest city, Chiang Mai, have also been canceled. Chief government spokesman Yongyud Maiyalab warned people to be cautious but not to panic.]

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2. "Hussein buried in same cemetery as sons."

[TIKRIT, Iraq (CNN) -- About 100 mourners gathered at the flag-draped grave of former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein who was buried Sunday in Awja, near Tikrit. About 100 people, including the governor of Salaheddin, clerics, tribal leaders and relatives attended the event, which took place at 4 a.m. (0100 GMT). Saddam Hussein's relatives, including sons Uday and Qusay, are buried in the same cemetery. His sons were killed in a firefight with U.S. forces in 2003.]

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3. "Hundreds die as ferry sinks."

["Survivors of an Indonesian ferry disaster told last night how they had fought each other for life jackets as the vessel broke apart and sank, drowning up to 500 passengers. The Senopati ran into trouble off Mandalika island, about 300km north east of the capital, Jakarta, amid heavy storms. Huge waves crashed over the bows as the ship was travelling across the Java Sea from Borneo to the port of Semarang, central Java. In the last radio contact, the captain said that the ferry was damaged and capsizing."]

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4. "Chappy and Joel's New Year's resolutions."

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5. Kid Rock pledges to "give up something" in 2007.
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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 Steven BooneRemember that scene in The Blues Brothers where Jake Blues catches the Holy Ghost while watching James Brown lead a leaping, flying congregation of black folks in a gospel blowout? That’s the spirit -- the soul -- of Dreamgirls, Bill Condon's film adaptation of the long-running Broadway musical. Writer-director Condon adores the most spectacular, super heroic aspects of what used to be called The Black Experience as surely as Blues Brothers director John Landis loves JB’s permed pompadour. It’s all flying negroes and flying hair. As embarrassed as some white critics (and one White critic) have been about Dreamgirls’ lumpy mix of flamboyant negritude with bland, cruise ship arrangements of faux Motown pop, black audiences have mostly returned the love. Here, the music’s quality matters less than its thematic resonance; the characters’ thinness and broadness are less important than their vibrancy and familiarity. Dreamgirls is a white moviemaker’s sorta wrongheaded but sincerely besotted Afro fantasia, destined to go in the Ebony subscriber’s collection alongside Carmen Jones, Wattstax, Sparkle, The Color Purple and Coming to America. Love is what keeps this parade float of a movie aloft -- until a failure of nerve and insight built into the Broadway original sends it floating far away from emotional reality on the helium of hope.

Dreamgirls is the saga of girl R&B group The Dreamettes (later called The Dreams) rise and Supremes-style dissolution across the 1960’s and 70’s. Despite denials surely demanded by various entertainment lawyers over the years, Dreamgirls is clearly the story of Berry Gordy’s Motown, his love affair with Supreme Diana Ross and the rude way he ejected singer Florence Ballard from the trio. Gordy saw beautiful Miss Ross as having more crossover appeal than the more talented but average-looking Ballard, so he made Ross the lead. It’s a classic tragedy of 20th Century American music: The black artist-entrepreneur who can’t rise without selling his soul or somehow destroying his musical kin. August Wilson’s stage masterpiece Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom is the great drama on this subject; Dreamgirls has always carried the potential to be the great musical of same. That potential evaporates during the Hollywood ending, in which the Dreams reunite with their downtrodden Ballard, Effie White (Jennifer Hudson) and Gordy figure Curtis Taylor Jr. (Jamie Foxx) realizes he’s the father of Effie’s daughter. The moment is pure Spielberg Color Purple redemption. The group’s Ross, Deena Jones (Beyonce Knowles) hugs it out with Effie onstage, smoothing over a decade of betrayal, humiliation and outright theft of Effie’s music.

Bullshit.

Florence Ballard died poor and unheralded at 32 while Diana Ross collected Oscar nominations and Grammys. Dreamgirls is set up for just such a tragic conclusion, but Tom Eyen, who wrote the Broadway show’s book, chose to let Effie live. The trouble isn’t that Effie survives but that the powerhouse singer returns to the stage a compromised, chastened also-ran who’s just happy to join in on the show's blandest song. If you’re going to dream a happy ending for Effie, why not one in which she truly wins? Let Taylor’s Rainbow Records crumble behind its payola schemes and overspending while the American pop audience turns against pretty, empty Deena, embracing Effie’s kind of earthy, unruly Soul.

But an ending which doesn’t treat the Dreams reunion as the travesty it is just doesn’t ring true. Effie’s failure and death would have jolted the complacent, historically ignorant, musically incurious viewer into the reality that pop isn’t an American Idol meritocracy -- that there’s a lot of musical treasure out there beyond the charts and the official story. Dreamgirls doesn't indict the racist, Faustian American recording industry, merely the ruthless ambition of Gordy types. In the end, Curtis senses the error of his ways and lowers his head penitently before all the folks he’s wronged over the years. Yes, he’s a musical Mister from The Color Purple! (To compound the deja vu, the real Mister, Danny Glover, as an industry sycophant turned benefactor, beams from the audience at the reunion he helped orchestrate.)

But, as with The Color Purple, none of these weaknesses will stop black moviegoers from loving Dreamgirls to pieces. The last time I saw a predominantly black audience get so excited about a flick was at a screening of Robert Townsend’s The Five Heartbeats (the male Dreamgirls) in 1991. Dreamgirls looks like a more lavish, stylized fraternal twin of Townsend’s film. Both have a storybook sense of the ‘60s and are at something of a loss at how to encapsulate the 70s.

But Condon’s visual flair out-dazzles Townsend’s televisual storytelling. Every grand entrance, turnabout and epiphany gets a dizzying Die Hard room-to-room whip pan, swooning crane shot, or spine-tingling slow fade out. This director has some Stanley Donen, some Bollywood, in his blood. He uses these chops to keep a fearsome momentum but also to underscore the spirit of the age Dreamgirls depicts. In the montage that traces Rainbow’s rise from car dealership to fledgling record label, Condon captures the blushing bride excitement of young black folks bursting out of the Civil Rights era with a crazy dream, money cobbled together from myriad hustles and the bravery that comes from having absolutely nothing to lose. Right on. This is the romance of wage slavery emancipation most of Dreamgirls’ working stiff target audience pursues in real life, with their side hustles and off-the-books home businesses. (In one scene which confirmed that the audience I was sitting in was falling madly in love with the movie, Taylor conscripts a young typist from a crowd of applicants outside the Rainbow office, but when he notices her overlong manicured fingernails, he starts to turn her away. She instantly snaps off the fake nails and bounces on into the office. The applause and laughter that erupted from the audience at that moment was pure, grateful recognition. We all been there, sister.)

Condon realizes that the performances are his best hope of drawing out such resonance and overcoming (or even slightly subverting) the stage musical’s tidy resolution. It hardly matters that the central characters are so wildly inconsistent in motivation, they seem to have split personalities. (Curtis goes from slick, transparent manager-pimp to ingenious grassroots visionary to Ike/Suge/Papa Joe oppressor; Eddie Murphy’s Jackie Wilson-styled James “Thunder” Early similarly oscillates between cartoon ladies man in curly conk and glitter vests and supersensitive cokehead Marvin Gaye in soul brother denim jacket.) Whatever emotion or position the characters happen to be pushing at a given moment, Condon makes them hurl it out from the diaphragm and the heart. So even though Curtis ultimately comes off as a manipulative, womanizing hustler, somewhere in there we get a just as convincing glimpse of his human, even heroic, side -- his ambition to conquer markets and pop culture terrain outside the chitlin’ circuit; his obsessive love of Deena as a regal personification of “Black is Beautiful.” Likewise, although generally there isn’t much chemistry between any two characters in the film, the communal love overflowing in the ensemble number “Family” is convincing enough to induce a crying jag. It helps that Condon tops it off with the loveliest, least saccharine group hug in cinema history.

