You must all see Spellbound. It is wonderful. In 2000, the year after this documentary was made, I go to go to the National Spelling Bee for one day to cover the girl who was representing Mississippi there. I didn't expect it to be a big deal, but when I got there and ESPN was broadcasting it and these children, some of them really little kids, were up there spelling these incredibly obscure words that no one, NO ONE has ever heard of since they were invented, I found myself cringing a little, not wanting to look at that much pressure. This documentary follows eight of the kids who were in the 1999 bee and tells all their stories ... every single one of which is compelling enough to make you root for them. It's like you can't decide if you're more nervous for them or their parents ... it's awful! But really, really good at the same time. It's an incredible work of journalistic storytelling. I loved it. Many thanks to Charity and Jessica, who both recommended it to me. I think the part that touched me the most was the dimension of all these kids who are so smart and so dedicated getting to the national level and finding 200 other kids who are like them, like them in a way that no one they know is like them, and finally they fit in. It's how I felt when I went to a summer journalism program in D.C.,which is where I went to the spelling bee as one of my first real assignments. It was like finally I had found my people ... people who think newspapers are fascinating and it is wonderful to talk to strangers and write down what they say so that other people can read it. That's a weird thing to enjoy when you think about it, but then, every kind of hobby or interest you have makes you a little different, and a little weirder, than most people you know. That's worth celebrating. Watch Spellbound.
Now I must get back to the other suggestions y'all left. I have a lot of movie viewing to do.

I love Time magazine, because I think they do a better job than most of finding stories within stories. Today, they paid back my love with a really good piece about religous themes in C.S. Lewis' beloved Narnia books and, therefore, the upcoming film version of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. Personally, I think it's going to be tough to do a film version of that book that doesn't touch on some pretty deep themes, much like I think the Lord of the Rings just wouldn't have been the fantastic series of films it was if the key moments of dialougue about good vs. evil hadn't been included in the film. But I'm sure it's a more complicated issue when you're trying to make a film that honors the spirit of a book that people love so passionately and will also be a financial success. Thus, I enjoyed this. But for less intellectual reasons, I enjoyed reading it because judging from the trailers Dan and I have downloaded off the Internet for the film, the movie is at least going to do a great job of showing me the world of Narnia that I imagined in my head when I was a kid, and I'm really looking forward to seeing it. I think that's one of the biggest challenges for a film like this, because ultimately, everybody who read those books saw Narnia a different way in their mind than anyone else did, and that's a deeply personal thing. I'm not ashamed to admit on the Internet that I actually cried during the first ten minutes of Lord of the Rings, before anything had even happened, because the Shire that Peter Jackson and company created was just so perfect that it was like stepping back into my childhood mind the first time I read that book. That's a hard place to get back to once you become an adult, and it was so beautiful.
Religous or not, I hope the Narnia movies can deliver that.
Because really, I just want to see Aslan.

Warning: Fairly pointless rant to follow. Read at the risk of wasting your own time.

