05 November 2005
MOVIE: A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE (2005).
 A small-town father's violent past catches up to him. That's no spoiler—it's in the title. And sadly, the title really doesn't go any deeper than that. Weird, to have such a critically acclaimed Cronenberg film play out like a summer action flick shot art-house style. I mean, the pacing of the leaden dialogue is Cronenberg-strange, and we have torturous stretches of Cronenberg suspense punctuated by Cronenberg gore. We even have the always enjoyable William Hurt crooning tough-talk with a mob goatee. But what's happening, really?
A man who left mob life years ago must kill it off once and for all.
And kick much ass in the process.
Attemps at greater significance flare up in starts and fits, but all of it feels embarassingly like self-inflated student work: a sex scene that morphs between violence, rape, passion, and disgust; the son, filled with hate after having resorted to his father's brute tactics; the washing of blood at a still, cold lake; the final redemption, in which the family wordlessly sets a place for the father at the dinner table. All of these puzzling, empty gestures are the result of a single failed intellectual exercise which posits, What if you were really a ninja assassin? There's nowhere to go with this, except to show some significant ass-kickage. Maybe this is because the real question concerning violence has already been asked by Cape Fear: What is the exact tragectory of people forced to reduce themselves to animalism, red in tooth and nail? Cronenberg should stick to the ideological fantasy of Videodrome and Existenz; realism only betrays, not celebrates, his pretensions.
How do you fuck up something as simple as this so bad?
MOVIE: FEVER PITCH (2005).
 An obsessed Red Sox fan finally falls in love. It's a safe bet that, Shallow Hal aside, one Farrelly brother plus another equals tender, wholesome fun—with swear words, even!—that adults can enjoy without feeling pandered to. Witty dialogue, nostalgic sweeps of Boston's cityscape, and an exacting gift for choosing that perfect gesture to signify charming vulnerability (the smartly-dressed woman who takes off her pumps while at her office desk) nicely disguise the fact that, in the end, Fever Pitch follows the same arc as every rom-com before it. Which is fine, really. Nobody goes to one of these movies and, their life changed forever, shaves their head before running off to the Himalayas.
The difference between this and previous Farrelly movies is the introduction of a new secret weapon: Nick Hornby, who with his trademark enthusiastic maturity brings gravitas to what would've been merely a pleasantly juvenile entertainment. Our Red Sox fan, for example, turns down a trip to Paris with his girlfriend because of an impending game, and this time the sight gags are set aside for a serious discussion of priorities that (to anyone who's ever been in a relationship) feels true, machismo be damned. A lovely and bright movie that doesn't even really need the bonus World Series footage at the end.
Here comes the big bag of hair.
MOVIE: ICE PRINCESS (2005).
 A high school physics whiz must choose between Harvard University and her passion for figure skating. Ah, the joys of transatlantic flights—when else would I ever get a glimpse into the jaws of the pre-teen aspirational marketing machine? This film, a nightmarish assault of cutesy shrugs, sassy eye-rolling, and earnest hair flipping, dots the "i"s on its glittered unicorn notebook with lipgloss hearts, leaving no room for its audience of twelve-year-old girls to imagine femininity as anything else. Indeed, males are starkly absent: no fathers or brothers to form healthy, balanced relationships with here. There's only the ultra-cute zamboni driver boy, who like Quasimodo seems to spend his entire existence confined to the ice rink.
Best friends gone bad, competition for popularity, all of these typical themes pale in comparison to the new elements that Disney has introduced into the genre. First there is what I have tradmarked as The Genius Puppy™, exemplified when our mousey heroine (when she lets her hair down, she's byoo-tee-full!) "rocks" her mad physics skills to help her former skating enemies improve their technique. You know, on computers. Then there is the Ultracute™, e.g. zamboni boy performing a last-minute love chase ne plus ultra by driving his machine on land, across town. There is The Nod™, tragically portrayed by Joan Cusack, who must have been fooled/bribed into playing a feminist organic-foods mother who, like, finally learns that makeup and sequins rule...in addition to all that women's rights stuff, which happened a long time ago but is very, very important.
The last and most innovative element is Dual Citizenship™, in which Feminist Mom and evil Skate Mom reconcile to let our heroine pursue both physics and skating. It is a sly, and hot, endorsement of lesbian parenting on Disney's part, and I applaud them.
—Yeah, velocity, acceleration, mass, stuff like that.
—How do you know about that?
—I'm into cars.
PHOTO DIARY.
We went to Paris last week. There's the Notre Dame cathedral.
And for you Pimsleur audio lesson fans, the Boulevard Saint Michel really exists.
Nicki fell in love with the Smart car.
The Hotel des Invalides, where we stayed for a few days. Just kidding.
Those French topiary cones.
Here's a brand new ride they built, called The Jules Verne Freefall Xperience.
A gold statue of Joan of Arc.
A typically lovely street in Montparnasse.
The Louvre Museum pyramid.
The Seine river at night.
The Arc de Triomphe, which I think Napoelon built to impress a chick.
The Hotel de Paris, which we stayed at for a few nights. Just kidding.
Stravinsky pool by the Pompidou Center.
We did lots of this.
Then we went to the palace at Versailles...
...where they keep tons and tons of ornate crap.
Ornate-ass ceilings, too.
Hundreds of Fronch conical topiaries lining the fountain pools in the surrounding grounds.
The Neptune Pool.
On our last day, we managed to slip into the Catacombs.
There are thousands of bones, all neatly arranged.
Everybody say, "Black plague!"
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