Country Strong

Posted on April 12, 2011 at 8:00 am

The husband manager of the beloved country singer just out of rehab says to her, “Do I tell you how to sing, darlin’? Hmm? Have I ever told you how to sing a song?” “That ain’t the point,” she weakly responds, and he keeps going. “Don’t tell me how to run your life. I been doin’ pretty good with it.”

That brief exchange 36 years ago in the classic Robert Altman film, “Nashville,” summarizes the new Gwyneth Paltrow film, “Country Strong.” She plays Kelly Canter, always introduced as a six-time Grammy winner, whose husband-manager James (played by real-life country superstar Tim McGraw) takes her out of rehab a month early for a series of concerts, on the theory that her brand needs more rehabilitation than her substance abuse problem.

But the incomplete rehab is not the only unfinished business. In a performance in Dallas, Kelly, then five months pregnant, was so drunk she fell off the stage. She has to regain the trust of her fans, concert promoters, her husband, and — toughest of all — herself.

To make things even more complicated and difficult, the opening acts for her new tour are Beau (“Tron: Legacy’s” Garrett Hedlund) and Chiles (“Gossip Girl’s” Leighton Meester). Kelly likes Beau. James likes Chiles. Beau and Chiles like each other. Not even a country song, much less a movie, can manage all that drama.

The music is the best part. Hedlund has a surprisingly rich singing voice, the mahogany tones giving depth and stature to an under-written character, and Meester handles her songs like the beauty pageant contestant with Taylor Swift ambitions she is asked to play. But all of Paltrow’s considerable acting chops are not up to the challenge of playing either a country singer or a substance abuser. Her toned, willowy body and elegant, urban posture are out of place and her singing voice, while pleasant and tuneful is far better suited to the saucy songs she performed on “Glee.”

As in her first film, The Greatest, writer-director Shana Feste shows a great deal of promise, but like many excited beginners, she still has not figured out how to remove the clutter from her story. Individual scenes work well enough and the songs are very good but she juggles too many relationships with too many ups and downs and the conclusion feels unearned and tacked on. Part of the power of a country song is its simplicity in telling its story, a lesson Feste still needs to learn.

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Drama Musical

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1

Posted on April 11, 2011 at 8:00 am

B+

Lowest Recommended Age:	Middle School
MPAA Rating:	Rated PG-13 for some sequences of intense action violence, frightening images and brief sexuality
Profanity:	Some British swear words
Alcohol/ Drugs:	None
Violence/ Scariness:	Constant intense fantasy peril and violence, some graphic injuries, major characters injured and killed
Diversity Issues:	A theme of the movie
Date Released to Theaters:	November 18, 2010
Date Released to DVD:	April 12, 2011
Amazon.com ASIN:	B001UV4XHY

Harry, Hermione, and Ron have to grow up quite literally in the gripping second-to-last installment of the “Harry Potter” movie series, based on the first half of the seventh and final book. Harry (Daniel Radcliffe), Hermione (Emma Watson), and Ron (Rupert Grint) take a swig of polyjuice potion to impersonate three nondescript middle-aged people so they can infiltrate the Ministry. Afterward, they shed the older personas like giant overcoats. But they know they must stay in the adult world in this powerful story that sets up the final confrontation between the boy who did not die and he who must not be named.

No more Hogwarts school for young wizards and witches. No more Quidditch, no more short-term Defense Against the Dark Arts professors or visits to Hagrid’s creatures or OWL exams or excursions to Hogsmeade for a cozy chat over butterbear at The Three Broomsticks. Hogwarts headmaster Albus Dumbledore (Michael Gambon) is dead. Hermione has had to erase her parents memories so that not even a photograph remains as evidence that they once had a child. The dreadful Dursleys have fled 4 Privet Drive. Voldemort (Ralph Fiennes) is stronger. The Ministry is under the control of his Death Eaters, who despise muggles (humans) and want to eradicate any witches or wizards with muggle blood.

