Cate Blanchett in Uncle Vanya

The Hitchcock blonde, sheathed in a scarlet dress,

   Curls her sleek body in a siren’s pose--

A cool, aroused, unfathomable mess,

   She squares her shoulders and looks down her nose

At all this sullen canine male display.

   She’ll slip a kiss to kiss on her own terms,

Return a hug and smoothly squirm away,

   Then roll her eyes and think, “Men are such worms.”

But she’ll do just what each man needs to think

   He’s her worm--warmly reach to hold a hand,

Pat this one’s knee, thrown that one a sly wink.

   She maps her country with a silky hand

      And waits.  Waits for one of these smitten curs

      To make a move, so she can make it hers.

Copyright 2012 Matthew J Wells

Flores para los muertos

I could use five thesauruses to find synonyms for "brilliant" and still come up short against what my friend Rob said after the (4th?) (5th?) (6th?) curtain call at Streetcar last night:

ROB: You can cross that off your list.
ME: Huh?
ROB: You'll never need to see this play again.

And that about says it all.


So why is it definitive? Or better yet, why does it feel definitive? A couple of things. It's an ensemble piece. (There was no Blanchett-only curtain call, and even though I wanted one, because she was magnificent, I cannot tell you how happy it made me not to see her take that star turn.) The way it's staged, you literally get a window into the apartment on the second floor throughout the entire evening. (It's a world you're seeing, not just a room.) It goes from funny to tragic a smoothly as Fred Astaire goes from tap to ballroom.


And, most important of all as far as Blanche is concerned? She does not walk onstage with a big sign over her head that says I AM DOOMED. You actually see it happen. I can't tell you how rare that is when you see a so-called tragedy. It's what I call the Desdemona Law. The Desdemona Law says that there is never a moment when you get the feeling that a doomed character might make it out of the play alive. The law owes its origin to the National Theatre production of Othello (with Simon Russell Beale as Iago) in which the first time we see Desdemona, she's wearing a blood-red nightgown. "Oh great; she's already dead," I said to myself. "So why am I sitting here waiting for the inevitable? And really, when have I ever NOT seen a Desdemona who was doomed from the moment she says 'My noble father, I do perceive here a divided duty'?" (Twice, actually, but they're the exceptions and not the rule. They were also the best two productions of Othello I've ever seen.) Point being, it's incredibly rare to see the Desdemona Law broken. This production is one of those rare moments.


But the true test of how good this production is? I didn't think of Marge Simpson once. Which is like hearing "The William Tell Overture" and not thinking of The Lone Ranger.


Oh yeah; the title of this post? Back in high school we used to use that phrase as an all-purpose Woo Woo Moment; no matter what we were talking about -- politics, literature, Homeric Greek participles -- at some point someone would say "And then the old lady walks on saying 'Flores para los muertos,'" and it would be good for a laugh. Part of the greatness of this production? Not only is this moment chilling, but you actually think for a moment that Blanche is totally imagining it.

"Do Your Early Stuff!"

I'm Not There. I've asked five other Matthews to help me review this movie. Here's what we think.

CRAZYLEGS MATT: When it's not the movie version of a tribute album, it's the film version of a bunch of Greil Marcus footnotes.

LIBRARIAN BOY: It's a movie for anybody who's ever looked at Bob Dylan's life and wondered "What if he died after that motorcycle accident?" (Cate Blanchett supplies the answer, and it ain't a pretty one, but man does she nail the Tarantula Dylan--complete with tarantulas.)

NINETEEN FOREVER: The best Beatles cameo ever. An unrecognizable Michelle Williams as Edie Sedgwick with Madonna's survival instinct. Love Julianne Moore's Baez avatar calling Christan Bale's troubadour a little toad. Adore archival footage of the Village bleeding seamlessly into recreated footage of the Village. And that's really Allen Ginsberg up there, don't let anyone tell you any different.

THE RANDOLPH KID: Will somebody tell me why you hear Kristofferson in the opening voice-over, but you don't see him playing Billy The Kid?!? How. Cool. Would THAT have been.

THE PLAYWRIGHT: The only real question is, will Cate Blanchett win for Best Actress or Best Actor?

MATTHEW: A totally refreshing antidote to every musician biopic ever made, it's a movie that does to Dylan's legend what Dylan does to a song when he's performing it live--attacks it from the side, does a riff on the melody, garbles this and growls that, and forces you to see and hear something you not only didn't expect, but couldn't expect, and can't get out of your head.

Weekend update

A Gourmet Peasant Thanksgiving. Or, putting the turkey in Turkey Day:

I'm Not There. This woman is God. GOD, I tell you:

"Show me your early stuff!"

The Mist. Stephen King's famously open-ended novella gets a Twilight Zone ending, and frankly I'm caught on the horns of the prose versus film dilemma. I loved the story, and because I know the story, I can't see the film without relating it to the story. So somebody who doesn't know the story is going to have to give me a reaction, because to me? The last five minutes? No no no no NO.

Weekend Update

Elizabeth: The Golden Age. I could subject you to a long list of crimes against history which this movie commits, beginning with the fact that Elizabeth is portrayed as a mid-30's hottie rather than the 55-year-old Bette Davis lookalike she really was in 1588 (and meanwhile Geoffrey Rush, like Cate Blanchett's personal Dorian Gray portrait, ages twenty years between February 1588 when Mary Queen of Scots is executed and September 1588 when the Armada sails), but what's the point? By the time Blanchett shows up in armor as England's version of Joan of Arc (Cate of Oz?), you've either been swept away or swept aside.

I do have one technical question of minor importance. The camera in this movie does just as much swooping and diving as Michael Bay's camera did in Armageddon, but in Armageddon it was annoying and nauseous -- in this movie, it's sweeping and operatic. And it's not like the plot of this movie is any different from any other Elizabeth I movie ever made (head versus heart, duty versus love, woman versus Queen, my country is my boyfriend, roll credits). Maybe I just like swooping shots of Aussie actresses more than identical zooms around Bruce Willis and Billy Bob Thornton. But then who wouldn't?