Of course, most folks are rushing to Dreamgirls for two reasons: To find out if Jennifer Hudson’s rendition of “And I Am Telling You I’m Not Going” really stacks up to Jennifer Holliday’s iconic version; and to see just how quickly her presence and singing voice blow Beyonce off the screen. Well, those expecting a weak performance from Beyonce will be delighted/confounded to find that she has become a decent actress. After a few robotic performances in a forgettable MTV “Hip Hopera” and an Austin Powers flick, she actually showed growth and promise in 2003’s The Fighting Temptations. In Dreamgirls, she plays, well, basically herself -- a young Diva whose beauty and ties to management give her a power she’s not too comfortable with. And, yes, playing basically yourself in a context that invites self-consciousness does qualify as a bitch of an acting challenge.

As for Hudson, you’ve heard it all by now. She’s miraculous, touched by the same force that sent Jake Blues somersaulting to the pulpit. In middle age, she will make a legendary, inevitable Ma Rainey. In the meantime, we’ll probably have to endure years of a Ho’wood shuffle, with Hudson trading maid uniforms for gray wigs for jail suits. Time will tell if, unlike the recording industry depicted in Dreamgirls, Ho’wood has learned anything from a performance by a plump black woman that makes you want to climb into the screen and make passionate love to her. Um, maybe I should speak for myself -- but at the screening of Dreamgirls I caught, Effie’s cry, “And you’re gonna love meeee” was answered by a live chorus of ordinary Joes: “We do, ma! We do!”
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Steven Boone is a New York-basic critic and filmmaker, a contributor to Vinyl is Heavy and the publisher of the pop culture blog Big Media Vandalism.

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1. "Saddam Hussein executed." Photo by Iraqi TV/AP.

["Saddam Hussein was executed at dawn today following his conviction by an Iraqi court for crimes against humanity. The death sentence was carried out at a former military intelligence headquarters in a Shia district of Baghdad at 6am local time (3am GMT). One of those who witnessed the hanging, Sami al-Askari, an adviser to the Iraqi prime minister, said Saddam struggled when he was taken from his cell in a US military prison but was composed in his last moments. He expressed no remorse."]

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2. "Another jump in ick meter." LA Times writer Geoff Boucher on the disquieting poster for Hostel Part II.

["Take your kids to the theater next week to see the barnyard fable Charlotte's Web and you might find yourself confronted in the lobby by a jolting new poster that is pure slaughterhouse — and the latest example of pop culture looking more and more like an autopsy photo."]

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3. "Moments out of time." At MSN News, film critics Richard T. Jameson and Kathleen Murphy revive their popular yearly feature, which they used to publish at Film Comment.

["A Prairie Home Companion: As Robert Altman's last set is dismantled around him, Guy Noir (Kevin Kline) noodles on a grand piano adorned by F. Scott Fitzgerald's fedora'd bust: "Gather thee rosebuds while you may..."]

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4. "Random bullet-point firing." Green Cine Daily editor David Hudson on what he considers the more significant developments in movies and criticism during 2006.

["I'll stray from the meta in a bit, but 2006 was a year in which critics - professed, self-professed or neither - did a lot of fretting about the state of film criticism. In the mainstream media, the story crested twice: in May, when anyone who could tap a keyboard demolished The Da Vinci Code and yet the unwashed masses flooded theaters to see it anyway; and again a month later, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest. What's more, the masses rubbed salt in the wounds by making both DVDs mega-sellers. They wanted to see it again! And again! And they still don't care what you think about that, either. The wounds were hurting. Papers were letting name critics go. There was an ugly shake-up at the Voice. Overall, and taking into account all the obvious exceptions, the printed press, undergoing a long hard squeeze, has tended towards streamlining arts coverage budgets by running essentially outsourced consumer reports rather than actual criticism written from a local point of view for a local readership. The alarms went off this year when it finally sank in that this downsizing would inevitably take some of the stalwarts of what used to be the alternative press down as well. But all in all, I'm not as worried as others seem to be. As I've argued here before, good writers and good readers will find each other, and if there's some sort of perceivable value going on where they do, economics will catch up. Yes, it'll be rough going for a while, maybe even a long while. But I remain optimistic that it'll be easier to find good writing and to get good writing read than it was before the advent of the new media that have put this long hard squeeze on the old."

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5. "Centennial Tributses: Carol Reed." Edward Copeland celebrates what would have been the 100th birthday of the director of The Third Man, The Fallen Idol, Odd Man Out, Oliver! and many other features.

["In the [Peter] Bogdanovich intro on the Criterion DVD of The Third Man he repeats the oft-told Orson Welles line that no great film performance was ever given in color. While I disagree with that statement, I can't help but wonder if it applies specifically to Reed as a filmmaker. Though I haven't seen all of his films -- and his filmography is surprisingly slim when compared with someone such as Otto Preminger -- it certainly is true that no film he made in color comes close to matching the greatest of his black-and-white efforts."]
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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 Travis Mackenzie HooverPan’s Labyrinth is a thoroughly mediocre movie -- not egregiously bad, but dull and unremarkable and easy to dismiss. At least, it would be easy to dismiss, were it not for the insane across-the-board critical acclaim that it's managed to garner. It’s not enough for these people to say "go see a sweet little fantasy flick, it’s good;” they must instead find deep and redemptive significance in what is at best a fairy tale retread with fascist gunfight appendices. But the fact that the film is a repetition of the fairy tale structure is exactly what people find so profound: Roger Ebert led the charge with his predictable declaration of “A fairy tale for grown-ups!” that was mirrored by other critics, as if dressing up a bedtime story with Franco references and bloodshed were doing anything other than gilding a wilted lily.

The film itself does little to engage the mind. We are introduced to 12-year-old Ofelia (Ivana Baquero) as she drives with an official escort into a forest compound somewhere in Spain; it’s the waning days of WWII, and her new stepfather -- the bloodthirsty fascist Vidal (Sergi López) -- has designs on her pregnant mother’s child, which he expects to be the son to carry on his name. In true fairy-tale fashion, the film sets up the Wicked Step-parent as an oppressive ogre so as to give the put-upon child a reason to fantasize -- and perhaps subconsciously call those fantasies to life. Sure enough, she’s soon visited by a fairy who leads her into an abandoned forest labyrinth to find a wacky-looking faun (Doug Jones) at the center. Turns out Ofelia’s the reincarnation of a long-lost princess from a fantasy world (whatever it’s called; I blacked out during the exposition), and that she has to perform some tasks in order to restore her position.

To give an idea of how pedantic the film is in repeating the fairy-tale milieu, I must mention one particular scene. Ofelia is sent to retrieve an item from a room occupied by the Pale Man (Jones again), a blind monster with its eyes in its hands and an enormous table of food set in front of him; the faun informs her beforehand not to eat the food for any reason. Not "Don't eat the food or the monster will eat you," because that would state the reason for not eating, and thus not trigger the chase that will ensue; just a vague reference on which any intelligent being would have surely elaborated. Further, the room is full of Goya-esque frescoes of the Pale Man eating his victims, giving a fairly vivid account of what happens when you raise his ire. To me, this suggests you not stay in his general proximity any longer than you have to. But what does our girl do? She eats some grapes, awakening the Pale Man and ensuring the deaths of a couple of helpful fairies. Had anyone put two and two together, they could have easily avoided disaster, but then there would be no scene.

Of course, the film's profundity supposedly lies not in its fairytaleness but in its being, in Ebert's words, "a fairy tale for grown-ups" -- a crossing of the childish genre with the real adult world. But this is only true if your frame of reference is extremely limited. Vidal, far from being a complex representative of adult reality, is the same monster villain familiar from a thousand bedtime stories. He's the man who makes life miserable for the surrounding peasantry, including the partisans who live in the woods and assorted rabbit hunters who impinge on his territory. Shooting and torturing are high on his list of fun pastimes, and of course he has nothing but disdain for the girl-child, so we have no choice but to loathe him absolutely. Had Vidal been kind to Ofelia and given her and her mother a safe home, the film might have actually had some complexity -- forcing our girl to choose between domestic bliss inside the family unit and the external suffering on which it is predicated. But Ofelia never really has to make a hard choice: she's thoughtfully provided a preordained path on which she can feel safe (and, ultimately, royally pampered), while all of the evil people in the "real" world are easily identified and offer her no comfort. Fascism isn't defined politically, it's rather selfishly defined as whatever gives the heroine a raw deal.

