'Song To Song' A Review

Song To Song is an experimental romantic drama filmed in Austin, TX loosly about singer/songwriters BV(Ryan Gosling) and Faye(Rooney Mara) their relationship with nebulous producer Cook(Michael Fassbender) and to a lesser extent about his marriage with server Rhonda(Natalie Portman). The film weaves in and out of chronology using image and score to convey meaning rather than the sparing dialogue.

Mara as the defacto main character is serviceable but seems to be constrained by the style, without scenes to play or lines to speak she is presentational more than natural. We can see her acting. To be fair she is the focus of many painfully protracted close ups where she has nothing to do. Gosling, Fassbender, and Portman all fair better, more comfortable with what was(or maybe more accurately what wasn't) required. More fluid and more honest. However the main cast is all limited by what they can do simply by the nature of the script, or lack there of, its convoluted and muddled. We're never quite sure what dynamics are at play, who wants what, or why we should care. All despite the best efforts of the talented actors.

Visually, of course, the film is beautiful. The score haunting and evocative. Typical of writer/director Malick. And yet an actual film fails to coalesces. Because of the pseudo narrative affectations its more pastiche than complete thought. There are spontaneous moments of real beauty and scenes of really compelling honesty but they fail to add together to make anything like a whole.

More montage than movie, more experiment than actual idea, interesting but not moving.

Don't See It.

Driving

I drive a car

probably six times a year

mostly my mother's

aging but stalwart

2003 Chevy Malibu

after living for years

in Chicago

where there is no pressing

need for cars

it provides a foregone thrill

no quite but close

to the joy

of the newly licensed teen

over come with freedom,

speed, and lush mobility

who knew those old days

could be recaptured

with prolonged abstinence?

Balance

We had a full roster for Schwa tonight and Joe in from LA, which put us at 10. Typical rosters at iO are 9 or 10 not because everyone is in attendance but because one or two usually aren't. Ten can be an unwieldy number of folks trying to do a 30 minute improv set. Bigger numbered ensembles are more compatible with longer sets, even two act shows, where the pacing is naturally more sedate.

I've been on a number of teams that had high numbers relatively frequently and there were all kinds of methods to try to find balance when there were so many people vying for time. One oft repeated "rule" is after you've been in a scene wait till everyone else has been in a scene before you make a move to reappear. Which is, I guess, in essence sound however with ten people that could eat up a good half of the show depending on how long the initial five scenes turn out to be. Which brings us to the next "rule" which is something along the lines of "be patient" "let it breathe" or "give people their time". Meaning leave those first scenes, when we're cycling through the entire roster, alone. Again, in theory sounds good, sounds egalitarian. However improv is a performative art form not a socialist enclave even though the way its discussed people believe it is or should be. Art & Entertainment shouldn't be bound by "waiting your turn".

The reality is that when your roster is light, then you have a chance to be patient and let stuff breathe. But when your roster is full that is when things need to move, pace picked up, so that the entire cast can cycle in and out of scenes quickly. This not only allows for everyone's ideas to be incorporated it allows each member the maximum amount of involvement. Speed not restraint is what's needed to make a possibly ungainly amount of collaborators effective in an improv piece.

Schwa rarely has a full roster so tonight was atypical for us but instead of agreeing to patience we settled on speed and because of that everyone was involved almost equally zipping in and out of the piece with relative fluidity. We were able to maintain a pretty high tempo because everyone was participating and making moves. And, I think, ultimately it was a success. Each of us knew going in we would play fast and that we individually would need to make the effort to engage. There is this idea prevalent in improv that the group comes first that can frequently discount the individual which can make for tentative or overly polite improv. A group of individuals with distinct points of view and their own energies and inspirations melding together actually takes care of the group more than this ineffective and untenable idea of "fairness".

And some shows don't necessarily require every individual performer be seen or highlighted at all. The Sight Unseen show last week turned into a narrative about this family musical group in Branson, MO played by Mark, Jimmy, and Rosie and I mostly participated as ancillary characters guiding the narrative, only coming on for a couple lines of dialogue or to move the show to the next scene. What I was doing was crucial to the success of the show but I wasn't really an "equal" participant per say.

Point being its the individual who determines their level of involvement, its no one's responsibility but their own to participate. And with that in mind, with that level of individual expectation shows are better and groups function more smoothly. Paradoxically by not "focusing on the group" by not trying to be "fair" by giving that authority back to the individual some kind of balance and artistic integrity can be achieved.

'Life' A Review

Life is a scifi horror film about a group scientists on the International Space Station who are studying samples from Mars. British biologist Hugh(Ariyon Bakare) discovers a cell in the Mars sample and after feeding it glucose and adjusting the atmosphere in its cage it begins to grow. After a month of observation the alien dubbed "Calvin" escapes and begins picking off the crew one by one.

