Sin City

Writer/director/composer/producer Robert Rodriguez (El Mariachi, etc. and the Spy Kids franchise, etc) and writer/comic creator/graphic artist Frank Miller (Batman, Daredevil, X-Men and other comics for D.C. and Marvel) have joined together to produce three of Miller’s Sin City graphic novels into one slick motion picture. (Quentin Tarantino was a guest-director; from much of the press about the film Rodriguez has broken many Hollywood standards by crowding the credit lines and breaking lots of other standards, too).

 

The Japanese actually have the corner on graphic novels (check out any Barnes & Noble or Borders). They are comic books published in paperback form and follow the super-hero storyline, good vs. evil. For U.S and English-speaking comic book aficionados and devotees, however, Frank Miller is a publishing and now cinematic phenomenon for his regular fans, and has perhaps gained some new ones along the way.

 

Sin City the film tells the story of a good cop (Bruce Willis) in Basin city (looks like Gotham…) who rescues a little girl from the son of a corrupt senator (Nick Stahl is the son and Powers Booth is the senator); the good cop, Hartigan, gets shot and ends in jail for 8 years. Skip to Marv (Mickey Rourke). Goldie, a prostitute, is killed while in bed with Marv who is sleeping. He has mental problems but heroic inclinations. He seeks her murderer and revenge among the clients of the hookers who run the red light district of Sin City. As he tracks down the perp, he finds that the Cardinal Roark (Rutger Hauer) is in league with a strange killer played by Elijah Wood. The Cardinal doesn’t do anything that most fiction has the clergy doing, but it is very gross.

 

And so on and so forth. Thefilm is two hours and six minutes long. I started looking at my watch an hour into it.

 

Here’s what I would say about Sin City:

 

It’s stylish in a comic-book kind of way. Rodriguez uses Miller’s film noir approach completely; from the one volume I have (Sin City: the Hard Good-bye), he practically copied the scenes from the book.

 

Did I like it? No, not really. While I enjoy most comic books made-into-movies, I think that Sin City is over-the-top for its goriness, violence, and crime-horror. However, a fervent filmgoer, which I am, has to respect the art and originality of the film. Also, among much sin, there is also self-sacrifice and goodness for others, even though everything is exaggerated. It’s not believable, but then what comic books are? There are also parts that … make you laugh because its so extreme. It also raises a question: what's the difference between sin and evil?

 

When I was buying the book (just yesterday) I chatted with the sales assistant at Barnes and Noble – an art/film major who has just finished school. He was a goldmine of information and insight.

 

I said: I bet females don’t like the movie much.

 

He said: I went with my girlfriend and she really liked it; you’d be surprised.  

 

I said: It made me uncomfortable.

 

He said: It’s because there was so much, too much really, repetition of the violent scenes.

 

I said: Why did he (Miller) have to put a Catholic priest (he’s mixed up in the mystery, too) and a Cardinal in the story? Was he picking on the Church?

 

He said: In graphic novels the super-hero is always going up against institutional or some kind of power, like the government or the Church. Here, there’s a dirty cop and a dirty senator, too.

 

I said: In an ocean of movies that all fit some kind of existing genre, Sin City stands out as smart, slick and completely different - even if it was hard to follow, hard to watch and I didn't get a lot of it.

 

He said: that’s for sure.

 

Who should see this film? Well, probably not your grandmother.

 

Miss Congeniality 2: Armed and Fabulous

FBI Agent Gracie Hart (Sandra Bullock) is just getting back into the swing of things after saving Miss USA (as recounted in Miss Congeniality). However, her relationship with Agent Matthews (played by Benjamin Bratt in the first film) is over and she is taking it hard. Then her cover is blown during an undercover op when a woman recognizes her. Hart’s boss, McDonald (Ernie Hudson) offers her the option of becoming the new face of the FBI. When Hart realizes this is her only choice, she goes for it.

 

Gracie gets her own entourage: a gay personal make-over artist, Joel (Dietrich Bader), a hair dresser, and make-up person. She also gets a body-guard, Agent Sam Fuller (Regina King). Fuller is in New York from Chicago to get an attitude adjustment: anger-management FBI style. It’s not going very well. When Gracie becomes obnoxious, Sam quits the detail. Gracie even writes a book, does book signings on the book store circuit– and gives advice to a young admirer on her grooming.

 

Then the action starts. Miss New York, Pam (Leslie Ann Grossman), and pageant host Stan Fields (William Shatner) are kidnapped in Las Vegas. The Bureau sends Hart, her entourage, and Fuller to Vegas to be the public face of the Agency, while the local field office, headed by Collins (Treat Williams), goes after the bad guys.

