Monthly Archives: May 2014

“Ah, what the heck! I’ll just raise my li’l Beelzebub. Rockabye, babeeee….” Rosemary’s Baby (2014 NBC mini-series)

28 May 2014

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[Image source: Wikipedia]

Is anyone else’s DVR a graveyard of shows and movies you’ve saved, thinking you should watch them, but when it comes down to actually committing the time to a given program, you just keep deferring it?

The last three episodes of this season’s Glee remain (gleefully?) unwatched, as does the second half of The Maya Rudolph Show, the otherwise super-talented comedienne’s clunky attempt at a Sonny and Cher meets The Carol Burnett Show variety romp. And we skipped about half a dozen episodes of Arrow, just to view the finale in head-scratching befuddlement.

However, we did clear one lingering mini-series from the queue last night: NBC’s recent “reimagining” (what does that even mean? what happened to the term “remake”?) of Rosemary’s Baby.

Originally a novel by Ira Levin, Rosemary’s Baby was first made into a film by Roman Polanski in 1968, starring Mia Farrow, John Cassavetes, Ruth Gordon (who won an Oscar for her work), Ralph Bellamy, Patsy Kelly, and Charles Grodin (!). Polanski’s screenplay was also nominated for the Academy Award, though it didn’t win.

The plot at this point is legendary (if not a bit dorky). Young couple (Farrow and Cassavetes) moves into apartment, befriends strangely overeager neighbors, and gets pregnant; husband (literally) makes deal with the devil; spooky doings ensue; child of Satan gets born; Farrow freaks out (justifiably) but then decides, “Ah, what the heck! I’ll just raise my li’l Beelzebub myself. Rockabye, babeeee….”

(Sort of sounds like some of Farrow’s recent interactions with ex-Woody Allen, come to think of it. What? Too soon?)

The recent NBC “movie event” adaptation, starring Zoe Saldana in the Farrow role, stretches this rather thin narrative from two hours to four and seems to exist primarily as a showcase for Saldana’s ability to cry, smile, cry, mope, cry, scream, and cry.

Don’t get me wrong. I really like Saldana (Avatar, Star Trek, upcoming Guardians of the Galaxy). She’s like a less manic Thandie Newton. She does her level best to keep the sloooooowly paced proceedings (transplanted to Paris from New York for no discernible reason) interesting.

She craftily cribs from the Audrey Hepburn Wait Until Dark school of worried pixie-cut acting, painting a compelling picture of a sweet soul trying to please everyone but herself and getting in deeper and deeper. Heck, Saldana’s Rosemary even has an adorable pet feline named “No-Name” (a la Breakfast at Tiffany‘s “Cat … poor slob without a name”).

It’s just that this story does. not. need. four hours. to be told.

There probably is a really crackerjack 90-minute telefilm in there, but I just kept forgetting why I was supposed to care. And, most surprising, the more interesting half of the mini-series is the first night which is all creepy, Hitchockian set up; the second night’s pay-off of gothic carnage and cuckoo witchery is a flat-out bore … by the time we finally get there.

The supporting cast is wildly uneven, with only Jason Isaacs (The Patriot, Harry Potter) rising above the fray as the smoothly cavalier, devil-worshipping neighbor/landlord. (Isaacs is just such a presence, as if Daniel Craig and Patrick Stewart had a really pretty son.)

Carole Bouquet as Isaac’s equally nefarious wife, is okay but not great, saddled as she is with the chief responsibility of making Saldana drink (over and over) some really gross-looking, moss-green smoothies made from some witch-y herbs in her fabulous botanical garden. (Yeah, you read that right.) Bouquet’s idea of setting a spooky tone is giving a lot of sidelong glances and delivering her oddball earth-mother-from-Pluto dialogue with Pepe le Pew “Frenchy-ness.” (She kind of sounds like a Martin Short character most of the time).

Patrick J. Adams (Suits) is a dull milquetoast of a husband, and Christina Cole as Rosemary’s Brit pal Julie is on hand primarily to bring the exposition every 10 minutes or so.

It’s a shame. In this postmodern, American Horror Story, “let’s use scare-fest genre tropes as metaphors for social ills” era, there was great potential for this new Rosemary’s Baby to say something interesting about gender politics, class warfare, race issues, and the increasingly slippery definition of “family.” Alas, no, the devil was not in these details. Better luck on the inevitable third time around for this tired tale.

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Reel Roy Reviews is now a book! Thanks to BroadwayWorld for this coverage – click here to view. In addition to online ordering at Amazon or from the publisher Open Books, the book currently is being carried by Bookbound, Common Language Bookstore, and Crazy Wisdom Bookstore and Tea Room in Ann Arbor, Michigan and by Green Brain Comics in Dearborn, Michigan. My mom Susie Duncan Sexton’s Secrets of an Old Typewriter series is also available on Amazon and at Bookbound and Common Language.

Don Draper redeemed: Disney’s Million Dollar Arm

26 May 2014

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[Image Source: Wikipedia]

Everything in life is a transaction. Success of any kind – be it in love, in wealth, or in notoriety – comes with a price. This was certainly the central theme of last winter’s The Wolf of Wall Street, and it’s the key message of the decidedly more humane and lovable summer Disney flick Million Dollar Arm, starring Mad Men‘s Jon Hamm.

Yes, snooty cineastes, I just compared a feel-good Mouse House sports movie to a Scorsese-helmed orgy of sex, drugs, and Leo DiCaprio. Like it or lump it.

