weekend movies

Friday night I watched The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen--it was pretty much by the numbers, but not as bad as I'd heard and it's always a pleasure to watch Sean Connery. I also liked Peta Wilson (who I've not seen before, although I know she was in the American tv version of La Femme Nikita)as Mina Harker.

Last night I watched In the Valley of Elah, with Tommy Lee Jones as an ex-army guy and Charlize Theron as a cop investigating the disappearance of Jones's son, just back from a tour in Iraq. I'm not sure how I feel about it. It's pointedly against the Iraq war but is awfully heavy-handed in its depiction of the war's emotional toll on the young American men (no female members of the corps in this movie) fighting. But most of the acting is good.

Then, because I knew I'd need something cheery afterward, I watched Fred Astaire and Cyd Charisse in Silk Stockings, the musical remake of Ninotchka. Made in 1957 and directed by Rouben Mamoulian with script by George S. Kaufman, Leueen MacGrath, and
Abe Burrows it's a very silly but pretty funny depiction of the Cold War. Fred Astaire is a movie producer who wants to use the classical music of an important Soviet musician for an American musical he's planning to make. Ninotchka is the by-the-book Soviet official sent to bring back the errant commissars and the composer. Most of the movie takes place in Paris, which seduces everyone who goes there (certainly all the Soviets).Peter Lorre is one of the three Soviet Commissars seduced by Paris and he's terrific. It's nice to see him having a good time in a movie rather than in his usual serious roles. Of course, there's romance. (I won't even discuss the sexual politics--bad).

I'm afraid I never appreciated Cyd Charisse enough before. I'd seen her in movies and heard how good a dancer she was (she just died in June at age 86)but after watching her dance last night I'm going to rent some other movies she was in. Here she is in the Red Blues number in Silk Stockings

Mentions/reviews of Poe anthology

Unfortunately they have the publisher wrong--I've asked for a correction...and I'm not sure how I feel about being called a "doyenne"--it makes me feel so...old.
Columbia Tribune, Literary links

and here's a review by Cassiphone from the Australian review site Not if you were the last short story on Earth that expresses pleasant surprise that the stories are not pastiches of Poe
She reviews "Illimitable Domain," Kim Newman, "The Mountain House," by Sharyn McCrumb, "Sleeping with the Angels," by M. Rickert, and "Truth and Bone," by Pat Cadigan.

Jonathan Strahan, who has also just read the book, says the following on his blog, Notes From Coode Street, Books I'm looking forward to "It’s likely to stand amongst the year’s finest anthologies, so be sure to check it out."

Doubt

Loved it. The acting was great with Meryl Street superb as ever, and Philip Seymour Hoffman and Amy Adams and Viola Davis also very fine.

I really wanted to see it as a play (it won the Pulitzer)with Brían F. O'Byrne and Cherry Jones but never got around to it.

Some Spoilers below:




It takes place in 1964 in Boston and there is a culture clash a-coming between the strict, by the book disciplinarian Principal of a Catholic middle school--Sister Aloysius and the more compassionate Father Flynn.

As Streep plays her, the woman is insufferable but believable and does (very) occasionally show signs of compassion--most notably toward an elderly nun who is going blind. But generally she is a monster--the kind of nun everyone I know who was schooled in Catholic schools seems to have been terrorized by.

She despises Father Flynn and seeks to rid the school of him any way she can. There is one negro student in the school and Father Flynn protects him from the bullies. The question is what is Flynn's motivation? Is he "preying" on the boy or not? Has he made advances toward the boy or not? There is a brilliant scene between the boy's mother and Sister Aloysius during which the stakes are made quite clear.

A young nun plays an innocent who tries to do what is right.

"Doubt" is the perfect title for the play/movie.