Instead of a reality and a fantasy that intertwine and comment on each other, we have two fantasies that are like ships that pass in the night. Of course the "real" fascist can't acknowledge the existence of the fantasy world (a denial exemplified by his destruction of a folk mixture designed to ease the pain of mother's pregnancy); the fascist is himself a monster designed to get his just desserts in the final reel. Any intermingling of the "real" and the "fantastic" would immediately show that both of them are drawn from the same, feeble archetypal cloth, for the fascist lacks any human qualities that might make his rise to power logical and understandable. So the fantasy/fantasy world can't ever encroach on fantasy/reality territory, because Del Toro's movie requires that the two worlds be hermetically sealed. Save for one deus ex machina bit close to the end, the faun and his fellow-travelers never actually impinge on the real world when anybody's watching, making Ofelia's position that of Big Bird proclaiming belief in the Snuffelupagus. This isn't just a lame piece of scripting, it keeps the film from having anything to say about either of its two sides; each remains intact and unchanged by the encounter.

You wouldn’t know this from the praise being bandied about, which not only overstates the case but fails to connect with anything theoretically useful. Ben Walters in Time Out claims "few directors are so adept at conveying both the uncanny in the real and the recognizable in the fantastic," which is a nice way of saying that both aspects are so broadly drawn as to be indistinguishable from each other. "Not only one of the great fantasy pictures but one of the great end-of-childhood elegies," says Stephanie Zacharek in Salon, despite the fact that Ofelia runs around serving surrogate parent figures blindly while attempting to get back to her “real” family in the magical realm. And the intellectuals at Total Film make sure that we don’t miss that it’s "steeped in the kind of myth familiar from Joseph Campbell’s landmark book," the default position of anyone attempting to justify limp fantasy. But it’s Paolo Cabrelli in Stylus who guilelessly hits the raw nerve, declaring "it does not propose the existence of magic. It confirms it." This bit of slack-jawed awe probably epitomizes the appeal of the movie. It’s for adults who no longer have faith in childhood fantasy, but are disillusioned with the business of being adult: people who are doubly cynical, and thus doubly looking for something to believe. Pan’s Labyrinth offers a bridge between the two worlds, a both-sides-now palliative that assures us that magic is still available in a "real” world gone mad. This is what is meant by “a fairy tale for grown-ups”: a film that encapsulates weariness in adult life and spices it up with nuggets from a world of make-believe that allows you to chuck your life for the magic kingdom beneath the earth.

In reality, grown-up fairy tales look more like Blue Velvet, with its human monsters and its hero's ambivalent stance toward same; Kyle MacLachlan's Jeffrey is sucked into the sensual depravity of damaged people and is changed by the experience. The fissure between reality and fantasy is better established by Celine and Julie Go Boating, with its analysis of (and intervention in) the fictions that teach us who we are. But these films both are invested in the magical infinitude of human behavior rather than the comforting abstractions of fantasy constructs; they also have an ambiguous stance over how far one can go in representing “reality” on film. Pan’s Labyrinth offers only simplistic disengagement, which makes its elevation to near-masterpiece status a little unnerving.
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Travis Mackenzie Hoover is a freelance writer based in Toronto.

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1. A CNN poll names President Bush both the hero and the villain of the year. No mention of who won Best Sidekick.

["Bush won the villain sweepstakes by a landslide, with one in four respondents putting him at the top of that bad-guy list. When people were asked to name the candidate for villain that first came to mind, Bush far outdistanced even Osama bin Laden, the terrorist leader in hiding; and former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, who is scheduled for execution. The president was picked as hero of the year by a much smaller margin. In the poll, 13 percent named him as their favorite while 6 percent cited the troops in Iraq."]

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2. The results of The LA Weekly Film Poll (formerly at the Village Voice, which also spawned a version at Indiewire -- if this keeps up, awards junkies will need a flowchart). LA Weekly's chief critic Scott Foundas pens an introduction.

["Of the more than 500 new feature-length motion pictures released in Los Angeles (and reviewed in these pages) over the past 12 months, among the very best of them — at least according to this paper’s two house critics and the results of the L.A. Weekly’s First Annual Film Poll — were a 37-year-old French wartime drama (Army of Shadows) never before distributed in the U.S. and a three-hour-long Romanian gallows comedy (The Death of Mr. Lazarescu) that grossed all of $80,000 during its North American theatrical run. Such statistics will, I fear, do little to disabuse people of the idea that movie critics are elitist scum fatally out of touch with the concerns of the general moviegoing public. But remember that these same critics have rallied en masse behind Martin Scorsese’s The Departed and a little comedy called Borat — both of which rank among the most commercially successful studio releases of the year."]

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3. At The Nerve Film Lounge, Bilge Ebiri on The Good Shepherd.

["Many of us have been waiting for an American spy movie that does for the genre what John Le Carre and Graham Greene's novels did for British espionage narratives: bring a refreshing dose of realism and somehow convey the mundane, often dysfunctional lives of international spies, shadowy individuals who have to subsume their identities for what they believe (often halfheartedly) is a greater cause. Despite the advance billing, and some admirable intentions, Robert De Niro's The Good Shepherd is not that movie."]

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4. The Chicago Film Critics announce their 2006 picks. Best picture: The Departed.

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5. The Toronto Film Critics' picks are summarized here. Best Picture: The Queen.
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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.: "Luke and the Jedi of the Round Table." Lance Mannion on Star Wars' "Expanded Universe," and the essence of Lucas' movies, which he compares to the Arthurian legends.

["Lucas' obsession with creating the perfect special effects got the better of him in the recently completed prequels/sequels, and he needlessly complicated, and confused, his own story by caring about the politics behind the rise of the Empire and cluttered up the screen with too many epic battle scenes, but the simple knights' tales are still there. In The Phantom Menace, Qui-gon Jinn searches for the Chosen One. In Attack of the Clones, Obi-wan sets out to solve the mystery of who is trying to murder Padme, which reminds me that I promised Jaquandor that I would write a post about Obi-wan's career as the Jedi's top private detective. And in Revenge of the Sith, Anakin faces and succumbs to temptation. I can and, given time, probably will write posts about the mistakes I think Lucas made in the tellings of each of these simple knights tales, but for now I'd rather note that Lucas tried to stay true to his original conception all the way through all six movies. The Star Wars movies are not about war. They are about individuals facing moral and spiritual challenges that come mainly from within themselves."]

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2. Girish Shambu on his "Ten Favorite New Films."

["If you'd like, please feel free to share, link to or comment on any of your favorite new films this year."]

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3. "An Appetite for Artifice," by David Bordwell.

["The rise of science fiction, mystery, fantasy, horror, and comic-book movies probably encouraged clever juggling with story order, point of view, and states of knowledge. So did the rise of indie cinema, which needs narrative innovation to set itself apart from the mainstream...We need to think more about where this impulse toward innovation comes from and how it shows itself, but it seems likely that the flourishing trade in self-conscious storytelling will be with us for some time yet. Hollywood cinema has long been self-consciously, almost fussily formal, and it has a vast appetite for artifice."]

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4. Dr. Mabuse's Kaleido-Scope on "The State of the Horror Film."

["There has been a trend in recent horror films to put a twist on their formulas due to the fact that audiences seem to be expecting something beyond gore. For instance, “Joy Ride” did so by infusing dark comedy and humor while “The Descent” turned conventions on their ear in a rather baroque fashion by being hyper-conscious of its placement within the genre. Moreover, there has been a drive to infuse a strong (in terms of Hollywood productions) political edge to the horror film."]

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5. Self-Styled Siren on Fred MacMurray and Barbara Stanwyck in ""Remember the Night."

