Wednesday, 5 January 2000

RANTING & RAVING

With Monday lost to the millennium bug, I'm not really in rant rhythm yet. After all, what's really happened this year? Stuart Little secured a place in my "Films I Just Didn't Get" list for 2000. The French made us look classless and inferior once again by having sideways fireworks on the Eiffel Tower. My beloved Miami Dolphins backed into the NFL playoffs, though I still expect either Jimmy Johnson or Dan Marino to remove the aqua & orange next season. I've gone back to see Titus. I went to see The Third Miracle. I rented and watched South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut, Go and She's All That. I bought Election on Pay-Per-View. I've been to Roscoe's Chicken & Waffles five times and to my very favorite L.A. restaurant (at least this month), Zen Grill, zero, as they were closed for the holidays. (What nerve!)

As you can see... I am reaching here.

Okay...I feel a rage coming...ummmmmm...Artisan is making a prequel and a sequel to Blair Witch. Reminds me of Warner Bros. pushing out two Pokemon films this year so that the hype doesn't die down.

Ahhh, that was okay, but no great shakes. Let me try again.

Nat Adderly, cornetist, composer and brother of the "Cannonball" died and the world is a little less musical. It really did seem like an inordinate number of people died before this new year, like they weren't meant to see Jerusalem. (see: The Bible, written version or just watch The Ten Commandments for the reference). I hope the parade has ended for a while. I don't much care for watching the planet lose any more talent. It's the natural evolution of things, but it comforts me to think that Billy Wilder, for instance, still roams Beverly Hills.

A little better, no? I'm heading into a roll....

I love the movie Once Around. I haven't been the world's biggest fan of The Cider House Rules, Lasse Hallstrom's latest. Though John Irving really got upset when I suggested to him, on air on KABC, that the movie leaned too much to the love story, it does. But Once Around, for me, is just magical. It's probably one of the best three or four roles of Richard Dreyfuss' career. Certainly his best in the '90s. Pure love and passion. Danny Aiello has never been better or better cast. What made him interesting as an actor and what really comes out here is his soft underbelly with all that fire above. Laura San Giacomo also gave her best film performance in this movie, not as a slut or a saint, but as a real and really confused woman. Gena Rowlands is golden. Roxanne Hart, Danton Stone and Tim Guinee are perfect in support. And Holly Hunter reminds us to wonder how much we are losing by not seeing her in movie after movie every year. Great dramatic comedies like Once Around and Broadcast News are where she truly sparkles. And as I'm sitting here, thinking who she sparkles like among today's hotter names, I think "Reese Witherspoon." Not based on what Reese has done, but in the potential she shows in movies like Election. I mean, yes, Reese is blonde and she has breasts. But she is more than that. Or she can be if she is careful. But Holly Hunter is still a relatively young woman. She has so much more to give us. And she is just so funny and heartbreaking and beautiful in this movie.

Allow me a moment of personal raving. Family movies get me. No, not Stuart Little. Movies about families. I don't know if it's because I am adopted or because my father died a few years ago or because I live thousands of miles away from my siblings and their children...but nothing can replace the love of your family. And that's what Once Around is really about. Dreyfuss' Sam Sharpe character becomes part of the family and he makes a family with Hunter's Renata against all the pressures that your immediate family can bring. Sam makes everyone look in the mirror and see where they are in the world. And though he accepts everyone, they can't always accept themselves. I tear up while I'm watching Once Around. Sometimes in joy. Sometimes in sadness. Sam and Renata watching 8mm films of Renata as a child on her belly, filled with their unborn child...one of the most irresistible moments in the history of film for this old softie. It's on cable this month. That's where I saw it. Or rent the movie. If you love a good love story but like it a little kinky, this one's for you.

Ahhh...that felt a little better... More like a real rant.

"A Rose Is A Rose, Canadian Awards & ROTD Wars"