Month / January 2009

by Edward Champion

Review: New in Town (2009)

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I am not necessarily opposed to romantic comedies. In fact, I even confessed to my moviegoing companion on the subway ride back that I enjoyed Notting Hill. I’m pretty certain that, given the choice between rewatching a Lucio Fulci film or Notting Hill, I would opt for the former. But the truth is the truth. Notting Hill more or less works and has some good dialogue, even if Julia Roberts plays Julia Roberts and the narrative is more obvious than the need to apply suntan lotion in 120 degree weather.

Richard Curtis would go on to make one of the most unpardonably atrocious films of all time. New in Town thankfully isn’t as bad as Love Actually. But that’s hardly a consolation, for it isn’t nearly as good as Notting Hill, and Notting Hill isn’t nearly as good as at least a hundred wonderful romantic comedies. By the time you get to New in Town‘s schmaltzy tapioca spraying scene (which reminded me of Zoolander‘s satirical gasoline montage), you know that any sliver of faith you’ve placed in the film can’t possibly be redeemed.

You see, New in Town is a romantic comedy that has a modicum of charm and better acting than a derivative movie of this type has any right to possess. Here is a movie that has pilfered elements from other rom-coms: the corporate crusader vs. the working man advocate at the heart of You’ve Got Mail, the city slicker humbled by the charms of small town life from Doc Hollywood (complete with a David Odgen Stiers-like character played by J.K. Simmons), and the romantic protagonist as a business exec who busts up companies in Pretty Woman (Renee Zellweger has replaced Richard Gere). It’s a movie so quaint and anachronistic that it even has the opening credits at the beginning. The way they used to. The way that audiences conditioned themselves to accept condescending junk without question.

I felt a strange emotional conflict sitting through this movie. I was appalled by the Minnesotan stereotypes, the obvious music cues (“Walking on Sunshine” when Zellweger attempts to escape to Miami), the reliance upon coincidence (a snowstorm), the pat happy ending, the union rep who doesn’t object to unpaid overtime, and the terrible Jesus jokes (redeemed by a better populist joke about belief later in the movie). I wanted the people of New Ulm, Minnesota to hail their conquering hero or make more intriguing efforts to welcome the woman who came to dinner. If only the filmmakers could understand that small towns are laden with life and a lot of fun, that the people who live there aren’t caricatures, that having a good ear for regional dialogue is a must, and that this movie’s potential audience would have augmented tenfold if the New Ulmites hadn’t been treated like one-dimensional rubes. Unfortunately, screenwriters Ken Rance and C. Jay Cox seem to think that phony parochialisms like “Ain’t that a kick in the keister,” “Oh for crying in the bean cheese soup,” and “We don’t give a goose fart on a muggy day” represent verisimilitude. It’s abundantly clear that these two Hollywood hacks whipped this shit up in a room and genuinely thought they were being clever. If only they were real writers who headed to Minnesota on Hollywood money to get their dialogue right. There’s also the token guy living in his ex-wife’s basement, the unbelievable idea of a woman as capable as Zellweger’s character not heading to Minnesota without winter wear, and a ruthless company not cutting Zellweger loose after she’s defied orders for tapioca pursuits and tapioca storytelling.

But just as I was about to give up, something slightly interesting would happen. Frances Conroy would evade bad direction to speak like the Fargo people by speeding up her line delivery, and it was a marvel to watch her improvise under the circumstances and bring something to lackluster material. A New Ulm resident would momentarily evade the stereotypical trappings with a small irony on how only city slicker idiots froze to death while walking down the highway in subzero temperatures. The camera would linger on Zellweger’s hair for more than a minute as she was emerging from a hangover. (No, you’re not exactly going to get Eric Rohmer takes in a movie like this, but, really, how often do you see a long take like that in a mainstream comedy?)

Such moments were too few. When Harry Connick Jr. told Zellweger, “You know you’re not so bad when you’re unconscious,” I had the strange feeling that he was talking directly to me. Maybe he might take me home and try to molest me. Perhaps he might show me his package. (Does he have a decent package at 42? I certainly hope so.) Or maybe he wanted me to be unconscious so that I might forgive the movie a little more. Maybe if I “wouldn’t be so bad,” I might wake up in a snug bed and pretend to watch wrestling on TV after we lip locked. Because that’s what Minnesotans do apparently: watch and elect wrestlers. Maybe I could take Connick’s daughter to the big city for shoes and I could walk around airports in high heels to show that I was just as assertive as Zellweger. This was, after all, what womanhood was to director Jonas Elmer. For all I knew, this definition extended to manhood. Walking around in high heels and having a man like Connick unzip a suit while I was trying to pee. Romantic escapades like that.

You get the picture. I honestly didn’t hate this movie as much as I probably should have. But I didn’t like it all that much either. Ain’t that a kick in the keister?

by Edward Champion

Does The End of Washington Post Book World Mean the End of Books Coverage?