["Stanwyck, as usual, is marvelous. In the courtroom scene, see her watch a hambone lawyer (Willard Robertson) spin an absurd theory of how self-hypnosis lured her into unintentional theft. Stanwyck's reaction shots start out demure, but none too optimistic. As the jury starts to buy all that lawyerly hokum, her posture improves, her eyes start to sparkle. She tries to maintain a look of contrition, while she eases her gorgeous legs a little more into the jury's sightlines.?"]
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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 Matt Zoller SeitzTo say that the new film version of Charlotte's Web doesn't dishonor its source sounds like a backhanded compliment, but it's actually the highest praise. E.B. White's novel has survived not just because of its charming premise, cleanly-drawn characters and hints of allegory, but because it's a perfect book. Every paragraph, sentence and word pulls its weight. Like the title object, it's a functional work of art. So is Gary Winick's film version, which casts Dakota Fanning as Fern, the precocious farm girl who assumes responsibility for a doomed runt pig (voiced by Dominic Scott Kay), then watches in astonishment as the pig becomes a curiosity, a celebrity and then an object of quasi-worship, thanks to the selfless devotion of Charlotte the word-embroidering spider. Like the book, Winick's movie is as solid and cleanly rendered as a Greek sculpture. It doesn't advance the art of cinema, nor does it mean to, but it does something just as rare: it stands up for true classicism. It's not a subversive/self-aware quote-mark-enclosed film school homage to prewar Hollywood; it's a 21st century movie so economical yet satisfying that it seems to have been ghost-directed by William Wyler or Walt Disney in about 1939.

The script, credited to Karey Kirkpatrick and Erin Brokovich writer Susannah Grant, doesn't just cherry-pick White's most memorable lines, it leans very heavily on his narration, read here by Sam Shepard -- a gutsy move, considering how many of White's passages are etched in our collective memory. ("It is not often someone comes along that's a true friend and good writer. Charlotte was both.") Winick -- whose borderline-inept Tadpole and serviceable but slight 13 Going on 30 gave no inkling of his potential -- rises to the screenplay's challenge and then some. In its own probably incidental way, Charlotte's Web has more to say about the sources of old movie magic than any number of blockbuster remakes and art-house rethinks. (It's an independent film, by the way, funded by Walden Media -- the family entertaiment production house that backed The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe -- and then picked up by Paramount.) It's not a straight-up computer-animated movie, nor does it foreground animatronic puppetry (as the Babe films did). Instead, it's a live action picture that uses special effects sparingly and tactically (to make real animals' mouths sync up with their dialogue, for instance, or to match a real animal with a digital double for some stuntwork). The effects never call attention to themselves as effects; aside from the obvious unreality of talking mammals and birds, the creatures move more or less as real creatures would -- an approach that gives the whole enterprise a matter-of-fact magic. The movie's compositions, cuts, hues and textures are similarly in tune with old movie values. Seamus McGarvey's cinematography makes the colors pop in the manner of a mid-50s Technicolor drama (bright but not garish, rich but not showily lush), and there's no visible grain, not even in dark shots. Winick and McGarvey's visual grammar favors locked-down closeups, crane shots and dolly shots, eschewing zooms, handheld camerawork and other visual signatures that came into vogue in the second half of the 20th century. Susan Littenburg and Sabrina Plisco's editing holds individual shots held just long enough to clarify a point or fix a reaction, never lingering or prematurely jumping away -- the cutter's equivalent of writing with a minimum of adjectives. These factors subconsciously convey solidity and permanence -- qualities that also describe White's prose.

The performances are conceived in the same spirit. Winick's absurdly overqualified voice-over cast -- Julia Roberts as Charlotte, John Cleese as Samuel the Sheep, Cedric the Entertainer and Oprah Winfrey as Gussy and Golly Goose, Kathy Bates as Bitsy the Cow, Robert Redford as Ike the Horse, and so on -- functions as a laid-back democratic ensemble, serving the scene and the story rather than upstaging them. When a performer shines, it's through precise character work. Roberts, for instance, has never had a role that makes better use of her to-the-manor-born confidence and opacity. What seems like icy vagueness in other roles -- Closer, for example, or Ocean's 11 and 12 -- plays here as craftiness, parental warmth and centered, depthless spirituality; these traits are just right for Charlotte, a mix of ubermom, movie star, Christ figure and eight-legged PR agent. Steve Buscemi's Templeton the Rat is miles away from Paul Lynde's rendition in the 1973 Hanna-Barbera cartoon musical (an OK movie, but one that'll vanish from your memory as soon as you see this version). Buscemi deadpans the rodent's scalawag self-interest in a manner that recalls his underrated star turn in his self-directed Trees Lounge. Buscemi's devotion to psychological plausibility pays off late in the film when Templeton realizes he's developing a conscience, and is startled, appalled, intrigued and finally excited. This sequence of feelings would be tough to sell if Buscemi were playing a human; yet here, with his voice issuing from a CGI-tricked-out rodent, it's not just convincing, it's moving. ("You're very kind," Charlotte tells him. "Don't go spreading it around," he replies.) The human stars acquit themselves just as honorably; first among equals is Fanning, whose beyond-her-years gravity and eerie focus read as righteous fervor. Moreso than in the 1973 film, you get the sense that Fern isn't just a kid taking pity on a pig, but a potential adult who's taking a stand based on an innate moral code (centered on empathy for the condemned, maligned and exploited) that will be perfected over time. This film about barnyard animals is the most humanistic blockbuster of 2006. It's humble and radiant.

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1. "Former President Ford dies at 93": From CNN.

["Former President Gerald Ford, who became president in 1974 after the resignation of Richard Nixon, died Tuesday at age 93. Ford, the oldest surviving former U.S. president, died peacefully at 6:45 p.m. PT (9:45 p.m. ET) Tuesday at his home in Rancho Mirage, California, according to a statement from his office. The cause of death was not given."]

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2. "Forgotten Films: Shockproof": Bilge Ebiri on a little-known collaboration (of sorts) between Douglas Sirk and Samuel Fuller.

["No, compared to the florid, sublime expressiveness of Sirk and Fuller’s later work, Shockproof is a relatively subdued film. But it’s also an object of genuine wonder – in which Fuller’s characteristically uncompromising, extreme plotting is given shape and conviction by Sirk’s sophisticated mise-en-scene. The film begins with a pair of women’s legs, clad in ratty black stockings and shoes, walking amongst the clean, dapper shoes of a mid-day crowd on Hollywood Blvd. A brunette walks into a hair salon and gets her hair dyed blonde. We quickly learn that we’re watching Jenny Marsh (Patricia Knight), a beautiful, recent parolee who has just done time for murder. Her parole officer, the tough-as-nails Griff Marat (Cornel Wilde, embodying a typical Fuller character with a typical Fuller name), tells her, in a classic hard-boiled exchange, that she has to change her ways: ”You gotta change your brand of men.” “Who picks them for me, you?” “You won’t have any problem making friends. Just make sure they’re friends this time.”]

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3. "Giant kangaroo likely killed off by humans": From MSNBC.

[" Australia's giant prehistoric animals, including three-meter (10-foot) -tall kangaroos, were likely wiped out by aboriginal settlers, not climate change, a researcher said Tuesday. The question of what killed Australia's so-called megafauna — including giant kangaroos and wombat-like creatures as big as a rhinoceros — during the last Ice Age divides paleontologists. The most popular theories are that climate change drove the giants to extinction more than 40,000 years ago or that Aborigines, who arrived in Australia as far back as 60,000 years ago, were responsible because of over hunting or burning the vegetation upon which the creatures fed."]

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4. "Uncommon Scents": Reverse Shot's James Crawford interviews Perfume director Tom Tykwer.