I loved every minute of Million Dollar Arm, which, like Wolf, offers us a predatory anti-hero whose adoration of a life fueled by supermodels, million dollar paychecks, sleek Porsches and swanky mid-century Eames chairs gives him license to try one get-richer scheme after another. Unlike Wolf, however, when our hero J.B. Bernstein (Hamm) hits bottom, he doesn’t double down and snort a yacht-ful of cocaine; rather, he finds the joy of unconventional family, risks his pristine world for the future success of others, and rediscovers his soul. Don Draper redeemed.

(Don’t get me wrong, I was a big fan of The Wolf of Wall Street as well – see here – and I suspect no one else in their right mind would compare the two … but I’ve never claimed normality.)

My parents were gaga over Million Dollar Arm too, with my mother emailing me, “An exceptional low-key film concentrating on human beings … happens to deal with sports incidentally, else I would not have loved it so! Hamm blends in and does not play ‘leading man’! Terrific film undeniably!” I couldn’t agree more with that succinct and apt assessment.

I’m not a sports fan either, but Disney has a marvelous track record for co-opting sports (Miracle, Glory Road, The Rookie, Invincible, Remember the Titans, to name a few of my favorites) as tear-jerking, heart-tugging metaphors for underdogs overcoming daunting adversity – ageism, racism, xenophobia, socioeconomic disparity, classism, sexism … heck, even species-ism (yup, Air Bud, I’m talking about you and all your countless direct-to-video sequels and spin-offs). Million Dollar Arm is no exception, and likely is my favorite one to date.

In short, Hamm plays a Jerry Maguire-esque sports agent whose days are numbered. He loses a key client that could have turned his fortunes around, and, in a very funny twist of remote control fate, he finds himself inspired by late-night channel-surfing between Susan Boyle singing “I Dreamed a Dream” and an Indian cricket tournament. He heads to India to scout out potential cricket players whom he can transform via American Idol-style pageantry into star American baseball pitchers. It is his last hope to reignite his sputtering career.

No one can play an admirable cad quite like Hamm, and, as noted above, he is subtle perfection, no easy feat in a Disney summer blockbuster. His transformation from a machine who views his fellow man as “investments” to someone who appreciates the heart and soul, fears and hopes intrinsic in us all is more inspiring than any slow-mo, symphonic-scored baseball-pitching at the film’s conclusion.

Hamm’s Bernsetin does find two potential baseball stars in Dinesh Patel (portrayed by a transfixing Madhur Mittal of Slumdog Millionaire) and Rinku Singh (played by Life of Pi‘s Suraj Sharma, also very affecting). He brings the two young men back to America, after a moving sequence where the boys’ families bid farewell with a heady mix of anxiety and aspiration. Dinesh and Rinku are accompanied by a manager of sorts, the very funny and very sweet Amit Rohan, portrayed by Pitobash. There are ups and downs as Dinesh and Madhur make their way to the inevitably uplifting conclusion, and, while some of the narrative is unsurprisingly predictable (it is a Disney movie, after all), the warmth and the humanity of all involved help keep the enterprise fresh and engaging.

The remaining cast members are all gems as well: Lake Bell’s sunny-but-pragmatic “Ms. Brenda” who rents Bernstein’s guest house and breaks into everyone’s heart; Bill Paxton’s left-of-center coach Tom House who cares as much if not more about heart and mind as he does body; Alan Arkin doing that same old (but still delightful) Alan Arkin-thing as Ray, a scout who assists Bernstein in India; Aasif Mandvi bringing light comic relief as Bernstein’s exasperated business partner; and Allyn Rachel as Bernstein’s helium-voiced assistant.

In a summer filled with mutants and dinosaurs and robots and spider-men (all of which I do indeed cherish myself), Million Dollar Arm is a welcome respite. It’s nice to spend two hours with human beings struggling as we all do with this human condition and how to make it through life without having a nervous breakdown. Million Dollar Arm is indeed a quiet film, albeit burnished in Disney gold, quietly inspiring in its message that no matter how preoccupied we may become with the material trappings of life, we can still stop, do the right thing, and appreciate those people who need us and love us.

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Reel Roy Reviews is now a book! Thanks to BroadwayWorld for this coverage – click here to view. In addition to online ordering at Amazon or from the publisher Open Books, the book currently is being carried by Bookbound, Common Language Bookstore, and Crazy Wisdom Bookstore and Tea Room in Ann Arbor, Michigan and by Green Brain Comics in Dearborn, Michigan. My mom Susie Duncan Sexton’s Secrets of an Old Typewriter series is also available on Amazon and at Bookbound and Common Language.

Shiny pop metaphor for how much harm we do ourselves through inaction and anxiety … X-Men: Days of Future Past

24 May 2014

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Description: Film poster; Source: Wikipedia [linked]; Portion used: Film poster only; Low resolution? Sufficient resolution for illustration, but considerably lower resolution than original. Other information: Intellectual property by film studio. Non-free media use rationales: Non-free media use rationale - Article/review; Purpose of use: Used for purposes of critical commentary and illustration in an educational article about the film. The poster is used as the primary means of visual identification of this article topic. Replaceable? Protected by copyright, therefore a free use alternative won't exist.

[Image Source: Wikipedia]

How many Oscar winners and nominees does it take to put together a successful comic book adaptation? Apparently, a boatload.

The per capita of Academy Awards/nominations among the cast in X-Men: Days of Future Past is astounding: Ian McKellen, Jennifer Lawrence, Anna Paquin, Halle Berry, Hugh Jackman, Ellen Page, Michael Fassbender … not to mention talented folks like Peter Dinklage, Nicholas Hoult, James McAvoy, Evan Peters, and even director Bryan Singer who likely may find themselves on the receiving end of a nod or a statuette of their own one day.