I just got done watching the Clint Eastwood-directed film "Mystic River," based on a great book by Dennis Lehane. Sean Penn won Best Actor for his role in the movie last year, and when it started getting a lot of publicity, I decided to read the book, even though I'm not usually big on crime dramas. Aside from good plot, the book is written in a way that just makes you deeply nervous for some reason, even before you know why. It gave me the feeling right from the start that something very, very bad was coming for all the characters. And of course, if you've seen the movie, you know that I was right. The book is incredible and I would highly reccomend it. It's hard to create that kind of ominous aura in print, and so I was eager, if somewhat afraid, to see the movie. Today, I finally got around to it.
Before I get to the point of this post, let me make a few disclaimers: the movie is good. Sean Penn earned his Oscar. He's perfect for the character, and he does a great job with it. Tim Robbins also more than deserved his Oscar just for managing to disturb you more at times in the film than Sean Penn does, and Kevin Bacon was also great. I have no beef with the way the story was adapted for film, because I understand this is a movie. Considering the butchery that is usually in store for good books turned into movies, this was OK.
What I have BIG issues with is the music. Music is incredibly important in films, because whereas Dennis Lehane had 400 or so pages to make you feel nervous, a film has maybe 30 seconds to put you in the proper frame of mind for a scene. And how you feel is very important in the context of a movie like this that has intense characters, intense plot lines, and some moments of drama that ought to be just short of painful. Notice I say "ought to be." Because while the acting, writing, and filming of this movie are perfectly aligned to make you feel like you should feel, about 20 minutes into the movie I started to notice that someone, and I was trying really hard not to blame Clint, but someone chose music for this film that I promise you could have worked just as well as a backdrop for mild moments of tension in a Disney cartoon. It sounds like nothing. Like every movie you've ever seen. Like every movie you ever flipped past on a trip through your TV channels. Like ELEVATOR MUSIC for crying out loud. Maybe I pay too much attention to music, but to me, it was distractingly bad at moments.
So bad that after watching the movie, I got online and started googling around to find out who was responsible. And do you know what I found out? CLINT EASTWOOD WROTE THIS GARBAGE. Not just chose it, wrote it. And put it in the movie. And no one stopped him! I don't know why that makes it seem worse to me, but it does.
If you've never seen Mystic River, please don't think I'm saying it's not excellent. Because it is. But now that I've brought it up, I dare you to sit through the movie without wanting to weep for how good it could have been with music that had anything even resembling a backbone. Let me know how it goes.
I'm off to write a letter to Clint Eastwood.

I have previously been a big fan of Keanu Reeves as the leading contender for title of World's Worst Actor. But as of tonight I would like to declare to you that there is a new nominee, and his name is Vin Diesel. If you don't believe me, please watch "The Chronicles of Riddick," as Dan just made me do. Keanu is going to have to star in, I don't know, Speed 8 in order to win now.

I'm starting to think that getting the Dish package and having access to hundreds of movies was a mistake, in as much as most movies are just really bad.

Because you and your spouse will both fall asleep and have extremely weird dreams for seven hours, at the end of which you will wake up while it is still dark and go to the bathroom. Which would be fine except that about 30 seconds later, your spouse, thinking you are still in bed, will get up and also go into the bathroom, and when he or she (OK, he) rounds the corner and finds you there, he will scream like a little girl, and so will you.

Not that I know this from personal experience or anything.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have to watch one more episide of this cursed show before I go to bed and dream of the jungle.

At long last, Dan and I saw "All the King's Men" this Saturday night. I am pleased to report that the movie did not make me want to write anyone an angry letter accusing them of dishonoring the memory of Robert Penn Warren.

One of the first things I feel I must do is grade the major actors on their execution of Southern accents:
Jude Law: A minus, better than anyone else in the film. Lazy, unrushed, but articulate, it's pretty solid.
Sean Penn: C plus, often unintelligible and slurred. Not that that is not something you hear occasionally, just that it's disturbing should you care what he's saying. On another relatively shallow note, I know that the book is constantly noting that Stark's hair is wild and out of order, but Penn's hair looks like it's been blow dryed and gelled into defiance of gravity. It's distracting.
Kate Winslet: B minus. Kind of the genteel counterpart to Sean Penn's hick.
Anthony Hopkins: While in all other respects excellent, Hopkins is essentially doing an elongated British accent more than anything else. And not to harp on the hairdressers, but what's with his hair? He looks like the Vidal Sassoon chick.

Still, I give the movie overall a B+. If you care to know why, keep reading.

The movie was, on the whole, pretty true to the spirit of the book. For anyone who's not read "All the King's Men" it is the story of a man named Willie Stark, a small town lawyer who becomes the governor of the state of Louisiana. The character is modeled fairly obviously on the life of the notorious Huey "Kingfish" Long, governor, senator, and would-be president, who made his name in politics by insisting the the state must do things to support its poorest citizens, but made his plans reality through enough blackmailing, intimidation and general corruption to get him impeached by the legislature.