["The problems of adapting literature to the screen are legion, but few novels are as resistant to cinematic translation as Perfume: The Story of a Murderer, Patrick Süskind’s macabre, serious, sometimes self-consciously ridiculous picaresque about a man born with an extraordinary sense of smell and an absent moral compass. Following the fictional Jean-Baptiste Grenouille from pauper to master perfumer to serial killer, Süskind’s prose is obstinately unfilmable, being intoxicated with the sensory minutiae of 18th -century France—especially its olfactory squalor and splendor. My first question to Tom Tykwer, director of Perfume’s film version—perhaps the holiday season’s least digestible entry as it so faithfully hews to the novel’s heady mix of solemnity, irony, comedy, and corporeal horror—therefore had to do with issues of adaptation."]

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5. "Like a Ribbon of Dreams" and "Based on a True Story": Martha P. Nochimson's two-part article for Film-Philosophy on New York Film Festival 2006.

["Founded in November 1996, Film-Philosophy is a 'salon-journal': an international para-academic 24-hour live-event version of specialised academic publishing, dedicated to philosophically reviewing film studies, philosophical aesthetics, and world cinema -- with an online readership of over 5000 individual visitors every month, as well as more than 1400 permanent worldwide members of the email discussion salon (join here). Journal texts are published through the email salon, as well as on the website, so that they can be discussed and contested and continued by salon members."]
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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 Matt Zoller SeitzAbout a third of the way through the science fiction thriller Children of Men -- set in a fascist, childless future England wherein radical activists led by Clive Owen and Julianne Moore try to safeguard the world's only known living pregnant woman -- there's an action sequence so stunning that it slapped the professional detachment right out of me. When it began, I dropped my notebook and pen and bolted upright in my seat, and as it kept unreeling for several minutes without a cut, piling incident upon incident, moving from tight closeups to wide shots revealing a small army of foes chasing our beleaguered heroes, I began to lean forward, as if believing, on some level, that the extra centimeters gained by the change in posture would help me get closer to the movie, even enter the movie, like Alice stepping through the looking-glass. The sense of spiraling panic is multiplied by director Alfonso Cuaron and cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki's decision to shoot the entire setpiece in one take -- an all-or-nothing approach that meant that if one or two details hadn't come off as planned, the whole sequence would have been unusuable. This choice makes the setpiece's inherent dramatic power insperable from its status as a directorial and photographic performance.

The problem with Children of Men is that it's too much of a performance and not enough of a movie. It's filled with emphatic yet fleeting references to a century's worth of miseries and atrocities, from the U.S. war in Vietnam and concurrent domestic unrest to Bosnia-Herzegovina, 9/11, Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay. And Owen's character, Theo -- an ex-radical turned civil servant who's asked by his ex-lover, the guerilla leader Julian (Moore), to secure letters of transit for the pregnant Kee (Claire-Hope Ashitey) -- could be seen as emblematic of contemporary western political malaise, if you squnt really, really hard. Unfortunately, although these touches and Cuaron's meticulous direction indicate otherwise, the film lacks a coherent vision. It's a compelling pastiche, and that's not nothing, but I wanted it to be great rather than just proficient and gripping; it never quite gets there, and it suffers in comparison to earlier classics in the same vein. Unlike, say, Brazil, which wove every scene, performance, line and design detail into an analysis of the mechanics of fascism and its bludgeoning effect on hope and imagination, or Blade Runner, whose jam-packed yet anonymous futureworld visualized life in an era where only machines with limited lifespans appreciated what it meant to be human, Children of Men's references feel at once calculated and perfunctory -- bits of faux-political plumage affixed to what is, in essence, a post-apocalyptic cousin of Casablanca, with Owen in the Bogart role and Moore playing a combination of Ingrid Bergman and Paul Henreid.

The movie felt less passionate and personal to me than Mad Max, Blade Runner, Brazil, Spielberg's War of the Worlds or the sleazy but fascinating 1975 midnight movie A Boy and His Dog -- movies that are mainly interested in building and sustaining a dreamlike/mythic free-associative aura that's not "real" in any quantifiable sense. Children of Men has a few poetic or allegorical touches: for instance, Kee reveals her pregnancy to Theo by stripping off all her clothes while standing in a cow pen (she looks like she's posing for Annie Leibowitz). Later, Theo loses his shoes and replaces them with flip-flops, in essence becoming Joseph to Kee's Mary, who's often seen in a hooded sackcloth-looking robe. But the film's not inclined to commit to this line of presentation, perhaps for fear of being described as corny, so the touches play like little jokes. For the most part, Children of Men aspires to a kind of off-center realism. It's not so much an allegory as a depressive leftist projection. Its vision of a brutal, paranoid, jackboot-policed, immigrant-abusing-and-deporting England is built on very specific contemporary and recent historical references, and the film certifies its "serious" credentials by embracing a grungy naturalistic vibe. Because of these choices, the film's vagueness begins to seem not allusive, but evasive. It's very, very tastefully pushing your buttons, writing sociological and political checks it has no intention of cashing. (At screenings, you can hear people whispering to their seatmates, "Guatanamo Bay.")

Which isn't to say it's a bad film. It's superbly crafted and compelling throughout, and filled with note-perfect performances -- particularly by Moore; by Michael Caine as the hero's elderly, pot-growing, ex-hippie mentor, and by Owen, whose characteristically coiled, sour performance hints at wellsprings of emotion the character doesn't dare reveal. (After enduring a particularly hideous onslaught of violence, he retreats from his compatriots and collapses behind a tree, sobbing; then he steels himself and heads back into action.) Some of the political and historical nods evoke a fleeting chill. The film is set in 2027, when an unexplained fertility crisis has rendered women sterile; that in turn means that the most conspicuous and constant source of solace -- the presence of younger generations who will someday succeed their elders -- is evaporating like water on hot pavement. Owen's wary, numbed performance suggests the sense of helpless emptiness that this entire society must feel (moreso than the film itself, which often seems merely disinterested). The story begins with a TV news story announcing the death of the only citizen successfully carried to term in three decades, assassinated at age 18 by an autograph-seeking fan. The conspicuous, public displays of grief -- open weeping in workplaces and Princess Di-style flower piles honoring the victim -- suggest that the entire society has become so numbed by daily existence that these media-fueled cathartic outbursts are a collective source of relief, a chance for much of the nation to feel something, if only for one day. But for the most part, the film's ripped-from-recent-headlines touches seem like opportunistic attempts to add depth to what is, in its curiously hard heart, the most elaborate cinematographer's reel in recent memory.

The first time Cuaron and Lubeski mount a one-take action showstopper (there are other one-take scenes prior to this one, but none so extravagantly chaotic), I was shaken, even awed, and rightly so. The sequence's power comes not just from how it's directed, but its events, their impact on the characters' lives and emotions, and their blunt confirmation of the terrifying (yet faceless, and therefore chillingly banal) force brought to bear on our scrambling underdog heroes. But as the film ploughs onward, Cuaron and Lubeski stage another such sequence, and another, and another, always jacking up the scale, accelerating the pace and cramming in more details. Eventually the other facets are subsumed into just one, showmanship, and urgent questions like "What does this futuristic fantasy have to tell us about life today?" and "How will the hero get out of this pickle?" are displaced by more mundane thoughts, like, "Is this take longer than the last one?" and "How the hell did they do that?" and "What time is it?"

