Prediction Turns Out More Right Than Wrong

Here’s what the Australian Broadcasting Corporation had to say about Australia’s first weekend in America:

“Americans chose Christmas laughs over a trip to the Australian outback with Nicole Kidman and Hugh Jackman.

Baz Luhrmann’s much-hyped epic Australia failed to ignite much interest over a busy Thanksgiving holiday long weekend in US and Canadian theatres, with the film managing to scrape into fifth place at the North American box office with $US20 million ($30.4 million) in earnings.

Audiences instead filled cinemas showing the new Reese Witherspoon-Vince Vaughn comedy, Four Holidays. It collected a bumper $US46.7 million from Wednesday to Sunday to easily claim first place.

The uninspiring opening for Australia will likely damage the Oscar prospects for Kidman, Jackman and director-producer-screenwriter Luhrmann.

It also raises the question if the Hollywood studio backing the film, 20th Century Fox, will make money on its huge four-year investment in the project.”

That $20 million actually includes the entire Thanksgiving weekend, beginning on Thursday.  Not good for Baz and friends.  They’d better hope someone in Europe or Asia is interested.

Heaven’s Gate: Australia

One great thing about blogs is that, unlike conversations, they’re written and verifiable.  Thus, if the following prediction is right, I’ll look smart.  If it isn’t, I’ll look silly.  There can be no denials if it turns out to be the latter.

All right, here it is:  I think the new movie Australia is going to be a big bomb here in the U.S.  First of all, few Americans care enough about Australia to subject themselves to two hours and forty five minutes about it.  I’m not saying that’s right, I’m just saying that’s so.  Secondly, the plot sounds like a mish-mash of every romance movie cliche, adventure movie cliche, and preachy socio-political movie cliche ever conceived, all rolled into a big smarmy mess.  Third, Nicole Kidman’s face looks so post-chemical now that I worry it will split and some giant grasshopper head or something will emerge.

Yeah, I know this director, Baz Luhrmann, is beloved by some for his last film, Moulin Rouge.  However, Moulin Rouge didn’t cost $150 million to make and wasn’t expected to be a blockbuster.  It did pretty well on its own terms — $57 million here in the U.S. — but that won’t cut it with Australia.  This thing has to approach Titanic numbers or it’s going to be regarded as a failure.  I say it’ll open big from all the hype, drop off fast, and never see the light of $100 million here.  Maybe not even close.

Not that I’ve actually seen the movie or anything.  Nor do I plan to.  It’s just fun to speculate.  Maybe in one of the many alternative endings that were reportedly shot (already looking towards that DVD, eh, Baz?), Nicole really does turn into a giant grasshopper.  Now THAT would be entertainment!

Across the Sea of Twee

On Tuesday, we went to the Co-Prosperity Sphere to see a lineup of performers from K Records, including the somewhat-known Calvin Johnson. The Sphere (not really) is located around 32nd and Morgan in Bridgeport. It’s the home to a sort of artistic collective called Lumpen, which is pretty neat overall. Whether they are actually good artists or not, we need more artists around.

The space was a vast empty floor with a lovely embossed tin ceiling, large enough for any kind of performance or exhibit. Although the weather was bad, a decent crowd gradually wandered in. Quite a few of them probably lived upstairs. They were, by and large, pleasant twenty-something tweesters who were taking on The Man by smoking cigarettes in defiance of the new law. Mary Ann thought the crowd seemed very 1992. Refreshments consisted solely of Pabst in cans for $2 and bottled water for $1. Admission was a more-than-reasonable $6.

The show, scheduled on the web site to begin at 8:00, didn’t start until about 10. This gave us time to chat with the representative of CHIRP, a project whose aim is liberalization of the laws concerning low-power radio stations. They’re hurting from the loss of Loyola’s station and want to make it easier to establish very localized indie radio. Sounds good to me. Then, inexplicably, the subject changed to vegan marshmallows. Here I thought that Jell-O and marshmallow companies had long ago changed over to some kind of non-disgusting gelatin substitute in their products. Nope, they still use gelatin from pig and horse hides, bones, and…you get the idea. Even in marshmallows. So, the CHIRP rep had ordered some truly vegan marshmallows over the Web. This is going to put somewhat of a damper on my hot chocolate.

After about an hour-long sound check/rehearsal by a band we ultimately missed, the show began with a crazy street person, sort of the Lumpen mascot, singing about Jesus, Barack Obama, and whatever else short-circuited his neurons at the moment. This was amusing for a while. I repeat, A WHILE. I have to give Lumpen credit for constancy, though. They brought him back to sing THREE different times while we were there. Imagine Wesley Willis crossed with Luciano Pavarotti, a cappella. If you can’t, check out the video. Also, he kept referring to Calvin Johnson as KEVIN Johnson. Five times, at least.