As comic book adaptations go, this is about as good as they get, marrying a bit of the self-serious sermonizing of Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight films with the gee whiz ironic whimsy of Jon Favreau’s and Shane Black’s respective Iron Man movies.

Having Singer return to the franchise (he rather unsuccessfully left to direct the bloated Superman Returns) is a stroke of much-needed genius. Other than last summer’s quietly effective The Wolverine, directed by James Mangold, or the zippy promise of Matthew Vaughn’s retro romp X-Men: First Class (Vaughn gets a writing credit on Days of Future Past), the series had started to lose its way with over-marketed, under-delivering, freakishly-merchandised failures like X-Men: The Last Stand (yeah, I’m a Brett Ratner hater too) or clunkily titled X-Men Origins: Wolverine (directed by Gavin Hood who went from Tsotsi and Rendition to X-Men Origins: Wolverine … wtf?)

Singer, not unlike J.J. Abrams with his seamless Star Trek reboot, brings us quite literally full-circle, mining all that has come before and brilliantly weaving the series’ best and crispest elements into a crackerjack narrative. The plot is a riff on Chris Claremont’s/John Byrne’s iconic “Days of Future Past” comics storyline from the early 80s. It details Wolverine’s mind-bending time travel leap from a dark dystopian future full of death and pain and murky CGI to a swinging 1970s full of death and pain and cheesy poly blends, all to avert a handful of historical moments that spark the creation of mutant-murdering robot Sentinels whose nefarious deeds bring about that nasty future everyone wants to avoid.

Clear as mud? It doesn’t matter ’cause the ride is a helluva lot of fun. The film isn’t perfect. I found this grim future-shock framing set-up with its overbaked Holocaust allusions, its bleak visuals, and its mopey characters and their endlessly ominous pronouncements rather tedious. Halle Berry (so miscast from the very first film) as weather-manipulating Storm still seems like she’s phoning her performance in from some all-inclusive Caribbean resort where they supply her an infinite series of bad white/gray wigs. And as much as I love McKellen and his comrade-in-arms Patrick Stewart as Magneto and Professor Charles Xavier respectively, they both appear to be marking time and collecting a paycheck (albeit a pretty hefty one).

However – and this is so key – all that Charles Dickens-meets-Philip K. Dick dreariness is essential to the fun once our time traveling mutant everyman (that would be Jackman with a crackling world-weary wit as Wolverine) hits the Me Decade. Everything comes alive.

McAvoy is so good – funny and haunting – as the young Xavier who has let his life (and fabulous mansion/school) go to seed. Fassbender (young Magneto) as the chillingly beautiful Malcolm X yin to McAvoy’s Martin Luther King yang is sharp as ever. The film smartly returns to Singer’s core hook: that mutant persecution is a righteous summer-blockbuster allegory for all the -isms/-phobias that plague our society and for the tension that always has and always will exist between the philosophies of blending/integration and of fighting/individualism.

All the players in the 1970s portion of the film acquit themselves nicely, from Lawrence’s fiery person-on-a-mission Mystique to Hoult’s worried caretaker Beast to Dinklage’s well-intentioned, quite-misguided military industrialist Trask.

The film’s best moments come from Evan Peters’ much-too-brief screen-time as speedster Quicksilver. He rocks every single freaking moment he has, like nothing I’ve ever seen in one of these tentpole epics. He wrings comic gold out of one word (“whiplash”) and has an absolute Bugs Bunny-esque ball torturing a gaggle of Pentagon guards, all set to the strain’s of Jim Croce’s time-warped classic “Time in a Bottle.” Give this character/actor his own movie. Now.

The smartest move of all in this very smart film? There is no villain. There is no mustache-twirling, blow-up-the-world, video-game-destructo fool in a cape leading us to a predictably cacophonous denouement. Nope. Everyone is their own worst enemy in this movie. Just like life. Fear and hate, self-loathing and prejudice those are the villains in this film, a movie which serves as a shiny pop metaphor for how much harm we do ourselves through inaction and anxiety.

Most importantly, X-Men: Days of Future Past leaves us with hope. No situation and no person are ever beyond redemption, as Stewart tells McAvoy in one of the film’s trippiest and most heartfelt moments. Amen to that.

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Reel Roy Reviews is now a book! Thanks to BroadwayWorld for this coverage – click here to view. In addition to online ordering at Amazon or from the publisher Open Books, the book currently is being carried by Bookbound, Common Language Bookstore, and Crazy Wisdom Bookstore and Tea Room in Ann Arbor, Michigan and by Green Brain Comics in Dearborn, Michigan. My mom Susie Duncan Sexton’s Secrets of an Old Typewriter series is also available on Amazon and at Bookbound and Common Language.

You’ve got a friend in me: Captain Kangaroo, blogging buddies, and movies

21 May 2014

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Captain Kangaroo

Captain Kangaroo

Facebook is fun! As some of my colleagues might tell you, I fought social media tooth and nail about five years ago, but now I can’t imagine a world without it. It breaks down barriers, opens minds, and disseminates interesting information like no other channel.

My pal Nick Sweet, a crime novelist born in England and now living in Spain, tagged me in a blog chain and asked me to answer the following questions. You can read his original post here.

But me being me … I can’t just do what I’m told. So I’m going to intersperse my answers with pages from another one of the “reviews” I wrote in my toddler years – this time about an episode of my beloved Captain Kangaroo. In fact, I adored the show so much I have my own autographed photo of Bob Keeshan as the Captain. (And you can check out Baby Roy’s take on The Bullfighter and the Lady here – thanks to my mom for saving these whimsical pages from my youth.)