Even though there has yet to be an official announcement, the NBCC is once again unofficially “reporting” “unofficial” and unsourced news that Washington Post Book World will print its last issue on February 15, 2009. Efforts to reach Marcus Brauchli to clarify answers have been unsuccessful (the man does not want to talk, even though it is claimed that he’s the only one who can answer), but perhaps a clue to Washington Post Book World‘s possible demise might be found in this blog entry at Short Stack, whereby specific links to “hard times” and “good news” suggest a tenable connection.

Conjecture, however, is hardly journalism. It still strikes me as journalistically irresponsible to report unconfirmed and unofficial rumors, particularly after Maureen McLane’s embarrassing array of bread pudding posts over the weekend. While this approach may work for Harry Knowles or Perez Hilton, it’s a bit dismaying but not particularly surprising to see that it likewise works for Jane Ciabattari.

[UPDATE: Thankfully, Motoko Rich has done some reporting, getting some interesting quotes from David Ulin, Steve Wasserman, and Douglas Brinkley, and talking with sources inside the paper. As Ulin notes, the death of a Sunday stand-alone section does not necessarily translate into an end for robust book coverage. It apparently hasn’t occurred to some of the NBCC’s inflexible fulminators that merging books coverage into general cultural sections may actually get more people reading books coverage. Is not such an approach better for the long-term health of literary journalism? And does it not attract a broader readership who otherwise may not have known about a specific book or author?]

[UPDATE 2: Terry Teachout also has thoughts, adding, “Why tear your hair because the Washington Post has decided to bow to the inevitable? The point is that the Post is still covering books, and the paper’s decision to continue to publish an online version of Book World strikes me as enlightened, so long as the online “magazine” is edited and designed in such a way as to retain a visual and stylistic identity of its own.”]

[UPDATE 3: Sarah Weinman notes, “Instead of passive intake, this is a world of active consumption and discussion, where people seek out what they want, when they want it at their own discretion. Looking for guidance and seeking things out aren’t mutually exclusive, but readers should be – and are – suspicious of entitlement and suspicion that comes with books coverage being wholly separate from the larger world.”]

[UPDATE 4: To jump off from Terry and Sarah’s thoughts, one advantage that a print-based newspaper has over a blog is the manner in which a reader can discover an article adjacent to another, much like the way in which you discover an unexpected book next to another in a library or a bookstore. Given this exploratory reading tendency, does it even make sense for any newspaper today to maintain a stand-alone books section? I’m wondering if the time has come for newspapers to stop segregating books coverage. A naturally curious reader, interested in the many pressing issues of her day, might very well find a newspaper book review to be of value. Hell, the reader may not even know that the newspaper features books coverage. Maybe the time has come for newspapers to stop considering how a newspaper’s house style dictates the tone, and think more about how individual voices bring life, passion, and informed arguments to a newspaper. The gatekeeper may no longer be the outlet; it may very well be the individual reporter herself. Authority may now arise from an individual’s reputation and voice, rather than the trappings of institutional newspaper culture. And given how rigid, gaffe-ridden, and humorless many of these institutions are, this development may not necessarily be a bad thing.]

[UPDATE 5: A contrarian print-partisan take from Lizzie Skurnick, whose mind is in the toilet.]

[UPDATE 6: The Post itself offers a report, with quotes from Brauchli. According to Rachel Shea, three quarters of the roughly 900 reviews each year will be shifted over to the Style section. Shea herself invites comments from readers.

Carolyn Kellogg: “A lot of effort has gone into bemoaning book review changes and it’s hard for me not to think that, coming from book critics, it’s both self-serving and a little cheesy. And it’s certainly less interesting than engaging with books.” Meanwhile, Scott Esposito calls out newspapers for not getting “with the 21st century and [figuring] out how to sell bookpage adspace to entities other than publishers and bookstores.”

Orthofer: “[M]an, do we miss paper coverage.” And to address the print sentiments of Elizabeth Foxwell and Joe Flood, it’s worth observing again that there will still be a print section that you can curl up to. It’s just going to be merged into the rest of the newspaper. Flood observes that the review was “printed on the cheapest paper available – the CVS coupons are on much better stock.” Maybe the time has come for newspapers to adopt POD as a viable curling up option.]

[UPDATE 7: I’ve located an article from 1973 depicting the then closing of Book World. The pertinent parallels and details can be found here.]

by Edward Champion

Regretting the Error

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[UPDATE: Apparently, it’s amateur hour at the New York Times. After fixing the above headline, Matt Bucher observed that The Broken Estate was not published in 1966. James Wood was then only a year old. (And, no, the above screenshot wasn’t faked. I resized it to fit it into the window.)]