Everything is on the line. Within the first 15 minutes of the film, an important character is seriously wounded and another is killed. Deeper, direr losses are ahead. Harry, Hermione, and Ron are out in the cold as they race from one remote, chilly location to another and try to figure out how to locate the seven places where Voldemort has hidden pieces of his soul.

Director David Yates and writer Steve Kloves return, again showing a deep appreciation for the material, especially in the way the vast, bleak settings reflect the overwhelming task facing the three friends. The book is not an easy one to adapt and like its source material the movie sometimes seems to lack direction as its heroic trio often has no idea what to do next. But its young stars have grown into able performers who hold up well next to what sometimes seems like a battalion of classically trained British actors. The scene of Hermione erasing her parents memory is very brief, but Watson makes it sharply poignant. Radcliffe’s quiet dignity shows us how Harry has matured. And Grint, too often relegated to comic relief, gets a chance to show us his pain as a piece of Voldemort’s soul begins to infect him with jealousy and mistrust. A tender moment between Harry and Hermione lends a sweet gravity that does as much to add urgency to our anticipation for the next chapter as the prospect of the final battle. (more…)

Upstairs, Downstairs — Old and New

Posted on April 10, 2011 at 12:58 pm

I loved the old PBS series “Upstairs, Downstairs,” which ran from 1971-75 on the BBC. It was revolutionary because it gave almost-equal time to the stories of the servants (downstairs) and the wealthy Edwardian-era family they worked for (upstairs). Jean Marsh, who played a housemaid, was the series co-creator with her friend Eileen Atkins. A new 40th anniversary DVD set has been released by Acorn Media with more than 25 hours of new bonus material.

Marsh returns for three new episodes, this time with Atkins, as the sequel to “Upstairs, Downstairs” begins tonight on PBS.

When the master of 165 Eaton Place, Sir Hallam Holland, carries his wife across the threshold of their new home, Lady Agnes exclaims with pleasure, “What a ghastly old mausoleum!” Neglect has strewn cobwebs everywhere and furred the surfaces with dust. But with a sumptuous renovation and the help of the indomitable housekeeper Rose Buck (Jean Marsh), the iconic address so beloved in the original series Upstairs Downstairs is soon restored to its former glory.

It’s 1936, a tumultuous time in Britain, and within the walls of 165 Eaton Place, characters from an orphanage, a damp Welsh castle, the heart of the British Raj and elsewhere together will face a changing world, not just upstairs and downstairs, but side by side.

Upstairs Downstairs

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Drama Television

Soul Surfer

Posted on April 7, 2011 at 6:01 pm

Bethany Hamilton (AnnaSophia Robb) tells us that as a child she spent more time wet than dry. She is the daughter of competitive surfers, home-schooled so that nothing would interfere with her training or her opportunity to go out into the water when the waves were good. And then one morning, when she was 13, a shark bit off her arm up to the shoulder. Determined that nothing could stop her from doing what she loved, she was back on her board a month later.

Two powerful forces kept her going, Bethany’s passion for surfing and her faith in God. This movie does a better job with the first than the second. The surfing scenes both before and after her injury are gorgeously portrayed, taking us inside the waves so that you will almost feel the spray on your face as the surfers rip around the swells. Writer-director Sean McNamara and the talented surfers on screen convey not just the experience of harnessing the power of the ocean but the thrilling rush of it as well. But he does not bring the same energy to the faith-based part of the film, which feels flat and more dutiful than heartfelt, like a youth group curriculum pulled off the Internet.

One problem is Carrie Underwood, a lovely performer who just does not have the acting skill she needs for Sarah Hill, the youth counselor who guides Bethany both before and after the attack. Perhaps because the film-makers are trying to please both faith and secular audiences, the faith-based elements of the story are thin and vague, reduced to a parable about not being able to see the big picture when you are too close and a trip to a very tidy settlement area in Thailand after the tsunami. The mention of Jeremiah 29:11 is not as significant as her doctor’s reassurance that “the things you are going to have to learn to do differently is extensive but the things you won’t be able to do is small.”