Captain 1

Part of my task as assigned by Nick is also to “pay it forward” and acknowledge some bloggers that I love – please check out their work …

  • My mom Susie Duncan Sexton’s fabulous free-thinking blog about animals, culture, empathy, and understanding here.
  • Beth Kennedy’s charming musings about yesterday and today at I Didn’t Have My Glasses On.
  • Lovely Kat Kelly Heinzelman’s thoughts on family, friends, and baseball at RedSoxLady35.
  • Gabriel Diego Valdez’ careful analysis of film, culture, and social politics at Basil Mariner Chase.
  • And my fellow thespian JP Hitesman’s energetic romp through local theatre offerings at Theatrical Buddha Man.

All five blogs are engaging and challenging and informative and rich – written by kind and thoughtful souls, hoping for a better, kinder world.

Captain 2

And here are my answers to Nick’s questions …

What am I working on?

What am I not working on? Between my daily life as a legal marketer, communicator, and strategic planner and my “free time” writing this blog, getting the word out about the Reel Roy Reviews book, proudly promoting my mom’s marvelous output as an author and a columnist and an animal rights activist, trying to be a good friend and family member, sharing a loving home and minding two nutty mutts, keeping up with my weekly comic book addiction, acting in and supporting local theatrical efforts, going to concerts and movies and plays, buying an ungodly amount of cds and dvds, and on and on, I’m not sure which end is up most days!

How does my work differ from others in its genre?

Stealing this from the press release about the book … “I try to respect that (for the most part) these are show business professionals putting (ideally) their best feet forward and that they are human beings with hearts and souls and feelings. I hope I never seem cruel. I don’t mean to be. These writings are off-the-cuff and journal-style and come from as positive a place as I can muster….Approach everything and everyone honestly and with positive intent and offer candid feedback with an open heart and as much kindness as possible.”

Captain 3

Why do I write what I do?

Also stealing from the release (lord, I’m lazy today) … “Film is an encapsulated medium. Whether 90 minutes or three hours, a movie tells one story-beginning, middle, and end-introducing you to new friends, enemies, and locales in an efficiently designed delivery mechanism. With a good film, I feel you get the experience of reading a novel (whether or not the film is in fact based on any work of literature) in a highly compressed fashion. … In the best movie-going experience, your brain leaves your body for a bit, you take a mini-vacation to places you might not otherwise ever see, and you return to your regularly scheduled life a bit changed, perhaps enlightened, and hopefully re-energized.”

How does your writing process work?

John laughs that he thinks I write my reviews as we’re still in the parking lot of the theatre. There is some truth to that. I’ve always been annoyingly analytical while watching a movie or a play or a concert – what choices were made, why, what do they say about the artist or about our culture? So all of that stuff is swirling in my head, and I quite literally have to purge it when I get home, or I lose track of the ideas and find myself on the cranky side. So, the minute we walk in the house, I grab the laptop, head upstairs, plunk myself on the bed, and exorcise these crazy thoughts.

Captain 4

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Reel Roy Reviews is now a book! Thanks to BroadwayWorld for this coverage – click here to view. In addition to online ordering at Amazon or from the publisher Open Books, the book currently is being carried by Bookbound, Common Language Bookstore, and Crazy Wisdom Bookstore and Tea Room in Ann Arbor, Michigan and by Green Brain Comics in Dearborn, Michigan. My mom Susie Duncan Sexton’s Secrets of an Old Typewriter series is also available on Amazon and at Bookbound and Common Language.

“The error in man is thinking nature is in our control and not the other way around.” Godzilla (2014)

18 May 2014

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Description: Film poster; Source: Wikipedia [linked]; Portion used: Film poster only; Low resolution? Sufficient resolution for illustration, but considerably lower resolution than original. Other information: Intellectual property by film studio. Non-free media use rationales: Non-free media use rationale - Article/review; Purpose of use: Used for purposes of critical commentary and illustration in an educational article about the film. The poster is used as the primary means of visual identification of this article topic. Replaceable? Protected by copyright, therefore a free use alternative won't exist.

[Image Source: Wikipedia]

Godzilla, Warner Brothers’ reboot of the classic Japanese movie monster, is exhausting. Don’t get me wrong. I was highly entertained, even entranced, but I also feel like I was just hit over the head by a 2X4 for the last two hours.

Like the similar postmodern reinvention in Rise of the Planet of the Apes (or even, for that matter, this spring’s Noah), Godzilla, directed with a surprisingly sure hand by relative newcomer Gareth Edwards, is positioned as pointed popcorn allegory for how abysmally we humans treat this planet and the ungodly vengeance Mother Nature should unleash on us self-important ants.

In all fairness, Toho Studios’ original Godzilla series took its cues from a mid-century world traumatized by the threat of nuclear Armageddon (as evidenced by the real-life bombings of Nagasaki and Hiroshima), so Edwards is just following that argument to its logical post-9/11, post-global warming, post-Inconvenient Truth conclusion.

The 2014 edition (let’s all just agree to forget the inane Jurassic Park-meets-Independence Day debacle that was 1998’s Matthew Broderick-starring effort) is a tension-filled marvel. Edwards wisely gives us plenty of footage of the titular “monster” and his battles with the Mothra-esque MUTO creatures, but he keeps the shots murky and smoke-filled, the pacing methodically coiled, and the shocks Hitchockian in their “did I see that or didn’t I?” simplicity. Alexandre Desplat’s score is brain-thumpingly martial.