Initially, Cuaron and Lubezki seem as though they're going to change up the film's tone as the story unreels and as Theo becomes more politically involved and emotionally invested in Kee's plight. The film's first third employs a striking bit of camerawork that visualizes Theo's detachment: a behind-the-shoulder tracking shot that follows Theo through an environment charged with emotion (for instance, his office on the day that the baby's death is reported) and then peels away from him to focus on other, far more demonstrative people. It's as if the camera equals Theo's conscience, and we get to see the exact moments when he sloughs it off. Curiously, though, as Theo becomes involved and activated again and has the detachment figuratively and literally beaten out of him, Children of Men retains its aloof, even cold tone. It makes you wonder if the filmmakers really care for the substance of what they're showing you, or if they're just keen to get to the next eye-popping one-take setpiece. (In retrospect, the first big action setpiece is reminscient of the highway driving sequence in War of the Worlds, but without the CGI.) Cuaron and Lubezki stage scene after scene with the same can-you-top this brio, guiding Owen through increasingly huge and chaotic tableaus which, as my colleague Keith Uhlich has remarked, feel uncomfortably like first-person shooter videogames. Panicked heroes drive failing old compact cars along muddy back roads while enemies race along on foot behind them, gaining ground whenever the vehicle stalls; Owen sneaks through a guerilla camp at night, staging a sneaky rescue/escape, while Lubezki's medium-distance compositions let us see that he's always mere inches away from being spotted; ragtag armies shoot at each other in a war-torn city that resembles the grimy English backlot version of Hue in Stanley Kubrick's Full Metal Jacket. Over time, the film's rhapsodically reviewed long takes start less an outgrowth of the film's story and themes than a cannily-presented stunt -- a marked contrast to the more justified long take aesthetics of Aleksandr Sokurov's Russian Ark, Gasper Noe's Irreversible, Theo Angelopoulos' The Weeping Meadow, Gus Van Sant's Elephant and even the time-travel sequences in Cuaron's Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. Children of Men has a gloomy majesty, but in time, it stops being about what it purports to be about and becomes a paean to its own proficiency. The tail wags the dog.

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1. "Garbage Day!": Wherein the greatness of 80s cinema is irrevocably proven.

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2. ""UUUuuuuuhhhh.. Miss Uggams x3": Wherein Miss Leslie Uggams forgets the words... thrice.

["Because it's June! June, June, June. Just because it's June! June! JUUUUUUUUNNNNEEE!!!"]

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3. ""I Can Die Now": Arkin Celebrated at Lincoln Center": Wherein Mister Alan Arkin purports to explain the existence of Little Miss Sunshine.

["The Film Society of Lincoln Center paid tribute to Alan Arkin Tuesday nightwith a special screening of Little Miss Sunshine. The film isn't the actor's most recent (I guess they wouldn't show The Santa Clause 3) nor is it his best (or second- or even third-best when you consider The Russians are Coming The Russians Are Coming, Glengarry Glen Ross or 13 Conversations About One Thing), but it is no doubt anchored by Arkin's wonderful performance in the role of the heroin-snorting Grandpa."

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4. "30 Great Westerns": Wherein we ride roughshod and bareback through film history.

["Welcome to our survey of "30 Great Westerns." These are the Westerns that any fan of the genre should know. These are some of the most influential and important Westerns ever made. We don't necessarily claim these are the 30 "best" Westerns. The Covered Wagon (1923), for example, hasn't aged very well, but it helped change attitudes toward Westerns and allowed for serious, feature-length Westerns to follow in its wake."]

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5. "S. Korea says avoid a prostitute, win a prize": Wherein the libido is bribed, to no avail.

["The South Korean government is handing out gifts for office workers who promise not to visit brothels this holiday season. “If you promise yourself to make it a healthy night out at the end of the year, and if you recommend this to others, we are giving lots of prizes,” the Ministry of Gender Equality said in an Internet posting. The ministry is offering to pay companies whose employees pledge not to buy sex after what are typically alcohol-soaked, year-end parties."]
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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. From the House staff to all our readers: Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!

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2. "James Brown Dies": From complications incurred while filming Rocky IV.

["James Brown, the Godfather of Soul, whose rasping vocals and revolutionary rhythms led to rap, funk and disco, has died aged 73. He was taken to hospital in Atlanta with acute pneumonia but the cause of death has not been established, his agent, Frank Copsidas, said. Along with Elvis Presley, Bob Dylan and a handful of others, Brown was one of the major musical influences of the past 50 years. At least one generation idolised him and sometimes openly copied him."]

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3. "Further Fodder": Film Comment readers respond to Paul Schrader's "Film Canon" article.

["But Mr. Schrader should fret less about the impossibility of setting a canon that will remain canonical. Canons always change to reflect evolving tastes. Vermeer was neglected for centuries and moved into the art historical canon less than a hundred years ago. Winckelmann’s epitome of the classical aesthetic was the Apollo Belvedere, now viewed as a Hellenistic pastiche for Roman patrons. And Roman architecture, once viewed as an undifferentiated extension of Greek architecture, came to be admired for its raw expression of structure in the early 20th century, when modern architects were pursuing similar goals, while today we acknowledge that the plaster and painted decorations conveniently ignored for so long really made these buildings more like Beaux Arts painted ladies than anyone previously cared to admit."]

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4. "Canonical Loose Ends": And Schrader's response to his readers.

["The omission of Rossellini was a major boo-boo. I’d sent a copy of the manuscript to Michel Ciment of Positif who objected to my inclusion of The Battle of Algiers at the expense of Salvatore Guiliano. Rosi’s film, Ciment implored, was not only the father of both Battle of Algiers and Z but better than either of them. I realized how right he was and asked Film Comment to replace Algiers with Salvatore, but through some mix-up it replaced Voyage in Italy instead. Rossellini is essential to any Canon, especially mine."]

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5. "Ignorance or Arrogance: What Hollywood Has to Learn from the Extinction of the Incan Empire": From the BRAINTRUSTdv website.

["In 1993, a Northeastern University undergraduate student with an affinity for the band Phish wrote a software application which allowed an online network of friends to share MP3 files. The student, Shawn Fanning, wrote the shareware application he called Napster for his friends who shared similar musical interests. The application spread across the web like wildfire. Unknowingly, Fanning and his small group of friends had launched a revolution against an empire: the recording industry."]
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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. "Calif. Gov. Schwarzenegger breaks leg skiing": At least it's not a tumor.

[" California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger broke his leg on Saturday while skiing with his family in Sun Valley, Idaho, the governor's office said. The 59-year-old former movie star broke the femur bone in his right leg and was taken to a local hospital for X-rays and later discharged, Adam Mendelsohn, the governor's deputy chief of staff for communications, said in a statement. "When the governor returns to Los Angeles from his scheduled Christmas trip, he will have surgery to repair his femur. No one else was involved in the skiing accident," Mendelsohn's statement said."]

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2. "FBI releases last 10 pages of Lennon files": From CNN.

["The FBI has released its final surveillance documents on John Lennon to a university historian who has waged a 25-year legal battle to obtain the secret files. The 10 pages contain new details about Lennon's ties to leftist and anti-war groups in London in the early 1970s, but nothing indicating government officials considered the former Beatle a serious threat, historian Jon Wiener told the Los Angeles Times in Wednesday's editions."]

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3. "Japan researchers film live giant squid": We're havin' sushi tonight, boys! (And tomorrow, and the next day, and...)

["A Japanese research team has succeeded in filming a giant squid live — possibly marking a first — and says the elusive creatures may be more plentiful than previously believed, a researcher said Friday. The research team, led by Tsunemi Kubodera, videotaped the giant squid at the surface as they captured it off the Ogasawara Islands south of Tokyo earlier this month. The squid, which measured about 24 feet long (7 meters), died while it was being caught."]

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4. "Letters from Iwo Jima": Stephanie Zacharek on Clint Eastwood's latest.

["Clint Eastwood's "Letters From Iwo Jima" springs from an admirable impulse: This companion piece to Eastwood's flawed yet complex "Flags of Our Fathers" sets out to tell the story of the Battle of Iwo Jima from the viewpoint of the Japanese soldiers who fought and died there. Eastwood, working from a script by Iris Yamashita (the story is by Yamashita and Paul Haggis), hopes to humanize these soldiers, showing them as inexperienced young men who loved their families, who were under orders from their superiors to fight viciously, and who were victims of a culture in which dying honorably was considered far more important than preserving life. The impulse is commendable; the movie isn't."]

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5. "Home at the End of the World": Elbert Ventura on Children of Men.