The story is narrated by Jack Burden, played in the film by Jude Law. Burden is a newspaper reporter who first meets Stark when he is a county treasurer being run out of office over his insistence that the county commission is acting corruptly by refusing to award a contract for the construction of a new school house to the firm with the lowest bid, and instead giving it to a construction firm owned by a politically connected friend of the commissioners. Burden becomes fascinated by Stark, even more so when, months after Stark loses his re-election bid, a fire escape on the school house collapses during a fire drill due to substandard construction, and three children are killed. Stark is suddenly looking like a prophet, and, therefore, an excellent politlcal candidate for any office he should choose.

"All the King's Men" is a very difficult book to adapt for film because so much of the tone of the story is decided by the narrating voice of Jack Burden, the newspaper reporter who eventually leaves newspapers to be in the personal employ of Stark. Burden is conflicted about whether Stark is a good man or pure evil and whether he should be doing the work he does for him, which turns out to largely consist of digging up secrets about politlcal opponents to use when persuading them to vote Stark's way. In portraying this, I felt that Jude Law did excellent work, playing Burden as an outwardly serene, but inwardly uncomfortable man who worries that his actions may be playing into some larger scheme of destruction. Burden's undoing is that he persists in soothing himself with the notion that as long as he never knows why he is asked to perform certain tasks for Stark, he can never be guilty of having contributed to anyone's downfall, even as he delivers his oldest and dearest friends into Stark's hands. The opening scenes of the film find Burden lying in bed, sleepless, with an introductory narration in his voice explaining that he attributes his success in life to one thing, and this is his belief in the idea that "What you don't know won't hurt you."
He turns out to be wrong, and that is what makes that a good place to start the film.

If the film is succesful, it is because they make good use of flashbacks to Burden's youth and use those times to interject narration in his voice detailing his ongoing struggle to work out in his mind the problem of the nature of good and evil and the question of original sin. Is it, as Willie Stark so staunchly proclaims, true that everything in the world including man is born in corruption, and that any good that exists in the world must be carved from that evil by any means neccesary?

Or is the world easily sorted into black and white, good or bad, as his friend Dr. Adam Stanton believes? Stanton, the son of a former governor, goes to work for Stark at Burden's urging, because he believes it's right to run the hospital that Stark envisions as a haven for the poor and sick. But he does so over his own convictions that Stark is an evil man, and that he is dishonoring the memory of his father by even associating with him. Burden is, essentially, caught between these two views, but fails to pick a side before it's too late to stop a chain of events that he himself has helped set in motion. The film was refreshing to me because my greatest fear was that the directors would shy away from this ethical meta-narrative, and instead make a movie run purely on the momentum of a fascinating plot. Instead, they give a good amount of screen time to establishing the moral questions the story struggles with, and I give them big props for that, because goodness knows that's not the stuff that sells movie tickets.

Sean Penn as Willie Stark is very good, if somewhat over the top. He plays with conviction the role of a man who truly, sincerely beliieves that he is doing good even as he lies, cheats and steals his way through the process, and has come to believe that he is a prophet. Even thought that's a little overwhelming at times, I'm not sure it's inappropriate for the character, who is meant to be larger than life, explaining in part why Burden can't tear himself away from his fascination with the man. As I've mentioned, I think Jude Law does a fantastic job as Penn's counterpart, and I'm not really going to get into the other characters, because ultimately this is a story about Burden and Stark.