 

But Hart goes off on her own to save her pal Miss USA and the expected escapades commence.

 

Miss Congeniality 2: Armed and Fabulous is an OK film. I don’t think it’s as good as the first one; it’s a little too slow on the uptake. Should have been edited better and maybe less focused on teaching us something. It’s full of good morals, though, for its youthful female audience, with a subtle anti-violence message. Friendship, self-esteem, where true beauty lies, and anger control are also on the list. Oh, and world peace. Seriously.

 

While I hope there will not be Miss Congeniality 3 unless there is a script someone would want to give an award to, Agent Fuller’s imitation of Tina Turner is quite good (Regina King is an excellent actress) and the ending works pretty well when Gracie visits the school of her young friend from the book signing.

 

You know how they put all the good scenes in the trailers to entice us to see the movie? If they had edited this film as well as they edited the trailer, Miss Congeniality 2 would have been better for it.

 

The Upside of Anger

When suburban Detroit housewife Terry Wolfmeyer’s (Joan Allen) husband Grey goes missing with just his wallet, Terry suspects that he has run off with his Swedish secretary – to Sweden. She’s understandably angry and just to prove it, she hits the bottle, the hard stuff. A neighbor, a retired big league baseball player turned radio host Denny Davies (Kevin Costner) comes calling. He wants to speak with Grey about the new housing development deal they are working on with their extra land. He’s stoned and carrying a can of beer. Over a three year period he and Terry become drinking buddies, friends, and lovers.

 

Terry’s four daughters, Hadley (Alicia Witt), Emily (Kerri Russell), Andy (Erika Christensen) and Popeye (Evan Rachel Wood), seem, on the surface, to deal with their father’s disappearance stoically and for Popeye, philosophically. However, Hadley rushes into marriage right after college graduation. Andy refuses to go to college and Denny gets her a job at his radio station; she starts an inappropriate relationship with Shep (Mike Bender), a producer. Emily ends up in the hospital with stomach problems, probably caused by stress. And Popeye keeps a journal.

 

Writer/director and actor Mike Bender has created a fine movie that examines the nature of human anger under a cinematic microscope. It’s pretty ugly. It’s an invitation for audiences to take a good look at our own internal violence.

 

As I thought about the film, it reminded me of what a very honest, non-romantic version of Little Women might look like today. A mother with four lovely daughters who struggle without the husband and father. The war is not on the outside, however, as the Civil War was for the March family in Louisa May Alcott’s classic. Rather it rages and takes its toll on the interior landscape of the characters' souls and is made manifest in their relationships and life choices.

 

But change is possible.

 

To Mike Bender’s lasting credit, this is not a chick flick (I really dislike that term; to me it’s derogatory) because it never caricatures the women. Anger is an equal opportunity, universal sin for all people and an occasion for transformation good for all seasons.

 

Kevin Costner gives a credible performance in this film; he plays a well-off bum really well. He is a perfect counter-point to Joan Allen’s uptight, liquored, and angry persona. I have never seen Joan Allen in a role she did not accomplish to perfection, and here she does not disappoint.

 

The Upside of Anger is a de profundis movie. It is not until the characters hit the depths that they can rise.

 

Pope John Paul II's Movies

The Jeweler’s Shop and Our God’s Brother 

 

 

 

As is well known, the man who would become Pope John Paul II (1920 - 2005), was very involved in the theater during his youth, as a writer and actor. This is an interest he has continued throughout his life, always remaining a spiritual mentor for those in the performing arts, from cinema, to the circus. Two films have been made from his plays: The Jeweler’s Shop (1988) and Our God’s Brother (1997). 

 

" Karol Sr. had inculcated in his son a love for Poland’s literateurs. It came as no surprise, then that, as a student, the young man took to the theater and to acting with depth and devotion—even at the risk of arrest and execution in wartime Poland. Twice a week he and the "Theater of the Living Word" clandestinely rehearsed and performed, committed to peaceful resistance and to keeping alive the nation’s cultural heritage." (from www.johnpaulpapacy.com)

 

The Jeweler’s Shop

 

In 1960 Karol Wjotyla published  a play in a Polish magazine called The Jeweler’s Shop: A Meditation on the Sacrament of Matrimony, Passing on Occasion into a Drama"  .

 

The Jeweler’s Shop was adapted and made into a film in 1988, starring Burt Lancaster, Olivia Hussey, Jonathan Crombie, Ben Cross, etc. It was directed by Michael Anderson (Shoes of the Fisherman).