Second up was some guy who looked like Screech from Saved By The Bell would look if he let his hair grow out for about ten years. Sorry you all missed his immortal version of Monkberry Moon Delight, a bad Paul McCartney song. He was doing a lot of that Minnie Riperton three-octave stuff. Screech, indeed.

Next up, after some more opera, came the headliner, Calvin Johnson, formerly of the Beat Happening and other pioneering indie bands. This evening he played solo acoustic. Calvin is an acquired taste, but I’ve more or less acquired him. He has a distinctive baritone voice that occasionally strays onto a known pitch. He writes wry, earnest songs about romance and other phenomena I don’t understand. Occasionally, he will sing sans guitar and do odd hand gestures and spastic, lurchy dances. He even tells amusing anecdotes. I think you really have to see him live to appreciate him. He’s a real American original, and his genuine feeling and sympathy for the human condition, albeit in a sort of autistic way, resonate. It would be easy to label him as just a guy who can’t really sing or play the guitar. The fact is, he’s all that and a whole lot more.

In a side note, what’s the deal now with everybody talking through concerts? It seems that people show up with no interest in the music, but want to say they were there. Or maybe concerts are where the Least Generation does its in-person texting (what old people call conversation). Either way, it’s rude. Calvin Johnson does not want to hear about your boyfriend. Geez, even those two people grooming each other like monkeys were at least quiet!

All in all, it was a very worthwhile experience. You go, Lumpen! Calvin Johnson is a quiet champion of sincerity in music, whether I agree with all his choices or not. As I said when I bought the mix tape from him after the show, “Keep on doing what you’re doing!” He replied, “That’ll be seven dollars.”

done

Just An OK Country For Old Men

Mary Ann and I finally went to see No Country For Old Men at the Quarry Theater in LaGrange. The Quarry is my second-favorite movie theater. It’s accessible and clean and has good equipment, polite patrons, and a large parking lot. For this movie, the serious fans were out in force. The sensation of brains focusing on cinema was almost palpable, like a giant, pulsating hive-mind. I swear, the only sound I heard from the audience during the entire film was a few times when I giggled inappropriately.

Since I don’t want to be a spoiler, I won’t go too deeply into the plot, not that there’s so much plot to go into. Instead, here are five good things and five bad things about the film:

Good:

1. Generally excellent acting. Tommy Lee Jones projects an iconic, craggy presence. Javier Bardem, although he looks like the evil brother of Randy Quaid’s character in Kingpin, still manages to be effectively menacing. Unbelievably, James Brolin’s son is a pretty good actor. All in all, the cast does an excellent job with some difficult material;

2. Desert locale. I just have a thing about movies set in deserts. I think it stems from being a teaching assistant in a class where we watched a lot of Sam Peckinpah and John Ford movies. Or maybe Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Whatever.

3. No easy answers. I have to respect a movie that absolutely refuses to resolve its plot in any conventional sense;

4. Literate script. Probably the source material had something to do with that. There’s a certain lilt to the dialog; and

5. Refreshing lack of sentimentality. This isn’t Ghost we’re talking here, that’s for sure.

BAD:

1. Not enough scenes with the compressed air cattle gun. Just kidding. There are plenty.

2. Too much contrivance. The plot, such as it is, relies far too much on psychological theses that don’t ring true. For example, Josh Brolin initially gets in trouble by doing something absolutely ridiculous, both in the context of his character and in the context of human behavior. I just didn’t buy it. Also, people in this movie, including the police, are mighty slow to respond to all the carnage. You’d think that after the first few gunshots fired in a motel, somebody would be dialing 911;

3. No easy answers. I have to respect a movie that absolutely refuses to resolve its plot in any conventional sense, but I don’t necessarily have to like it. There’s a sense of letdown when some dramatic confrontations never materialize or are never shown to the audience. Those of you who loved the ending of The Sopranos, however, will probably like it that way;

4. Literate script that doesn’t always say much. For all the use of elegaic language in the movie, a lot of it seemed just for show. I may be prejudiced, since I thought the same about Cormac McCarthy’s The Road. When you’re lifting your title from Yeats, those are some big shoes to fill. I could have used less cracker-barrel philosophizing and more of that cattle gun; and

5. The ending. When the movie ended, everyone seemed surprised. That isn’t necessarily a good thing. Maybe the audience members have reevaluated and are now talking about the brilliance of how the Coens wrapped matters up. At the time, though, it felt like someone had pricked the balloon of the giant pulsating hive-mind. I, myself, wanted a little more.

Overall, I’ll give it three stars — just like Kingpin, but for different reasons.

Hey, I never said to come here looking for profundity!