[UPDATE 2: More errors in the piece. “More important, the move to a small town seemed to stimulate his memories of Shillington and his creation of its fictional counterpart, Ollington.” It’s Olinger. Also, John Updike was interviewed by the Paris Review in 1968, not 1967. Also, it’s Terrorist, not The Terrorist. It should be “outsized talents,” not “outsize talents.” Good Christ, don’t they employ copy editors and fact checkers at the Gray Lady?]

[UPDATE 3: The Gray Lady has fixed these errors, without “regretting the error.” In the haste of my horror, I added an extra L to Olinger — as pointed out by a pedantic commenter named Albert. This has been fixed. I regret the error.]

by Edward Champion

RIP John Updike

I have just been informed by several people that John Updike is dead.

Words fail me right now. And I have been lurched over for the last few minutes. Updike meant a lot to me. As much as Westlake, McGoohan, and David Foster Wallace. And I hope that I can bring myself to articulate something in the next few hours.

In the meantime, I will just say that one of my favorite Segundo interviews was Show #50, in which I had the good fortune to interview the man. I will reveal more of the story behind that interview later, and offer more words when I have a clearer head. But this is a major blow to American letters. Rabbit and Bech are now truly dead.

by Edward Champion

Theater Review: Queens Girl

Queens Girl is a one-woman show written and performed by Lauren LoGuidice. It is playing here in New York at a venue called Stage Left on January 29, 30, and 31st. From there, it moves on to San Francisco. I was contacted out of the blue by a publicist and opted to attend. My +1 had to back out. My alternate +1 likewise found himself busy. I was frankly too lazy to enlist a third +1. So I attended alone. I was one of two press members in the audience. I am still not entirely sure why I was contacted.

I am informed by Ms. LoGuidice’s website that the show was once called Skinny Girl, but there is no specific reason given for this title change. My own titular preference is Queens Girl. And having seen the show, my own preference would have involved less multimedia and more performance. I suppose the idea here was to suggest distractions which present one from being true to one’s self, but bombarding the audience with often needless visual information and regrettably obvious musical cues (e.g., The Godfather theme playing when we learn about the Italian neighborhood Ms. LoGuidice grew up in) only succeeded in this reviewer wondering why the real Ms. LoGuidice was still hiding, and why she cared so much about appealing to the crowd. The show’s truest moment came with Ms. LoGuidice impersonating a homophobic ruffian shrieking at “Ms. LoGuidice” to leave the neighborhood. That such a moment comes from the portrayal of another figure reveals the show’s central problem. We learn that Ms. LoGuidice has spent all of her adult life running to other places. Bombay, San Francisco, the Meatpacking District. But to what end? We never know. The multimedia proves too intoxicating.

Now ancillary information is sometimes a regrettable obstacle that hinders an individual from telling the truth. I can tell you that the show’s running time was sometime between 32 and 37 minutes. Had my cell phone battery not expired, I would be able to give you a precise figure. The other journalist attending the show, who was diffident about revealing his name and outlet to me, informed me that the show was 37 minutes. But he had determined this fact from looking at his own cell phone once the show had concluded. It read 8:37 PM. There was then a minor but conciliatory point of argument between us in the elevator ride down over whether the show started at 8:00 PM or 8:05 PM. I advocated the latter time, even though I truthfully wasn’t paying attention and suspected I was wrong. This was not what I would call a prevarication. I was merely being jocose. The idea here was to present a possibly erroneous piece of temporal information for this gentleman to correct me on. But I apparently conveyed my position to him with some entirely unintentional authority, a deadpan confidence that had him believing that the show had started at 8:05 PM. And even though I began to get the sense that I was probably wrong, I politely agreed that the running time might possibly be 32 minutes instead of the 37 minutes he had initially estimated. We both agreed that it was a bit unusual to attend a theatrical presentation that lasted considerably shorter than our subway ride to Stage Left.

Stage Left itself is located on the fifth floor of an edifice located on West 37th Street. There is nothing, aside from the space’s proximity on the western side of the building, that suggested a possible origin for the name. Perhaps there was another imputation behind the name: fringe theater that came out of left-field. But none of this really matters.

I can also report that I was one of only five men in the audience. My audience estimate was 25 people, most appearing to be friends of Ms. LoGuidice. I took notes in a five subject notebook — a knockoff that I had purchased two nights before for $2.79 from a small shop in Tribeca that was something between a bodega and a pharmacy. The pen I used to take notes — a black Uniball — was on its last legs. In looking at the eight pages of notes I took, I am struck by two things: the gradual waning of the ink and my own fierce efforts in the dark to force more ink on the pages. Given that I also took notes on Wednesday night during the Barnes and Noble New York Times event and did not use any of them, I think that I will do the same for this piece. But I will present one note, picked entirely at random, that might give you some sense of my theatergoing experience: “Relies too much on music.”

Those last three paragraphs may be interesting to my friends, but they don’t really tell you anything.