The narrative is straight-up Saturday afternoon matinee with a healthily cynical gloss of 21st century ecological nightmare. The first half of the movie is all set up as we are introduced to a scientist (a hammy Bryan Cranston saddled with an epically bad hairpiece … guess the budget got eaten up by CGI) who loses his wife (Juliette Binoche) in a tragic nuclear power plant accident that may or may not be giant-lizard-related. Flash-forward 15 years, and Cranston’s now-adult son (Aaron Taylor-Johnson, all grown up from his Kick-Ass years and looking like a steroidal Joaquin Phoenix) has tired of his papa’s conspiratorial theories as to what really offed mama.

There’s a gibberish-spewing Japanese scientist (an awfully wooden Ken Watanabe) and a gibberish-spewing British scientist (the always crackerjack Sally Hawkins) and an authoritatively gibberish-spewing American general (the genius David Strathairn who could make tax code seem fascinating).

At one point in the film, Watanabe says to Strathairn: “The error in man is thinking nature is in our control and not the other way around.” (I loved that!)

I kept expecting Kevin McCarthy or Gene Barry to show up wearing fedoras covering up their sweaty brows as they rattled through unnecessarily expository dialogue (see: 1953’s War of the Worlds or 1954’s Invasion of the Body Snatchers… but preferably if you are 10 years old and it’s 1982 and there is nothing else on television).

Of course, Taylor-Johnson has chosen a military career, much to the chagrin of his academic dad. He is returning from service in some unidentified locale, eager to reignite all-American family time with his perpetually anxious wife (Elizabeth Olsen, spinning gold out of a thankless role) and his toddler son. As mayhem ensues and the various screaming creatures destroy Honolulu … and Las Vegas … and San Francisco … somehow Taylor-Johnson’s character managers to be in every setting, save the day, and find another means of transport to get him closer to home. Ah, Hollywood logic.

But, here’s the thing … it all works, pretty marvelously. There are no winky-nudge-nudge sexist/racist/xenophobic Michael Bay-style jokes/asides/quips and the carnage (while PG-13 friendly) is believable and haunting (and any movie that blows up Las Vegas is ok in my book). The pacing is ominous and steady and relentless, and, without being a shrill polemic, the film reminds us, in no uncertain terms, that how we treat (or mis-treat) this planet has dire consequences for us all …

In this case, primordial creatures who’ve lived in the earth’s core for eons until the lure of radioactive weapons and waste draw them out will obliterate us all in some kind of H.P. Lovecraft/Ray Bradbury fever dream … but, hey, I said it was an allegory!

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Reel Roy Reviews is now a book! Thanks to BroadwayWorld for this coverage – click here to view. In addition to online ordering at Amazon or from the publisher Open Books, the book currently is being carried by Bookbound, Common Language Bookstore, and Crazy Wisdom Bookstore and Tea Room in Ann Arbor, Michigan and by Green Brain Comics in Dearborn, Michigan. My mom Susie Duncan Sexton’s Secrets of an Old Typewriter series is also available on Amazon and at Bookbound and Common Language.

Animals, the environment, nature or wildlife: Dearborn’s Big Read Wrap-Up Event

18 May 2014

6 Comments

Roy and Susie and John and Terry

Roy and Susie and John and Terry

What a wonderful day! Thanks to Henry Ford Centennial Library’s Henry Fischer for organizing the Big Read Wrap-Up author event. I was (and am) so proud that my mom Susie Duncan Sexton was among so many great writers, that she has an essay included in their book Animal Tales, and that my canine “siblings” Jack and Zelda are featured on the front cover.

Animal Tales book cover

Animal Tales book cover

 

Me reading my mom's essay

Me reading my mom’s essay

Here’s the book description: “Call of the Wild Dearborn: Animal Tales is a community anthology featuring short stories, poems, and essays about animals, the environment, nature or wildlife.” It will be available to purchase online at the library’s site soon. [All photos in this blog entry by Don Sexton.]

Authors

Authors

My mom emailed, “What I would add is the ‘moment in time’ that Selfridge [Jeremy Piven tv series] identified in his final installment for this season last night seated around a Thanksgiving table with his entire family … because you, Roy, so poised on that stage reading about Jack and Zelda with that magnificent slide of the book cover was incredibly moving for me! Like nothing ever before! Loved every moment of this event. Super concept! Pleased to have been included … I am delighted to have a story in the book and that my Jack & Zelda are a part of the cover! I once taught the works of Jack London, so I enjoyed the Call of the Wild theme of the presentations at the Saturday afternoon event.”

Rosalie's in Jonesville

Rosalie’s in Jonesville

My parents had a marvelous lunch at adorable Rosalie’s in Jonesville, Michigan, on the way to the event, and John and I had such a nice dinner with them and with Terry Branoff at La Pita in Dearborn following – with a quick stop at beloved Dearborn Music. And then Terry and I were off to see Lady Gaga. Here’s my mom’s website: www.susieduncansexton.com – enjoy!

Susie at Rosalie's

Susie at Rosalie’s

Henry Fischer

Henry Fischer

More about my mom and her work…

Roy and Susie and John and Don

Roy and Susie and John and Don

Read about movies and nostalgia, animal issues and sociopolitical concerns all discussed in her book Secrets of an Old Typewriter and its follow-up Misunderstood Gargoyles and Overrated Angels – print and ebook versions of both are available on Amazon (click the title). You can find her fun and free-wheeling blog here.

Her books are also carried by these fine retailers: Ann Arbor’s Bookbound and Common Language; Columbia City’s North Side Grille and Whitley County Historical Museum; and Fort Wayne’s The Bookmark. And you can download from iTunes.