If the movie has one major failing it is in the ending. It's my understanding that the filming of this movie was plagued by troubles from the start, and that the film was far overdue by the time it was finally done, but the ending is horribly rushed. I could live with that if I didn't feel like they wasted precious time with an ill-advised, drawn out, black and white sequence that I'm sure was supposed to heighten the drama, but could have been done without since the events themselves are dramatic enough alone. I felt that the time could have been better used had there been some overarching narration from Burden (Jude Law's character) drawn from any one of the book's many passages that find the Burden trying to sort out the meaning of all the destruction after the fact. Instead, the film ends with a replay of one of Stark's speeches, which is not only repetitive, but fails to strike the appropriate tone, since it implies that you are somehow supposed to leave feeling that Stark really was a great man and that the story ultimately glorifies him and his ways. That is not at all what the book leaves you with, so it's troubling that the movie insists on ending with a conclusion that doesn't really exist in the book.

So, up until the last 15 minutes, the movie is good. The condensations of plot neccesary to keep the movie from being 8 hours long are acceptable, and the film does a good job of balancing the external plot lines with internal contemplation by the narrator. Mixed throughout are images of crosses on the side of the road passed at breakneck speed by the car carrying Burden and Stark, which is a nice way of reminding the viewer of the spiritual issues being struggled with in the story.

Generally, I'd say the film is worth seeing and does not dishonor the book for the most part. But you should still read the book if you want to understand the ending. Remember: What you don't know can hurt you. And you wouldn't want to make Willie Stark your personal hero without having all the facts.

As has been previously mentioned on this blog, Dan and I, largely due to the influence of my baby sister Audrey, are now "Lost" fanatics. I don't know what crack cocaine addiction is like, but I'm pretty sure this show is the television viewing equivalent of it.

This is all well and good so long as I'm getting my fix. But tonight, the third season of "Lost" premiered. And do you know what I'm not doing right now? Cowering in fear and cursing some new mystery that puts an unexpected twist on the new season. I'm not doing that because even though our Tivo recorded Lost for us, Dan refuses to watch it with me!

This is because Dan has developed this theory that it would be better, nay, The Right Thing to Do, to wait until we have about 4 hours of the show saved up and then watch it all at one sitting. That way, we don't have to deal with commercials or the suspense of not knowing what happens from week to week. This kind of random arrival at an unalterable opinion over something relatively trivial is something that Dan does from time to time, (remember this?) and I'm used to it. But now it's getting between me and my show. So I'm resorting to drastic measures.

If you watched the season premiere of Lost last night, I want you to call Dan at least once over the next few days (I"ll give you his contact information if you don't have it) and tell him one thing that happened on the show. Don't even bother to identify yourself. Just spill the beans and hang up. My hope is that he'll crack and watch the Tivo version with me tomorrow night and we can join the ranks of normal people who must rearrange their lives so that they can watch a ridiculous show that probably has no satisfying conclusion. Because that's the Right Thing to Do.

I thought you might all want an update on the progress of Operation Let Haley Watch Lost.
Thanks to the valiant efforts of Cody and Erika, who each left a message on our answering machine last Thursday revealing one aspect of the plot of the "Lost" premiere, Dan relented, and allowed me to view the Tivo-recorded episode, but only on the condition that he was not in the house at the time. (It was more like he wrestled me to the ground and took the remote out of my hands to keep me from hitting "play" on the Tivo in his presence.) But I prevailed. So I can now proudly join the rest of America in saying .... "WHAT? There's a BOOK CLUB on the island? What kind of sick, twisted game are the writers of this show playing with my mind?" But that's about all I can say, because true to form for this show, that's about all I learned. I can't wait for next week.
Dan continues to avoid all conversations that reveal the plot of the show, and actually deleted Cody and Erika's messages before they were fully played, but I think he'll crack. Kind of like Locke, who wanted to keep pushing the button down in the Dharma station until he realized it was all futile. Except of course that turned out to be a bad call. Once again, I hate this show.
Back here in reality, we'll be spending the rest of the week with Dan's parents, who are coming into town on Wednesday for the latter half of the Balloon Fiesta. Should be good times, but maybe not a lot of blogging. Hang in there. A rescue plane will be here any day now. Or not.