["Doomed to disappear before it even sees the light of day, Children of Men seems the exact opposite of what the public wants to see during the holidays. Never mind that Alfonso Cuarón’s searing tour de force is actually a nativity story infused with spiritual fervor (not to mention a riveting action flick with the best set pieces of the year). This orphaned movie emanates such unrelenting bleakness that only a Christmas miracle could rescue it from its ineluctable future as a cult item. And rescuing it deserves."]
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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. "Essentially Woody: Intro/Annie Hall": A beautiful introduction by Reverse Shot's robbiefreeling to Film Forum's three-week Woody Allen retrospective.

["Odds are that most cinephiles of my generation, and most Reverse Shot writers, were watching Woody Allen movies before they ever saw anything by Ingmar Bergman or Federico Fellini; before they ever read anything by Dostoevsky or Ibsen; before they were aware of the sizable disparity in aesthetics between American and European cinema; before they were brushing up on their Nietzsche or read Rilke; before they knew the radical cultural differences his films evinced, and that cinema and, furthermore, pop culture itself had completely consumed and regurgitated his philosophical style and outlook. Often either regaled or demeaned as being merely a conduit to the “higher arts” mentioned above, Woody Allen is actually one of the most essential American artists of the past century, subsuming and reappropriating the textures of the modern European arts for the American cosmopolitan sensibility, funneling those tropes into a New York tenor, and thus single-handedly creating a new form of Jewish humor, which tightened the Borscht belt around the ever-inflating girth of the gentile elitism he (and we) both despises and covets. Each Woody Allen film is tricky to navigate; while he seems to put himself out there, in firing range, bearing his neuroses for all to heckle, he also always is shielding himself from some greater truth, whether by hiding behind Upper West Side extravagance or Euro art-house nostalgia."]

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2. "Some Points Before Vacation": From Zach Campbell at Elusive Lucidity.

["I'm not a boxing fan exactly, but I found this article interesting (I found it at some political blog I was surfing very recently, but I'm too lazy to double check which one at the moment). The media treatment of Mike Tyson finds itself echoed strongly by the underappreciated Walter Hill-directed Snipes/Rhames vehicle Undisputed ('02). Armond White wrote up the film in a positive review here. It's hard for me to deal with White's reviews these days--his weird permutation of rightist authoritarian populism is now too demoralizing--but for a while he seemed to be one of the few name reviewers engaging with ideas when he wrote on films, and at the time (2001-2002: he also seemed more aligned with the social left then, tho' I could be wrong) I was really inspired by his work. And anyway the article and the film offer another occasion to recommend Mandingo, Richard Fleischer's 1976 film maudit which is sensationalist, and far from a masterpiece, but still quite an important film. David Ehrenstein (for the record--gay and black like Mr. White, but in his case a figure on the left) has called it the "most honest film about American racism ever made."]

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3. "Gus Van Sant Popped for DUI": Those Fuzzy Navels are to die for.

["Gus Van Sant has directed himself right into the hands of the law. The Oscar-nominated Good Will Hunting auteur was picked up early Thursday morning on a drunk driving charge in Portland, Oregon."]

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4. "Zhang's Defiant Beauty, Smith's Maudlin Happyness": Fernando F. Croce's latest column from Cinepassion.

["Curse of the Golden Flower is incredibly beautiful, but beauty, easily abused and easily misread, has a curse of its own: reviewers seeking the frugality of seriousness were already leery of splendor in the days of Von Sternberg and Ophüls and Minnelli, and knee-jerk distrust of sumptuous surfaces has hardly waned in the years since (vide the uncomprehending scorn heaped onto Sofia Coppola's Marie Antoinette). The opulence of Zhang Yimou's new film is mystical, everything is ceremonial and everything is ritualized, from the dressing of the palace servants to the preparation of tea to the polishing of a throne; the Empress (Gong Li) strides through the corridors as if inseparably a part of the gold-and-blue chambers, yet a ground-level shot early on, looking up at the suddenly shuddering regent, locates the first crack in the grandeur. The year is 928 A.D., in the midst of China's later Tang dynasty: Chow Yun Fat, his prole rascality hidden under a graying beard and chilling regal armor, is the Emperor, returning from the front for the Chong Yang Festival, as well as for a bit of ruthless house-cleaning. Strands of intrigue proliferate -- three sons (Jay Chou, Qin Junjie, Liu Ye) vie for the crown; Prince Wan (Liu) has an illicit affair with the Empress, his stepmother, but much prefers the pretty daughter (Li Man) of the imperial doctor, who has his own secrets. The Empress pretends not to notice that her medicine's been spiked with mind-destroying toxins, for, as the Emperor reminds her, their family "has to set an example for the entire country."]

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5. "Mike Evans, original Lionel Jefferson, dead": From CNN.

["Actor Mike Evans, best known as Lionel Jefferson in the TV sitcoms "All in the Family" and "The Jeffersons," has died. He was 57. Evans died of throat cancer December 14 at his mother's home in Twentynine Palms, said his niece, Chrystal Evans."]
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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 Ross RuedigerDoctor Who Season Two (or Season 28, depending on your anal-retentiveness) has been a string of entertaining highs and lows, in terms of both quality and intensity. It’s been a season of returns, renewals and reinventions. We’ve met Cybermen, a werewolf, clockwork robots, Queen Victoria, Madame du Pompadour, and at the edge of the universe, maybe even Satan himself. We visited a current parallel Earth and also a New Earth in the year 5,000,000,23. There were trips to 1953, 1879, 2012, and the 51st century -- a time that led to a tour of 18th century France. Sarah Jane Smith came back to us and Mickey Smith said goodbye. K-9 was blown up and put back together. Jackie Tyler died, but Pete Tyler lived. Throughout the adventures, there were only three constants: the Doctor, his TARDIS and Rose Tyler – at the end of the two-parter “Army of Ghosts” & “Doomsday”, we bid a gut-wrenching farewell to one of them.

Rose Tyler: “Planet Earth. This is where I was born. And this is where I died. For the first nineteen years of my life nothing happened. Nothing at all. Not ever. And then I met a man called The Doctor. A man who could change his face. And he took me away from home in his magical machine. He showed me the whole of time and space. I thought it would never end. That's what I thought. But then came the Army of Ghosts, then came Torchwood and the war. And that's when it all ended. This is the story of how I died.”

The two-part finale had an awful lot to live up to, especially after Season One’s “Bad Wolf/The Parting of the Ways” big finish, which was nothing short of resolution perfection, and for better or worse, my initial basis for comparison. The Bad Wolf story was embedded into Season One with a nearly flawless weave. Season Two attempted something similar with Torchwood, but the ongoing references dropped into each storyline managed to draw attention to themselves more than create any kind of mystery (then again, I don’t suppose they were intended to.)

This season’s finale is, from a writing standpoint, the reverse of the first season. “Bad Wolf” was a mildly goofy setup for the ideal “Parting of the Ways”. Here, “Army of Ghosts” offers up a fairly intense 45 minutes of intrigue and a cliffhanger to put all others to shame. “Doomsday”, however, delves into an awful lot of fanboy silliness on the part of “the war” aspect (more on that later). That said, the dramatic, soulful parts of “Doomsday” work splendidly and I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve watched the Doctor and Rose say goodbye to one another on that overcast beach – the name of which translates to Bad Wolf Bay.

“Army of Ghosts” begins with Rose’s voiceover monologue above - portents of a bitter end it is, too – set against almost nostalgic imagery. They’ve even got the smarts to throw in an Eccleston clip! Credits…and then the Doctor and Rose arrive at the Powell Estate for a typical check-in with Jackie. But things aren’t typical, and only the time travelers seem to notice. The planet’s gone ghost crazy, and as Russell Davies did with “Bad Wolf”, we’re presented with more of a statement than a reality - but it’s a statement worth going for. If such a seemingly harmless phenomena occurred, I’d imagine this is how it might go down. Yeah, the premise is absurd, and Torchwood oughtta have its license to experiment revoked -- but once you get past that, the notion of humans basking in a conveniently affirmed afterlife isn’t terribly hard to swallow. The Doctor deflating the wind in Jackie’s sails is just sooo Doctor Who. No time for fairy tales and romance – shit is going down and he’s gotta get to the bottom of it.