Meet other like-minded souls at her facebook fan page. Or join a great group of animal advocates Squawk Back: Helping animals when others can’t … Or Won’t

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La Pita

La Pita

Giggle and Laugh

Giggle and Laugh

Reel Roy Reviews is now a book! Thanks to BroadwayWorld for this coverage – click here to view. In addition to online ordering at Amazon or from the publisher Open Books, the book currently is being carried by Bookbound, Common Language Bookstore, and Crazy Wisdom Bookstore and Tea Room in Ann Arbor, Michigan and by Green Brain Comics in Dearborn, Michigan. My mom Susie Duncan Sexton’s Secrets of an Old Typewriter series is also available on Amazon and at Bookbound and Common Language.

Bleeding gratitude for her Little Monsters – Lady Gaga’s ArtRave tour at Detroit’s Joe Louis

18 May 2014

10 Comments

The Lady herself

The Lady herself

Little Monsters, Mama Monster did you proud in the “D” tonight. Lady Gaga rocked the house at Joe Louis Arena and made me a Gaga-believer.

I freely admit that her last effort ArtPop left me a bit cold. I’d been a fair-weather fan all along, absolutely adoring some of her hook-laden hits  and scratching my head on others. Lyrically, she occasionally seemed to be picking at Tori Amos’ or Bjork’s verbally tortured scraps, yet the uptempo accompaniment always kept bringing me back for more.

Opening number

Opening number

 

 

 

But that needle skipped the record, quite literally, when I heard ArtPop for the first time, the only cut speaking to me on any level being the incredibly infectious “Applause.”

However, watching Lady Gaga’s ArtRave tour tonight, suddenly all of ArtPop snapped into perfect relief. Like watching a musical after only hearing the cast album, every number made sense in the context of Gaga’s Jeff-Koons-meets-Haruki-Murakami vision.

And most importantly Gaga seemed to be having fun. She was an inferno, dancing with military precision, belting like some Liza Minnelli/Janis Joplin lovechild, and commanding us, like some hippie dippy drill sergeant, to accept and to love and to move.

Her stage

Her stage

I fell head over heels in adoration with this talented woman tonight.

Often dressed like The Birth of Venus (by way of the Jersey Shore) or like The Little Mermaid‘s Ursula (by way of Sigmund the Sea Monster), Gaga definitely had a “we’re all in one big aquarium together” vibe going. Her backup dancers were dressed as sea creatures more often than not, and the amazingly tight orchestra seemed to be playing from the inside of a fabulous sand castle onstage.

With my pal Terry (and a Little Monster behind us)

With my pal Terry (and a Little Monster behind us)

Gaga tore through all the familiar hits – from “Poker Face” to “Paparazzi” to “Bad Romance” – landing on my personal favorite “Born This Way” as an exquisite piano ballad (as opposed to its typical four-on-the-floor sonic blast). The song took on a touching resonance that it never had when Madonna (the queen of swipe-as-homage) called it a “reductive” version of Madge’s “Express Yourself.”

(Really, Madonna, I love you, but that was unnecessary. There’s room for us all in Gaga’s big tent.)

Applause

Applause

But most notably, Gaga – whether schtick or sincerity or both – opened her heart (sorry, Madonna, couldn’t help it) time and again to the fans surrounding her fabulously asymmetrical catwalk of a stage and to those of us in the cheap seats, imploring us to be kind to one another, to be tolerant of difference, and to be empathetic in every action and deed. She bleeds gratitude for her followers, and to witness that in person is the greatest spectacle of all.

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Reel Roy Reviews is now a book! Thanks to BroadwayWorld for this coverage – click here to view. In addition to online ordering at Amazon or from the publisher Open Books, the book currently is being carried by Bookbound, Common Language Bookstore, and Crazy Wisdom Bookstore and Tea Room in Ann Arbor, Michigan and by Green Brain Comics in Dearborn, Michigan. My mom Susie Duncan Sexton’s Secrets of an Old Typewriter series is also available on Amazon and at Bookbound and Common Language.

Goodbye, Troy Bolton – Neighbors

11 May 2014

11 Comments

Description: Film poster; Source: Wikipedia [linked]; Portion used: Film poster only; Low resolution? Sufficient resolution for illustration, but considerably lower resolution than original. Other information: Intellectual property by film studio. Non-free media use rationales: Non-free media use rationale - Article/review; Purpose of use: Used for purposes of critical commentary and illustration in an educational article about the film. The poster is used as the primary means of visual identification of this article topic. Replaceable? Protected by copyright, therefore a free use alternative won't exist.

[Image Source: Wikipedia]

Neighbors – the new movie starring Seth Rogen and Zac Efron – made me uncomfortable. I don’t mean that it was a bad film, but it sure as heck made me uneasy for its 90 minute running time.

This is both credit and critique.

The awful things the characters do to each other are unpredictable and mean and escalate with nightmarish abandon. It’s just that this is not my idea of a fun Saturday night at the movies.

I love me some outre comedies – from Bad Santa to Bridesmaids to this year’s Bad Words – and Neighbors, directed by Nicholas Stoller (writer of the last two Muppets movies!?), is as crass and crude as they come … but mostly the flick just managed to set my teeth on edge with not nearly enough laugh out loud moments.

Whereas the other aforementioned films use their gross out gags in service to the story (and to illustrate the renegade qualities of relatable characters who live in the margins), Neighbors seems to follow the rhythms of a horror movie, seeking to shock and awe rather than to humanize.

The high/low-concept relates the trauma of a young, hipster, entitled couple who move into a precious arts-and-crafts bungalow only to find their new neighbors arrive in a haze of 24/7 fraternity bacchanalia. We all know this couple, portrayed by Rogen (doing that same adenoidal foghorn thing he always does) and Rose Byrne (one of the best things in the spiky enterprise) – a pair of suburban survivalists who overuse words like “awesome,” who brag about their use of recreational drugs while obsessing about the latest Baby Bjorn-parenting-r-us techniques, and who sport t-shirts emblazoned with ironic Gen X catch phrases.