 

The story is in three acts as are all movies and plays; here the structure is very obvious. In the first, a couple falls in love just before World War II and buy a wedding ring amid signs that a dark time coming. The jeweler (Lancaster) tells them: "the weight of these golden rings is not the weight of metal but the proper weight of man [and woman], each of you separately and both together." In the second act, another couple grows apart because each partner is succumbs to ego; each blames the other. The woman decides to return her wedding ring to the same jeweler, but it weighs nothing on the scales. In the third act the children of these two couples meet and fall in love. Each one has issues stemming from their parents and upbringing. These are eventually resolved in hope with each of the young people deciding to try and grow beyond what limits them so they can marry in freedom of spirit

 

The play revolves around the role that ego plays in human relationships, especially marriage.

 

When I first saw the film I admired it on the one hand because it was written by the Pope. On the other, it was not the best film I had ever seen. In my memory it seemed stilted and somewhat obvious. Nevertheless, if we read or watch The Jeweler’s Shop within the context of John Paul II’sbody of philosophical, theological, and pastoral work and teachings, the play is remarkable for our times. He has taken one of the basic theses of his teaching, the balance between freedom and responsibility in human activity, and incarnated it through art.

 

I think the filmmakers wanted to remain very faithful to the original out of respect for the author. But maybe someday someone will remake this little gem into a film that will get everyone’s attention.

 

Our God’s Brother

 

The Polish/Catholic director Krzysztof Zanussi directed the second of Pope John Paul II’s plays-into-film, Our God’s Brother in 1997. According to the one review I could find, it is the story of the 19th century Polish painter Adam Cimelowski who gave up his promising artistic career for the service of God. The film was never released in the United States.

 

For more information on the particulars of the films, visit www.imdb.org

 

Unfortunately, the video/DVD of The Jeweler’s Shop is not available at this time. The book is available, however, on Amazon or at your local Catholic bookstore.

 

(I even checked on www.half.com for used copies of The Jeweler's Shop, but no one is selling at this time. As we can imagine, folks probably want to hold on to their copies as the Pope's health declines so rapidly.)

 

For more about the Pope as actor, writer and poet, visit
http://www.johnpaulpapacy.com/  

On a personal note, I was priviledged to be part of a pilgrimage group of our sisters (Daughters of St. Paul) who had a private audience and Mass with the Pope at his summer residence at Castel Gondolfo on September 2, 1981. We were the first group to be received privately after the assasination attempt on his life the previous May. It was a time I will always remember. 

Born into Brothels: Calcutta's Red Light Kids

First time filmmakers and Academy Award winners Zana Briski and Ross Kaufman have given audiences a sensitive and realistic view of what life looks like a cramped, dirty, chaotic world – that of prostitutes and their children of Calcutta’s red light district.

 

Zana Briski first went to Calcutta to photograph the life of the women of the district but ended up doing two things. She taught eight children how to take photographs and at the same time learned from eight children about hope.

 

Born into Brothels is a very simple film. Zana introduces the children and we see their lives, families and the amazing photographs they take of their world. Zana decides to help the children have a chance at a better life. She sells the photographs to make enough money to send the children to boarding school. She struggles to find schools who will take the children of prostitutes, because most will not; she struggles with an impossibly out-dated bureaucracy to get their papers together to meet the schools’ criteria for acceptance; then she struggles with the children’s’ deterministic attitudes and those of their families.

 

There are parts of the film that are shocking because the reality is too harsh to imagine. Yet, I came to a greater understanding of the work of Mother Teresa of Calcutta, and why she cared for the poorest of the poor without the hope of changing social structures from the top down. Like Mother Teresa, the filmmakers, through art, tried to make a difference in the lives of eight children, one child at a time. They did what they could. They did not want to make a film just to pay the bills; the film is a result of their realization of the fine balance between art and social responsibility - about caring. We will never know if the filmmakers have succeeded in the long run; but we are encouraged by their example to put love into action and try, even for the sake of one child, to make a difference.

 

Congratulations to the Academy for recognizing this film.

Robots

Mr. and Mrs. Copperbottom (voices of Stanley Tucci and Dianne Weist) become the parents of Rodney (Ewan McGregor) after twelve hours of labor to assemble their made-to-order baby ‘bot. As Rodney “grows” up, his interchangeable parts are replaced with “hand-me-downs”, or “pre-owned” parts. The Copperbottom’s don’t have much money; after all, dad is a dishwasher.