The real turning point is the scene where Bethany receives a prosthetic arm that does not give her the functionality she expected. That is a far greater blow than the original injury because it is only then that she must acknowledge that her loss is permanent. It is only then that she is able to have an honest re-evaluation of her faith, her priorities, and her options. In another sober moment, Bethany’s father (Dennis Quaid) silently matches the bite mark on Bethany’s surfboard with the enormous jaws of a captured shark, confirming that this was the beast that attacked his daughter.

Robb conveys Bethany’s resilience and athleticism. McNamara has a good sense for the rhythms of teen girl friendships (I still think that Bratz is underrated) and the scenes with Bethany and her friends capture the warmth and excitement of young girls on the brink of mastery of skills and the beginning of independence. But like its main character, it really comes alive when it catches the waves.

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Fair Game

Posted on March 28, 2011 at 3:29 pm

It turns out that being a spy is not glamorous at all, especially when you are the mother of twins. Valerie Plame (Naomi Watts) does not get to pick up a bunch of fun gadgets from Q or change from a wetsuit into a ball gown to crash a party at the palatial home of the bad guy. What she does do is a lot of tough, gritty research and a lot of painstaking relationship building with people who have every reason not to trust her. And sometimes she also had to threaten people who were pretty scary. And then come home and make dinner for her husband and children.

Her job at the CIA requires judgment, skill, courage, intelligence (in both senses of the word), loyalty, integrity, and the ability to keep a lot of secrets. While she had all of that, the people around her did not, and she found herself outed as a spy in the press, not for anything she did but because the government wanted to discredit her husband, former Ambassador Joe Wilson (Sean Penn). Suddenly she was out of a job but still not permitted to speak publicly, even to respond to the false and disparaging statements being made about her.

The problem was not that the White House made a mistake in thinking — and saying in the State of the Union address — that there was evidence that Iraq was making an effort to buy uranium from Africa to make nuclear weapons. The problem was that the White House made a mistake about how to respond when they were publicly contradicted. Former Ambassador Joe Wilson wrote an op-ed in the New York Times saying that he had been sent to Niger by the CIA to investigate this rumor and found no evidence of any such transaction, explaining the basis for his conclusion. Instead of responding on the substance, pointing to a better source of information, or accepting his conclusion and providing additional justification for concerns about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, the White House decided to discredit Joe Wilson, which involved telling the press that Wilson’s wife, Valerie Plame, was a spy.

Director Doug Liman (who was his own cinematographer here) can make a scene with two people across a desk as gripping as the action scenes in he gave us in “The Bourne Identity” and “Mr. and Mrs. Smith.” Based on the books by Plame and Wilson and on court transcripts and other records made available since the trial, he has given us their side of the story, with the leak of Plame’s role a weapon of mass destruction aimed at their reputations and their family. Because it is from their point of view, they are in almost every scene. That means we never see who is plotting against them or what the plot is; we just know that the most powerful men the world has ever known see them as “fair game,” or, even worse, as collateral damage. Liman, whose father was counsel in the Iran-Contra investigation, understands the culture of Washington well, the wonky dinner party debates, the show-boating, the passion, the long hours, the patriotism and the partisanship, the ends/means balancing act, and the way that sometimes everything boils down to a kind of middle school clique-ish brattiness.

Watts and Penn are outstanding, very compelling in the scenes about national security and even more so as what is going on affects their marriage. Penn lets us see that Wilson can be a bit of a blowhard and Watts lets us see that Plame knows that, can be frustrated by it, but loves him because she understands that it is a part of his passionate engagement with policy. Watts makes Plame a serious professional who achieves her objectives with preparation and diligence, though her being an exceptionally attractive woman made it easier to diminish and marginalize her, and she contributed to that by posing for Vanity Fair. The best surprise of the film is David Andrews as Scooter Libby, a wonderfully layered performance that shows us his mistrust of the career staff and his insecurity about the way they saw him. At the end of the day, you don’t need a Dr. Evil to be the bad guy. You just need a bully who thinks he can get away with it.