On the other hand, the frat boys, led by alpha wolf Efron and his charming chief lieutenant Dave Franco (James’ brother) are uber-millennials for whom the challenges of college seem to consist of how, who, where, and when to plan their next drug-fueled, techno-soundtracked, social media-documented rager. Sitcom-esque conflict ensues.

Do Byrne’s and Rogen’s characters just want a little peace-and-quiet for their baby daughter or are they caught in a disastrous spiral of trying to stay relevant and “hot” in the eyes of a youth culture that devours its own for breakfast?

There is a potent social commentary buried somewhere in this film, and it glimmers periodically – in the bureaucratic tomfoolery of Lisa Kudrow’s gonzo dean of students whose chief desire is to avoid bad PR and to keep her well-paying university gig or in the dissipated pretty boy bullying of Efron, a dim bulb freaked out that his prince-of-the-campus days are rapidly drawing to a close.

Ultimately, Neighbors captures a sweaty bad dream for those of us caught between our fraternity days and our mortgage-paying mid-life. But it’s chief accomplishment will be in shifting the rudderless career of Efron from bland all-American heartthrob (a role that never quite suited him) to comically creepy, beautiful sociopath. This turn fits him like a glove. Here’s hoping he gets another chance to explore this newfound niche. Goodbye, High School Musical‘s Troy Bolton. And good riddance.

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Reel Roy Reviews is now a book! Thanks to BroadwayWorld for this coverage – click here to view. In addition to online ordering at Amazon or from the publisher Open Books, the book currently is being carried by Bookbound, Common Language Bookstore, and Crazy Wisdom Bookstore and Tea Room in Ann Arbor, Michigan and by Green Brain Comics in Dearborn, Michigan. My mom Susie Duncan Sexton’s Secrets of an Old Typewriter series is also available on Amazon and at Bookbound and Common Language.

 

If Ernest Borgnine had been dropped in a vat of angry electric eels: The Amazing Spider-Man 2

3 May 2014

11 Comments

Description: Film poster; Source: Wikipedia [linked]; Portion used: Film poster only; Low resolution? Sufficient resolution for illustration, but considerably lower resolution than original. Other information: Intellectual property by film studio. Non-free media use rationales: Non-free media use rationale - Article/review; Purpose of use: Used for purposes of critical commentary and illustration in an educational article about the film. The poster is used as the primary means of visual identification of this article topic. Replaceable? Protected by copyright, therefore a free use alternative won't exist.

[Image Source: Wikipedia]

Between the ubiquitous marketing onslaught, the gaggle of colorful villains, the four-quadrant prestige casting, and the manically overeager trailers, I walked into summer 2014’s kick-off blockbuster The Amazing Spider-Man 2 dreading an overstuffed, overbaked, underdeveloped camp-fest like Batman & Robin or X-Men Origins: Wolverine or … The Grand Budapest Hotel. (Just kidding on that last reference, though I really did hate that movie.)

Color me surprised (sort of).

I adored the 2012 reboot starring Andrew Garfield and Emma Stone. I thought director Marc Webb hit all the right notes of scruffy young angst, of familial love and resentment, and of just making ends meet and getting through a day … let alone having your life extra-complicated after having been bitten by a radioactive spider. The Sam Raimi films with Tobey Maguire and Kirsten Dunst, while zippy and fun, just never really felt that grounded to me.

Blessedly, those relatable elements remain, though they are buried under a mountain of back-story and subplots. Garfield is winsome and charming as Peter Parker/Spider-Man – imagine if Anthony Perkins grew up a Millennial hipster and played a haunted spandex-ed superhero who hid his pain under glib one-liners and silly puns. And Stone as girlfriend Gwen Stacy is the perfect foil, more than holding her own amongst car crashes and emo dates alike. I will admit to finding their snappy teen repartee a bit cloying at times, but generally they remain the heart and soul of this series.

Sally Field also returns as Peter’s Aunt May, bringing free-floating yet fiercely protective anxiety and determined iron will to the role. She has one scene (as Field seems to in every movie in which she appears) that brought me to tears while I cheered her on – a quiet scene where she asserts once and for all that while she may not be Peter’s mother, she raised him and is the only family that counts.

Other cast members include Jamie Foxx as nebbish-turned-power-mad-demigod Max Dillon/Electro, Dane DeHaan as Parker’s childhood-pal-turned-chief nemesis Harry Osborn/Green Goblin, and a criminally underutilized Paul Giamatti (though if he’d been used properly, the movie would have been four hours long, instead of two and a half) as a scenery-chewing (literally) Russian-mobster-turned-mechanical Rhino.

Thematically, the film turns on a central concept of “being seen.” Gwen Stacy wants to know she has true value in Peter’s life. Aunt May wants Peter to know the sacrifices she has made to protect him at much cost to her own happiness. Osborn wants to redeem himself in the eyes of an industrialist father (Chris Cooper) who shipped him off to boarding schools like he was disposing of a pest.

And most overtly, Max/Electro wants the world to acknowledge his presence and his contributions in the moment, not to steal his ideas, and to simply remember his name. Some may find Jamie Foxx’s performance hammy (it is just shy of Jim Carrey’s Riddler in Batman Forever); I found it compelling. To me, Foxx walks a fine line between comic book silliness and heartfelt poignancy, giving us a Marty-style loser … that is if Ernest Borgnine had been dropped in a vat of angry electric eels and garnered lightning powers as a result.