The core cast of six are all wonderful actors. Hiroyuki Sanada as Sho, always a confident, comfortable, magnetic presence on screen. Ryan Reynolds as Rory provides his patented and effective wit. Rebecca Ferguson as Miranda and Olga Dihovichnaya as Katerina both give compelling performances with dimension albeit on little in the ways of script. Jake Gyllenhaal as David is serviceable but is the outlier of the cast in that he feels at points like he's acting, he has moments of presentation which are all the more noticeable given how present and in-the-moment the other cast members are throughout.

Visually the film is crisp and fluid, there's many evocative shots of the crew zipping along hallways in zero g, deep space visible through portholes. The monster design of Calvin is original and interesting, like a space squid with teeth. The only downfall is how rote the plot is. There is nothing new about the monster-in-the-walls beats the film hits, it falls in the long and dark shadow of Alien and doesn't offer anything particularly new. The ending is also a stumble with a twist that is predictable and a final shot that is more run on sentence than exclamation.

Excellent cast, sharp aesthetic, tired narrative.

Rent It.

'Power Rangers' A Review

Power Rangers is a superhero movie based on the 90's TV show of the same name. The movie opens on prehistoric Earth, a group of Rangers on the brink of defeat at the hands of villain Rita Repulsa(Elizabeth Banks) call down a meteor sacrificing themselves to stop her. In modern day five disparate high schoolers discover the five power coins of the original Rangers in their local quarry imbuing them with power. Rita, banished to/hibernating at the bottom of the sea is brought up by a local fisherman and endeavors to complete her mission- Power at the cost of all life on Earth. Will the novice Rangers be able to stop Rita before she acquires Earth's Life Crystal!?

The actors playing the Rangers, mostly unknowns, are all very good. Charming, authentic, and with good chemistry. The first half of the movie is basically updated Breakfast Club before they dive into battling Rita Repulsa with robot dinosaurs and they are all able to make this drastic leap work. We get to know them all a bit as characters, with some limited dimension for each, and that provides a nice base that makes the action at the end all the much more of a pay off. The stand out is RJ Cyler as Billy who has more to work with. But they all balance the humor and reality of the story with surprising grace. Banks, of course, is a knock out as the villain, big and broad and absolutely compelling.

Visually the film is stylish especially the first couple scenes establishing all the teens but it kind of degrades into serviceable, if not original, effects when all the morphing and zords get involved. The story has enough nods to the 90's TV series to please fans, a lot of jokes and lines referencing some of the more campy elements of the source material, but confidently makes it different and modern enough to work now. With the bright colors and particularly nutty premise the movie overcomes potential pitfalls to provide a little camp, a little heart, but above all entertainment.

A fun reboot with a nice balance of character and action.

See It.

Movie Purgatory

The past couple days Nicole and I have watched some movies from the early 90's- Powder, Soapdish, and Howard's End. They were bad, surprisingly good, and shockingly bland respectively. The last got 9 Oscar nominations yet couldn't be more forgotten, or forgettable. I asked around about these three movies and most people hadn't heard of them or only heard of them but not seen them with a few exceptions.

There are some movies that stand the test of time. Movies that are remembered and re-watched, that find their way into the cultural lexicon. But many others fade away due to their own mediocrity and simple time's passing. For a while the video store was the place where these forgotten films would be, if not remembered at least preserved. And browsing the shelves and watching a swath of moderate to bad movies you might find something cool. I still remember fondly Legend of the White Horse, a 1987 movie with Christopher Llyod, and Josh Kirby...Time Warrior! both of which I don't think anyone I've ever met has seen. With the advent of streaming and the extensive accessibility of mainstream entertainment the video store has gone the way of the buffalo. And so to the ability, and pleasure, of finding relatively unknown films.

But time has passed, streaming services are now the watchword and with their popularity they have all focused, almost primarily, on original content. With the majority of their money being spent on their own shows and films streaming services don't have the money to continually buy rights for all new releases. In order to keep their catalogs full they've begun digging deeper for content, acquiring rights for little known, little seen, or forgotten films. Which brings us to Powder, Soapdish, and Howard's End.

Of the three only Soapdish I would actually recommend but its nice to have the access, to have the ability to go back and watch these 20+ year old films that can, if not necessarily entertain, evoke a time period, a style, and a culture temperature. Films are not only entertainment they are time capsules and, good or bad, can teach us, can have value. With the bankruptcy of Blockbuster and the extinction of the video store as we know it something was lost, not the access to the new releases but access to the breadth of film history, we still have Taxi Driver and Titanic but hundreds of thousands of movies fade into obscurity. With Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon all pushing hard into original programming we are getting that breadth of access back. And that's a good thing.

Jelly Beans

Essentially they're just sugar
the various flavors merely chemical
but for me
their crystalline savor
is the epitome of treat
perhaps because
of fond Easter's past
hunting on every ledge,
counter top and picture frame
for beans arrayed in lines,
circles, arcs and arrows
patiently laid out by my parents
and lovingly collected by me
or perhaps because of
their jagged sweet
fluid crunch
so simple
and unpretentious
dogged every spring
despite the flash and flair
of modern candies
they remain
unchanged and unrepentant.