And so the Doctor is finally introduced to the ubiquitous Torchwood, and all logic flies out the window. What’s funny is that it happens so fast, there really isn’t time to think about stuff like the immense amount of alien tech available to these people, and how the government fails to monitor any of it. Yeah, I know I said it was an intense 45 minutes—and it is. This story makes no attempts to play by any rules other than its own. Hop onboard the rollercoaster or admit you’re less than 4 feet tall. The Doctor is our main character, and he’s gotta be the one to point out how rotten things are in Denmark.

That the ghosts turn out to be Cybermen is probably not a shock; Mickey Smith’s (Noel Clarke) sudden reappearance and the cliffhanger Dalek manifestation probably are. I’ll never again experience the initial orgasm of the moment the Daleks descended from the void ship, and yet I’ll always remember the realization: Daleks vs. Cybermen -- every Whovian’s wet dream. If an old-school Doctor Who fan tries to tell you otherwise, they are lying. And so, Russell T. Davies, now that you’ve gotten us here, what do you intend to do with it?

With “Doomsday”, Davies does what really is the only sensible thing to do with the oft-imagined Dalek vs. Cybermen scenario: He has fun with it -- anything else would be masturbation. And he goes for the only other logical bit of drama: Daleks whooping Cybermen ass. This isn’t King Kong vs. Godzilla; there’s only one way to play it. Those of you who said the Cybermen were merely second rate Daleks were sorta correct, and “Doomsday” confirms the verdict.

But enough of that. An engaging piece on ‘bots battling ‘bots isn’t in the cards, as it would eventually lead to bagging on the fact that for some inexplicable reason only Daleks are seen being sucked into the void – there’s nary a Cyberman in sight. Or perhaps I’d hit on the Deus Ex Machina to end all DEMs – two levers which conveniently fix this most dire of situations? Or how about Pete Tyler appearing in the right place at the right time, so Rose doesn't get sucked into the void? If it seems like I’m on the fence with this 90 minutes of fanwank, that’s simply not the case. No matter what happened throughout the story -- the low point being Cyber-Yvonne Hartman’s oily teardrop -- I forgive it: The reunion of Pete and Jackie Tyler and Rose’s exit make it all worthwhile. The former was an unexpected bonus; the latter a painful necessity.

The idea that Rose’s travels with the Doctor in some bizarre way brought her family back together is potent stuff. The initial scene between Pete and Jackie in the corridor makes my heart swell – and that shortly thereafter they manage to slip back into bickering mode is priceless. Maybe only Doctor Who can do this, and if it asks too much of you to submit to such romance, you might be watching the wrong show.

Rose risks everything and all to be with the Doctor. Maybe life has no meaning without him? Her speech at the beginning of the story has a dual interpretation. Yes, “Rose Tyler” is dead on Earth at the tale’s conclusion -- but is that the singular truth of “This is the story of how I died”? Rose’s future seems sound, and she’s a strong enough individual that it likely will be…but her feelings for the Doctor are of such intensity that she’ll always have a hole in the center of her being. Rose may be “the defender of the universe”, but a longing will accompany her until her last breath. Nothing she experiences will equal or even come close to what she had with the Doctor. Echoes of such feelings were seen through Sarah Jane in “School Reunion”; now we get the real deal.

I don’t know when or where, but Rose Tyler -- like Sarah Jane before her -- must encounter the Doctor again. Rose is as much a part of the new Doctor Who as the Doctor himself, and it’d be dramatically irresponsible to not come back to her at some point – cruel even. I look forward to Freema Agyeman’s Martha Jones and the change her character will bring to the dynamic, but Rose Tyler can’t and shouldn’t be replicated. Billie Piper may be headed for other projects, but I (perhaps foolishly) believe she will return to the role that put her on the map.

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THIS WEEK: The Sci Fi Channel broadcasts "The Christmas Invasion", David Tennant's first story, on Christmas Day at 3PM (EST).

Doctor Who DVD Recommendation: Got a sneak peek of the Doctor Who: The Complete Second Series DVD box set and it does not disappoint: All 14 uncut episodes spread across five discs; commentary tracks for every episode -- five of ‘em are “InVision” commentaries, where a box appears in the bottom right-hand corner of the screen allowing viewers to see the participants ramble; video diaries from both David Tennant and Billie Piper; over 15 minutes of deleted scenes (unsweetened, but still great fun); an amusing outtake reel several notches above the current standard for that sort of thing (for instance, see a Cyberman take K-9 for a walk in the park!); the 7 minute Children in Need special set in the TARDIS immediately after the 9th Doctor’s regeneration and before “The Christmas Invasion”; lastly, a sixth disc is devoted to cutdown episodes of the documentary series Doctor Who Confidential. The box streets on Jan. 16th.
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Ross Ruediger is a San Antonio-based critic and columnist, a contributor to The House Next Door, and publisher of The Rued Morgue.

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1. "indieWIRE Critics Poll 2006": The Dennis Lim-run end-of-the-year movie poll moves from the Village Voice to indieWIRE. House contributors who voted, with links to their ballots: Ed Gonzalez, Matt Zoller Seitz, and Keith Uhlich.

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2. "Road to Morocco (minus Hope & Crosby)": From Edward Copeland on Film, Josh R on a little film called Babel.

["There’s a little film called Babel winding its way through our nation’s movie theaters that is so completely illogical in every respect that it strains credulity well past the breaking point. Now, Babel isn’t a fantasy-based film like Harry Potter, nor science fiction, nor the kind of broad comedy where you accept the ridiculousness as in keeping with the spirit of the thing – it purports to be a realistic drama. But the implausibility factor has been ratcheted up so high that somewhere, the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth are watching this thing and mumbling to themselves, “You’ve gotta be f***in' kidding me.” Copeland, I know you had issues with Training Day. I'll bet it's starting to look pretty damn reasonable right about now."]

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3. "Rowling tells 'Harry Potter 7' title": Hope Hannah's as excited as I am.

["British author J.K. Rowling revealed on Thursday that the long-awaited seventh and final book in her wizard saga will be called "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows," sparking the next phase of Pottermania."]

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4. "The Cinephiliac Moment": From Rob Humanick's blog The Projection Booth.

["Perhaps because I lack the gift of hindsight for now, pinpointing 2006's defining moments has been a bit of a chore. Some have been evident purely for their balls-out extremity (the prolonged, nude wrestling match in Borat), others for their simmering intensity (Miami Vice features one of the most intense police raids in movie history), but a moment of small profundity that only resurfaced in my memory recently took place in Robert Altman's swan song A Prairie Home Companion (forgive me if I screw up any details, as this is from memory, and I haven't the DVD at my disposal for confirmation purposes) has emerged as a pivotal centerpeice of a year that has, for me, largely focused on death and the hereafter. With Virginia Madsen's Angel of Death hovering about the proceedings, mostly unseen, the "lunch lady" (the heartwarming Marylouise Burke) discovers her lover and the long-time show employee Chuck Akers' (L.Q. Jones - I think) lifeless body backstage, having given up the ghost but minutes ago. Overcome with confusion and emotion, she is soothed by the invisible presence of Madsen, who reassures her, "There is no tragedy in the death of an old man. Forgive him his shortcomings, and thank him for all his love and care."]

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5. "Yowsah, et al": Welcome back Eric Henderson. We missed you.

["Insomnia kept me up writing about what I hate. But a few paragraphs in and I'm not sure it sends the proper holiday spirit. The downright sick strains of Newsong's "The Christmas Shoes" aside, I am not prone to Grinching away this time of year. (Hell, I'd probably blog about that song if I could work up the enthusiasm to download it and confirm my suspicions that those lyrics, those sentiments, those off-key children's voices weren't just made up on the spot by my mom's car's radio. Suffice it to say, it's the sort of song that Kenny Rogers might pen after catching Children Of Heaven while tanked up on Jack Daniels eggnog."]
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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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