I enjoyed this film a lot, but it is way too long and tries to accomplish too much. Yes, comic book fanboys, like yours truly, love to see all manner of minutiae from fifty years of four-color canon honored (and reinvented) on the big screen. But, we also like to see compelling movies well-made that tell a story efficiently, effectively, and seemingly effortlessly.

Unfortunately, I could feel the gears grinding together a few too many times in Amazing Spider-Man 2 as Webb and screenwriters Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci labored to stitch together countless disparate threads. I also could feel the Sony studio heads rubbing their hands together with money-grubbing glee as they planned out the multitude of spin-offs and sequels that this flick might generate.

Regardless, the movie is an exceptionally entertaining enterprise, and that is chiefly due to a crackerjack cast that imbues the material with generous spirit, empathetic soul, sparkling wit, and loving heart.

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Reel Roy Reviews is now a book! Thanks to BroadwayWorld for this coverage – click here to view. In addition to online ordering at Amazon or from the publisher Open Books, the book currently is being carried by Bookbound, Common Language Bookstore, and Crazy Wisdom Bookstore and Tea Room in Ann Arbor, Michigan and by Green Brain Comics in Dearborn, Michigan. My mom Susie Duncan Sexton’s Secrets of an Old Typewriter series is also available on Amazon and at Bookbound and Common Language.

“Anybody that’s different, we’re ready to be prejudiced against them” – Jonathan Balazs’ documentary Mars Project

2 May 2014

5 Comments

[Image Source: marsprojectmovie.blogspot.ca]

[Image Source: Mars Project]

One of the things I love most about social media is that, if you allow yourself, you can expand your horizons beyond the provincial – those traditional boundaries of geography, life experience, education, family – to defy and redefine the term “friend.” This is a revolution in the making, and none of us can really see the forest for the trees at this point as to how differently our communities, virtual or otherwise, ultimately will look in the future.

That being said, I was honored when Canadian filmmaker Jonathan Balazs reached out to me via Facebook as a follower of this blog to see if I would review his documentary Mars Project (click here for more info). I was thrilled that he wanted to share his work with me – evidence of the global footprint we all can create with just a few keystrokes.

(As an aside, this morning, I heard Sheryl Sandberg – COO of Facebook and author of Lean In speak at Detroit’s Adcraft Club breakfast. I appreciated her candor about the toxic effects of sexism, racism, ageism, and all the other nasty “-ism”s in society today. Interesting factoid: 63% of facebook’s 1.28 BILLION users return every day.)

Balazs’ documentary, a brisk 60 minutes, offers the haunting tale of a hip-hop artist Khari “Conspiracy” Stewart who may or may not be suffering from mental illness and how his frustrations with the health care system lead him to explore more spiritual/humanistic options to cure his “affliction”.

We learn Khari’s story in his own words through voice-over as well as through first person interviews with his twin brother Addi, who telegraphs a palpable mix of frustration, rivalry, annoyance, and love. We also hear from representatives of the mental health profession who express their frustration with their own colleagues’ tendency toward quick medicinal fixes and reductive categorization. One doctor observes, “Anybody that’s different, we’re ready to be prejudiced against them.”

Arguably the most interesting question the documentary grapples with is the “chicken or the egg” phenomenon of whether insanity breeds great art or the intensity of the artistic process prompts social maladjustment. Art as therapy?

The film pointedly critiques a society that often labels “mentally ill” those folks who view the world differently. In watching Addi and hearing him articulate his understandable frustrations with Khari, the viewer may intuit a rush to judgment that occurs out of annoyance and jealousy as much as it does concern for his brother’s well-being.

The filmmakers don’t offer us any easy answers to these questions, and, at times, I wondered if Khari had created this persona of a hip-hop artist plagued by demonic voices (that may or may not come from space!) as a quirky means of differentiating and marketing himself. Yet, as the film runs its course, illuminating the reality of Khari’s difference, it becomes apparent that his musical gifts come with a price.

Balazs uses a variety of techniques to illustrate Khari’s unique place in a world that rejects him. At one point. a radio interview is played wherein the DJs remark how Khari’s music is 10 years ahead of its time, while his own brother, a member of the crew, admits he can barely bring himself to listen to it.

The film is shot in a grainy hand-held fashion that suits the subject matter, with some interesting layered effects as footage is projected on brick walls and other stationary objects in and around Edmonton, the twins’ hometown.

I have had a tenuous relationship with hip hop in recent years, though I was a big fan in high school and college. Those artists who speak to me have always been a bit left of center, be it De La Soul or Black Sheep or Jungle Brothers or Digable Planets or even more mainstream folks like Kanye West and Erykah Badu.

I also find myself questioning the efficacy of modern approaches to mental health, which seem more about bringing everyone “in-line” to “normalcy” … when I’m not sure any of us really know what that is or what that looks like.

I’m not meaning to start a debate here about mental health doctrine or about the artistic merits of Kanye West, but I will concede that this documentary gave me a lot of food for thought … and makes me want to find some of Khari’s musical output. And, in this sense, Balazs did his job as a documentarian beautifully. Balazs is a filmmaking force to watch.

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Reel Roy Reviews is now a book! Thanks to BroadwayWorld for this coverage – click here to view. In addition to online ordering at Amazon or from the publisher Open Books, the book currently is being carried by Bookbound, Common Language Bookstore, and Crazy Wisdom Bookstore and Tea Room in Ann Arbor, Michigan and by Green Brain Comics in Dearborn, Michigan. My mom Susie Duncan Sexton’s Secrets of an Old Typewriter series is also available on Amazon and at Bookbound and Common Language.