 

When Rodney grows up he wants to become like his idol, Mr. Bigweld (Mel Brooks), whose on air persona wants to help all the robots by inventing things and supplying them with spare parts so they don’t have to buy expensive news ones. Rodney is very creative and he takes his invention to the big city to sell to Mr. Bigweld. There he discovers that Bigweld is missing and his place taken at the helm of the corporation by Ratchet (Greg Kinnear).

 

Rodney and the other ‘bots he meets join forces to combat Ratchet and his Manchurian Candidate-like mother who do away with replacement parts and demand that the ‘bots only buy new models or be banished to the junk yard.

 

Robots is highly entertaining animation (for kids and adults) and the pop-culture dialogue is very funny (mostly adults).

 

I suppose Robots is intended as just fun, kind of an anthropomorphic-like morality tale (using robots instead) about the mechanical dehumanization of Fordism and planned obsolescence of manufactured goods. But I had three issues with it. One, I disliked the use of mail-order “children”; smacks of genetic selection, even though toys do have to be assembled. Two, it’s easy to accept animals as having human characteristics because they will never be human;but the humanization of robots is another matter. Lots of questions arise about the nature of the human person (a good thing), but since robots will never be able to reflect upon themselves reflecting, I didn’t care for the humanization of the machine and the mechanization of the human. What is it saying about the nature of the human person? Three, the battle between good and evil. Life just isn’t that simple and neither is conflict. Did the characters even try negotiation as a way to resolve conflict? No, only violence. This kind of ideology is repeated over and over in children’s movies, maybe because it’s easy.

 

I wish our creative people and entertainment industries wouldn’t take the easy way out to resolve conflict so often.

 

Robots is a fun flick, but take the time to talk it.

 

Vanishing Point (1997) new DVD release

Jimmy Kowlaski, played by Viggo Mortensen before he became Aragorn, is a young ex-race car driver who served in the original Gulf War as an Army Ranger. He and his wife Raphinia (Christine Elise) live in rural Idaho and do not have much money. Jimmy is partners in a garage business and occasionally delivers refurbished race cars to their owners for extra cash.

 

He leaves his wife in bed at home to deliver a car; she is very pregnant and there is certain to be complications for her delivery because she has lupus.

 

When he arrives at the first delivery point, he gets the opportunity to deliver yet another car even further away from home. Along the way, he calls to check up on his wife. When she doesn’t answer one day, Jimmy calls a neighbor and finds out his wife is in the hospital and things don’t look good. He decides to drive home – really fast.

 

Along the way Jimmy remembers how he met his wife, her faith, and that she wanted him to become a Catholic like her as a condition for them marrying.

 

Problems start when Jimmy gets in a hurry going from one point to the hospital where his wife’s condition is deteriorating. Instead of stopping for the highway patrol when they go after him for speeding, he just keeps going (really fast) and causes some spectacular pyrotechnic crashes. He is helped by people along the way: a former Marine who gives him a police scanner, an Indian who shows up out of nowhere when Jimmy decides to travel through the brush instead of the road, a disaffected war vet holed up in a cave and his girlfriend, and the “Voice” of a radio jockey (Jason Priestly) who keeps the truth about Jimmy’s life alive when the FBI think he’s a terrorist.

 

This TV remake of Vanishing Point by writer-director Charles R. Carner (Judas) takes as its starting point a cult favorite from 1971 – which I have not seen. Carner explained to me: “I loved the originalwhen it came out (I was a high school freshman) - hadn't seen it in 25 years, decided to rent it on video - was appalled at how bad it was - but realized that the central concept was not only great, but even more timely in the Clinton Nineties than it had been in the Nixon Seventies.” 

 

What’s interesting about this film now is that it might make the current political administration nervous, depending on one's interpretation. Its critique of the “Man” is pretty obvious and a certain throw-back to the original film, though this is not Jimmy’s issue. He just wants to get to his wife. What might be its strongest point, the faith that Jimmy is seeking on this road trip on “speed” (automotive, not drugs) and that his wife enjoys, is a bit corny towards the end. It would have worked better if the story suggested more than what it shows.

 

As Carner admits, “I'm amazed we got away with so much!”

 

I don’t know why the www.imdb.org has this rated “R” – I think it is an error and might be referring to the original film. This TV movie offers many themes to talk about, such as marriage, fidelity, faith, seeking, family, life in America today, the situation of the media vis-a-vis government, civil law, and morality. It’s never too clear how Jimmy’s race to the vanishing point is justified – but that’s another point to talk about, too.

 

(Charlie Carner and I are both members of Catholic in Media Associates here in Los Angeles, and it is a priveledge to know him and his work.)