Movies

A Prairie Home Companion


I never got the Lake Woebegon thing. Never did more than skim any of Keillor’s writings and wasn’t into the radio show. It was corny and I didn’t find the tongue in cheek fun poking at Midwesterners amusing. Still don’t. There is nothing magical about the coasts. CrazyBrother lives on the west one after all and if any of the bad actors in his life are to be taken for the average – well, culturally ignorant and tragically unhip people are everywhere. The Midwest isn’t cornering any markets.

But we were watching The World’s Fastest Indian (starts slow but improves) and as is our wont, scanned the previews for future viewing opportunities and stumbled on a few picks that our library had in stock (our library by the way is the most awesome source of flicks).

Garrison Keillor wrote and plays himself in a fictionalized version of his own show. Robert Altman directed it and I remember the tabloids at the time made much of the fact that Linsday Lohan was playing a character in an attempt to redeem herself as a serious actor (failed).

The story is shot in typical Altman fashion with random and overlapping dialogue/actions. If you’ve seen one of his other movies, you seen the template. Mostly it works but the characters and the setting have to be compelling and this story is so not. It’s dull. Duller, as one of Shakespeare’s characters once remarked, than a great thaw.

Rob fell asleep. This is an indictment of bad. My Virgo husband will stick with the worst movies until the bitterest of ends (Babel) because he hates to start something and not finish. 

I quit about an hour in with 46 mind-numbing minutes to go that Rob votes for skipping them.

The story – as nearly as I could follow – was about the radio shows last performance as the theater had been purchased by Texans (a memorable Kevin Kline line “Sure they talk funny and their eyes don’t focus and their flesh in rotting and falling off..”) who want to tear it down and put up a parking lot – Paradise Paved – I guess.

Lilly Tomlin and Meryl Streep are a Christian singing act with Lohan playing Streep’s suicide poet daughter. Streep’s character is a widow who is still in love with her husband’s friend played by Keillor. I really can’t tell you how cliche that is. Widow and best friend trysting and widow pining away in bitterness after he comes to his senses – or something like that. Anyway, totally couldn’t see why anyone would pine for Garrison Keillor. He is a bit bug-eyed and has no butt. Maybe it’s a sexy radio voice thing? If you close you eyes?

Woody Harrelson and John C. Reilly do their best to save things as a cowboy singing duo but they are only good on their own. The minute another cast member begins sucking air in the scene, the whole aura deflates and everyone suffocates. Although there is one scene where the two old men are obviously vying for Lohan that isn’t too bad.

Virginia Madsen portrays an angel in a white trench coat that only Kevin Kline’s character can really see. At one point she guides the soul of an old man who sings on the show to the wherever. I cringed a bit when her character tells the old man’s paramour that “The death of an old man isn’t a tragedy” in her attempt to soothe the woman. While this is true. My early widow indoctrination programming reminds me to be a trifle indignant.

I believe the movie garnered the obligatory critical praise but it is truly an awful waste of talent as the number of Oscar winners and nominees totals half the main cast at least.

Here is my bottom line. Watch the trailer. All the good stuff is there. And then just listen to the actual radio show

The Jane Austen Book Club is My Lame Hump Day Hmmm


During the enforced downtime during my bout with illness a couple of weeks ago, I actually watched one of the dvd’s I checked out from the bookmobile.

Rob and I were watching quite a few flicks over the colder months thanks to our public library, but warmer weather equals much daylight up here and so we aren’t as inclined to while away hours simply watching. As a result, we are still checking out dvd’s that catch our fancy but often returning them unwatched.

I happened to run across an adaption of Karen Joy Fowler’s The Jane Austen Book Club and since I was too tired, light-headed and otherwise shitty feeling to even write a blog post (that is as low as it gets for me) I decided to watch it.

And let’s just generously say that hours of my life are just gone forever now.

The frustrating thing about books that become Hollywood movies is that more often than not the entire book is seen as merely a guideline for film rather than the basis for the movie’s existence. Throughout my viewing I was acutely aware that I was being shortchanged. Characters appeared and vanished. Main characters behaved in ways that the other characters seemed to understand without question but left me with nothing but questions.

My main question was this: what was the real version of this story. I knew there had to be a better one. One that was rich and full of real detail.

So, as I often do in these situations, I sought out the book.

Did the page and paper thing.

Actually read.

Reading just the prologue – not even five full pages – I realized that the film was even less a guideline than I had suspected. Four and a quarter pages of the author’s original intent told me the following:

  • the character’s ages had been altered in favor of younger people. Everyone was at least 5 to a dozen years older in the book. I guess a novel can have women of a “certain age” but the big screen mustn’t show women over 50 if they can help it (and then they must be “quirky” because that will explain the “old looking thing”.)
  • it was supposed to be told from just a single character’s perspective and that the filmmaker had dropped the idea to avoid voice over – I’m guessing – but a narrator certainly would have helped the movie because it jumped all over without much explanation save the passing of the months.
  • although the author had the women “typed” ie: flamboyant woman of a certain age, best friend, perfect friend, younger woman friend in need of mentoring, Lesbian, the simple paragraphish introductions seemed more flexible and fluid than their rigid and wooden screen counterparts. I credit the imagination. The mind is a far better screen.
  • I knew the book was going to be way better.

I hate film versions of novels by and large even if I haven’t read the book first because it is often so obvious that the story was diluted to make it “fit” the screen and running time.

When I was a kid I loved movies. Almost as much as I loved books. But anymore I find them slow and easy to out-think and insulting. The last because the filmmaker doesn’t view my time as valuable or my attention worth working for. Better to try and dazzle me with visuals and distract me with soundtracks.

My question for you is book or movie?

Death at a Funeral


Frank Oz directed a British movie called Death at a Funeral which Rob and I actually watched on purpose last Saturday night. The basic plot revolves around the death of an older man and the funeral service his wife and sons hold for him at their home out in the country. The movie is a comedy, and it is the first death movie that we have viewed, on purpose, since we watched Catch and Release back in the fall. Watching funny movies about the passing of a spouse and father is definitely on the order of gallows humor and oddly I find this type of story even a bit funnier now that I have a first hand perspective of some of the situations at which fun was being poked. For instance there is a scene where a close friend of one of the sons is sitting with the newly widowed mother in the garden – clearly uncomfortable – and trying to cover it with small talk that, as many widowed people can attest to. leads to questions about whether or not the widow/er has thought about remarrying again. As the friend puts it, “You’re young – relatively. Do you think you might marry again?” Withering look of disbelief. “Oh, right. Too soon to talk about that.” I know for myself I was being asked about dating/remarriage prior to my late husband’s death even and at four months my younger sister was inquiring as to the state of status, “So, dating anyone?” Rob’s late mother-in-law let him know at his late wife’s funeral service that she was okay with the fact that he would find someone new someday. Tactless takes on a new meaning from this point of view. It also further illustrates to me just how poorly equipped we are when it comes to dealing with death and the grieving on both sides.

Throughout the course of the family, tense family dynamics are revealed including a secret about the late husband. While it is over the top in that understated English way, it rings true. Family members have roles and almost set in stone ways of reacting and interacting and when something out of the ordinary occurs (although what can be more ordinary than death?) everyone is shaken loose from their moorings and things are done and said that can be more honest than the family business as usual even as they change things for everyone involved.

It was a good film, though, providing laughs and insight.