10/13/12

Word of the day : nuncupative
                                                  : spoken rather than written, oral

Cave Bear

Ah, the weekend.  Gabriel's slightly under the weather, but I don't think he'll be hampered from doing his Saturday thing: watching cartoons and playing outside.  Julia just finished reading Jean Auel's Clan of the Cave Bear and is upstairs in the guest bedroom, watching the movie version with Daryl Hannah.  Working on this blog, all of what I overhear from the film sounds like characters having non-stop sex.  She assures me, however, that it's just pre-historic grunting and gesturing.  I'll take her word for it.  (Perv.)

Did any of you catch the series premiere of Nashville Wednesday night?  Terrific opener, that's for sure.  I'm not quite sure the show wants to be a layered, multi-faceted, ensemble piece about modern life in a complex, scheming city (ala The Wire); it seems like the show wants to be more of a good old- fashioned soap opera, which is fine two.  Thank God T-Bone Burnett is the man behind all the music we hear; Burnett can put another notch in his belt for memorable soundtrack work (alongside O Brother Where Art Thou? and Crazy Heart, to name a few).  Thank God, too, for Connie Britton, who gets the lead role as a fading country star relegated to be the opener for the popular, oversexed, manipulative Taylor Swift-like (not to say the nice, wholesome Taylor is any of those things!) star of the moment, played by a well-cast Hayden Panettiere.  Britton, who was so great in Friday Night Lights and the best thing - the only human thing - about the first season of the loony American Horror Story, gets a plum role, and, imbuing it with down-home believability and sexiness, looks like she is going to run with it - it might be the best role for an actress on network television this season. 

Brief Movie Reviews

Lola Versus (2012), a slight romantic comedy, has some appealing performers - The Killing's Joel Kinnaman and Hamish Linklater - but none more so than star Greta Gerwig, who carries this minor but enjoyable film as the titular heroine, a loopy, neurotic, confused NYC woman who was just dumped by her fiancee days before her wedding and now finds herself spinning along in the city as a kooky, up-for-anything single gal.  Gerwig can do no wrong, really, but I wished there was more of Debra Winger and Bill Pullman as her parents, who just might have been to some seriously kinky stuff back in the 70s. 
Grade: B 

The only reason anyone at all has heard of A Better Life is because of Demian Bichir's surprise Oscar nomination last year in the lead role.  Directed by Chris Weitz (About a Boy) from Eric Eason's screenplay, the film teeters on the precipice of earnestness and some of the teenage dialogue sounds fake.  Nevertheless, the story of Carlos Galindo, an illegal immigrant working as a gardener and trying to support his son in L.A., has an undeniable pull.  When Carlos' truck is stolen, the film threatens to turn into The Bicycle Thief - as father and son scour the streets in search of it.  This is a film, the filmmakers remind us, about the people we don't notice, the anonymous everymen who do the shit we don't want to do.  Any preachiness is snuffed out by Bichir's heartbreaking turn; a speech to his son, a declaration of his love, is a heartbreaker. 
Grade: B+ 


- A performance today for my list of the 500 Greatest Performances of All Time?  Why not...

Demian Bichir 


as Carlos Galindo in A Better Life (2011) 

It's one thing to constantly juggle languages back and forth from Spanish to English in a film, it's another to make it look so effortless.  Bichir, a handsome man, is so believably nondescript here, you would almost never think he's an actor - that's a compliment, folks.  From his worn, hesitant gait, to the lost expression in his eyes, Bichir slips into the skin of a man we would never want to know one thing about.  But by the end of this low-key winner, his character has become one for the ages. 

* 

- Football picks for the weekend, here we go.  (I whiffed on Pittsburgh Thursday night - oh, well.)

- Cleveland over Cincinnati.    (sorry, I just don't trust the Bengals to keep beating the Browns, who seem to be getting better)
- Atlanta over Oakland      (6-0?  Is that a misprint?) 
- Baltimore over Dallas    ( I think this is a must-win for Dallas, but I just don't trust them)
- Miami over St. Louis    (in a close one) 
- the NY Jets over Indianapolis
- Philadelphia over Detroit    (don't like Detroit, don't trust 'em) 
- Tampa Bay over Kansas City   (if not now, when, Bucs?)
- Buffalo over Arizona       (I might be crazy, but...)
- Washington over Minnesota
- New England over Seattle    (I don't think Seattle is ready for this kind of game yet) 
- SF over NY Giants     (revenge)
- Houston over Green Bay     (wow, who knows?  I know this would mean GB losing three straight, but Houston is tough) 
- Denver over San Diego     (I just think the Chargers are frauds, I really do) 

Last Week's Record:  10-4
Season Record: 44-33   







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https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDUZQz2en0w2dWsuXZIcQGbLrGQYC4Pa1WiUc8_2kLhAc9vdvV_XhpMSXaPh4C2gvAt3TlMm5k5imxxk9OVdwPbMzUHKSLuFwP9T6Him55I5xBK-QfH9D_3LmFwvPyCP-EJMqTOPheYn0/s1600/Demian+Bichir+as+Carlos+in+A+Better+Life.png