Hail, Caesar!

From Golgotha to West Malibu….from Busby Berkeley to Preston Sturges to the near never-ending series of MGM musicals – if you are of a certain age, or are familiar with That’s Entertainment (from 1974), then this is an ideal film for you.

Actually Hail, Caesar begins in the confessional box in a church somewhere. It is 4 in the morning, and Eddie Mannix, played brilliantly by Josh Brolin is feeling the need to get something off his chest. It seems he’s been smoking due to the pressures of his work (running a major Hollywood studio), and he’s promised his wife that he had or would give up smoking.

So begins the Coen Brothers homage (or is it a send-up?) of the old Hollywood , circa early 1950’s, when the studios controlled the actors under the star system. Now Brolin’s Mannix runs Capitol Studios – a thinly disguised MGM – and answers only to an unseen head of the overall corporation who is based in New York or somewhere other than Hollywood.

In truth, this is a zany look at the movies from actual movies being shot – there are westerns, a biblical film (Hail, Caesar), light-hearted drawing-room comedies – many within the huge sound stages, and others on location on studio back-lots. We get to the editing process, the studio campus and commissary, and even the uniformed guard at the studio gate has a speaking role.

We get to watch a director struggling and failing to get an actor to effectively say something like, Would that it twere so simple.

But wait there’s more. There’s a kidnapping, there’s the threat of the Communist scourge, Mannix is doing a film (the film within the film that we are watching called Hail, Caesar – A Tale of the Christ) that requires him to sit down with a priest, a rabbi, a reverend, and a Greek Orthodox cleric and ask them if they’ve done a credible version of Jesus.

Now this scene falls a little short of being howlingly funny, and it is more like a take-off on an old joke – 4 clerics walk into a bar – only it is not a bar but an oak-panel board room of the film studio.

HBO’s Olive Kitteridge: Some Thoughts Now That I’ve Watched the Show

On Sunday night I skipped watching Madam Secretary at 8:30 PM, and passed up watching Homeland at 9:00 PM . Instead I tuned in Olive Kitteridge on HBO. As I had learned, the show is set in a place called Crosby, Maine. Apparently, this New England locale is the perfect setting for Olive Kitteridge.

She’s not about to warm your heart or anyone else’s either.

Before I get to some particulars, let me state that the original source material, Elizabeth Strout’s book, Olive Kitteridge, is not structured in the normal way a novel is. There are 13 loosely connected short stories – all about the folks in Crosby, Maine, with Olive Kitteridge at the center of the book if not at the center of each of the stories.

For the mini-series, a two night, four-hour production, they’ve chosen to follow a similar pattern with Olive as the main character in all four of the episodes. I’d like to describe the show as Life in the Slow Lane, which is kind of a wordplay on the Eagles song Life In the Fast Lane, but you might think that description to be a bit too glib. Set down home, in a small coastal town in Maine, basically we are spending four hours with Olive Kitteridge. She’s taciturn, she’s stoic, she’s disapproves of almost anything that appears before her – except maybe her loyal dog Clancy. To continue with another musical connector, Olive is a woman who definitely would not be singing another Joe Walsh/Eagles tune – the one called Life’s Been Good.

Olive is the daughter of a depressed mother and a father who killed himself with his own gun. But Olive believes that depression is a sign of intelligence. As in you have to be fairly smart to know that your life isn’t all that it could or should be. She doesn’t wear her depression like a merit badge, but she doesn’t hesitate to bring it up at dinner with her husband Henry, and son Christopher.

Christopher: What’s depression?
Olive: It’s bad wiring. Makes your nose rot. Runs in our family
Henry: Your mother is not depressed.
Olive: Yes I am. Happy to have it. Goes with being smart.
Christopher: Is that why you’re so mean all the time?
Olive: [nodding with a sense of utter conviction] Absolutely…

Olive Kitteridge: HBO Miniseries Premiering Tonight November 2nd

I’m waiting for the dog to die, so I can shoot myself…

That’s Olive Kitteridge, the name of the lead character as well as the title of the new HBO Miniseries which begins tonight (November 2nd) with two one hour episodes, then concludes tomorrow night (November 3rd) with two more.

This mini-series is directed by Lisa Cholodenko and written by Jane Anderson who adapted the Pulitzer Prize winning novel of the same name penned by Elizabeth Strout.

The series stars Frances McDormand as the titular Olive Kitteridge, Richard Jenkins as her pharmacist husband, with John Gallagher Jr as the son, and with Zoe Kazan, Peter Mullan, and Bill Murray in supporting roles.

It is a generational story about Olive Kitteridge and family set in a place called Crosby, Maine. The Opening episode might have been called Welcome to Crosby; the actual title was The Pharmacy. McDormand embodies Olive Kitteridge, a retired school teacher, a practically full-time curmudgeon, a mother, a wife, and she’s even called a witch.

One might say that she’s depressed and angry all of the time. But Olive views depression as a sign of intelligence. She’s been called a school teacher that you hated when you were a student, but have come to view fondly after a suitable number of years has passed by.

Moonrise Kingdom

So I stepped into one of those little mini-mazes the movie theaters set up to guide, control, and gently feed the ticket buyers, in orderly fashion, to the ticket windows. A few people were already at the windows buying tickets, but no one else was next in line.

However, two women, likely in their late 50’s or early 60’s were standing in mid-maze.

‘Excuse me, are you ladies going to buy tickets?‘ ‘Not yet, we are still deciding what to see. You may pass us – any recommendations?‘

I said that I was going to see Moonrise Kingdom. And they asked what is it about?

I said that I couldn’t say more than it would take you back to the time when you were both 12!

They said that sounds interesting and they followed me towards the ticket window. I never saw them after that as I lost about 7 minutes waiting in line to buy snacks.

But yes, Moonrise Kingdom, directed by Wes Anderson and written by Anderson and Roman Coppola, is about two 12 year-olds. While it is not quite a coming-of-age film, it is truly about an adventure that the two kids take, and what is even more interesting is that this film is not a film that seems to have been designed for today’s kids. Instead it seems that Anderson created this film for people in their late 50’s and early 60’s, because they are the ones who can mostly likely identify with people who would have been 12-13-14 years old in the 1960’s.

Of course, being 12-13-14 might be the same at any point in history (up to a point) with only the influential toys, clothing, and other things like cultural idols, icons, and artifacts changing over the years.

On New Penzance Island, a mythical island – actually the film was shot in Rhode Island – Sam Shakusky, a 12 year old Khaki Scount has gone missing. Scout Master Ward, played by Edward Norton, discovers this only after making his morning inspection and then sitting down at the Mess where the place settings and the headcount of seated scouts differ by a count of one. Who’s missing?, asks the Scout Master.

Where’s Shakusky……?

It takes them a few moments to figure out that it is Shakusky. His tent is zipped from the inside, but this isn’t much of barrier. After Ward unzips the tent entrance, they peer inside the tent and see no one …

… and the mystery immediately intensifies. In a remarkable feat of stating the obvious, Ward says, Shakusky has flown the coop. Peeling back a poster taped on the inside tent wall. they discover a hole big enough to crawl through.