Mary-Louise Parker Is... Mary Louise Parker!

Thoughts I had while watching... RED (2010)

A few years ago I attended one of those New Yorker festival interviews that featured Mary-Louise Parker and the writer/moderator called her "a chameleon" after showing a clip of her from a movie I didn't recognize in which she wore a blond wig. It was the most ridiculous thing I heard that entire movie year.

Mary-Louise Parker is not a chameleon. Mary-Louise Parker plays Mary-Louise Parker. Like most enduring star actors, she's very very good at her one role.

This random memory came to me while watching RED, the October action comedy (yes, I'm two months late.) about Retired and Extremely Dangerous operatives, that the Golden Globe and Satellite voters unfortunately tossed into the precursor-mandated viewing schedule.

In the film Mary-Louise Parker plays Mary-Louise Parker with a headset. She works a boring job answering phones in some payroll divison of government and she enjoys flirting with retired killer Bruce Willis played by not-retired action star Bruce Willis. Once someone takes a hit out on Willis, MLP gets caught up in the madness.

All of the delightful MLPisms were there: the stoned line-readings, the sly smiles, the wide eyed narcisstic "this is happening? to me ???" wonder, that improbably unique fusion of frazzled and narcotized performance energy as if her body and mouth have never quite decided which brain  chemicals or illegal substances are in power during that moment.

The movie is not good. But I can't lie and say I didn't enjoy it at all. Here are the things I enjoyed about it most in descending order.

• Mary Louise Parker playing Mary Louise Parker.
• Bruce Willis playing Bruce Willis.
• Mary Louise Parker mumbling "pizza" from beneath duct tape after much unintelligible screaming about being tied up and duct-taped. It's true, I LOLed.
• Mary Louise Parker hiding behind Bruce Willis when confronted with John Malkovich playing John Malkovich. My what big teeth he has. "All the better to chew scenery with, my dear"
• Karl Urban being sexy, especially whilst wounded. 
• Bruce Willis casually stepping out of a madly spinning car, as if it's in park and he's just running errands... with loaded firearms.

But mostly I did not enjoy it. For these reasons.

• Brian Cox mangling a Russian accent. 
• Rebecca Pidgeon being cast as someone who you're not supposed to know is sinister, because she's always sinister.
• This is a personal thing but I have a super low tolerance for "comedies" that think rapidly escalating body counts are hilarious. And seriously this thing is vile with the 'killing people is fun and wacky! twinkly cheer.
• That neighborhood where not a single house lights up or neighbor emerges while a group of men machine gun a house for what feels like an hour.
• General laziness.
• The pervasive feeling that it might never end.

• The joke with the stuffed pig did not work. The set up, punchline and execution didn't feel at all in synch for what was, I can only presume, supposed to be a big takeaway gag. I mean, they even sent awards voters that very pig (albeit in miniature form).

Monty, who attacks stuffed animals on sight, was weirdly docile
when confronted with "the pig".

Lastly, I did not enjoy Morgan Freeman as Morgan Freeman or Helen Mirren as Helen Mirren because they both seemed to be phoning it in for a quick buck and both are capable of so much more. Seriously, do these two ever say "no" to an offer? Did any big-salaried actors make easier paychecks this year?

Even if you didn't see the movie... (you dodged a bullet --- thousands of them actually) do you like it when Mary-Louise Parker plays Mary-Louise Parker?
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Hit Me With Your Best Shot: Angels in America

We're only three episodes in and I've already polluted the idea of this new series, in which participants are supposed to choose their single favorite shot from a film. I offered up a fantasia of multiple shots from Showgirls. The idea is to choose only one shot from each film. I did a better job with X-Men. And I'm so happy that people are now playing along... even if the one shot thing is difficult difficult difficult. But this time our indecision is totally rational. Tony Kushner's extraordinary stage epic Angels in America was adapted for the screen in 2003 by Oscar winning Mike Nichols. Rather than limit myself to one shot I'm picking one from each chapter. This I can manage!

Chapter 1 "Bad News"


Mary Louise Parker and Justin Kirk in their pre-Weeds duet. Harper and Prior, the abandoned lovers, are dolled up to provide themselves with distracting glamour in their shared hallucination. But their lonely hearts club memberships are too strong for these distractions to be successful. The framing is deliciously funny here. You could title this still "The Lurking Homosexual" and really, whether it's the men she imagines behind walls, or her own husband or this imaginary friend "aren't you too old for imaginary friends?" she knows he's there.

Chapter 2 "In Vitro"


There are so many shots in the six hours where Prior looks devastatingly lonely as both his condition and his fury at the deficient boyfriend grows. The darkness is going to swallow him up.

Chapter 3 "The Messenger"


It's a slightly canted angle, which tends to be lazy shorthand for "TENSION!" but I mostly chose this shot because the physicality in the relationship between leering Roy (Al Pacino) and confused Joe (Patrick Wilson) is so fascinating. Roy is constantly pawing at Joe, totally hot for the young buck. Joe is mostly oblivious but likes to be touched and yet, it always comes out wrong... particular between the two of them (their next close physical contact will involve clenched shirts, gay confessions and lots of blood). Joe raises his fist and Roy keeps egging him on (he wants sex but he'll definitely take violence as a substitute -- check out the dirty thrill in Pacino's eyes with a sideways glance to Joe's fist)... it's all so disturbing. Roy Cohn is basically the devil. He's asking Joe to sin -- pick a transgression, any transgression -- but the genius of the scene is that it's not terrible advice in this case. Something's gotta give.

Chapter 4 "Stop Moving"


This scene is excitingly lit, both for its obvious bids for EPIC MOMENT status and for its rapidfire shifts in feeling: glaring whites, golden softness, blue mood. Plus, Emma Thompson is just hilarious as the self regarding, impatient and highly vocal heavenly creature.

Chapter 5 "Beyond Nelly"
Here's where I stop being able to choose. It's late at night. I'm exhausted and I love every hallucination in this great piece of theatermovie. An astounding monologue about racial impurity and the afterlife from Belize (Jeffrey Wright) to Roy ends with this condescending dreamy dismissal "Go to sleep now baby. I'm just the shadow on your grave." Director Mike Nichols and cinematographer Stephen Goldblatt chase that line with this incredible image.


Both the dead (Meryl Streep as Ethel Rosenberg) and the living (Belize...but "out" gay men in general, really) are haunting Roy. And they'll cast a shadow over him forever. But isn't it rich that you could layer that threatening lullaby monologue over the nearby image of Joe and Harper's tragically unsexy reconciliation and it would work just as well.


Everyone is haunting everyone.

Chapter 6 "Heaven, I'm in Heaven"


My favorite part of chapter six is the frankly incredible duet between Meryl Streep and Al Pacino as they trade hauntings and tauntings, one dead and one dying but both entirely obsessed with defeating the other. "I WIN!" It's the kind of lengthy scene you dream of seeing Great Actors perform together. Neither of them pull any punches but it's also not lazily over the top. It's just perfection, a lucid dream of a duet. But I couldn't decide on a shot. So let's hear it for the absurd diorama (so chintzy, boxy and tiny) that is the angel's final arrival. It's an epic in miniature, both entirely cinematic and thoroughly stagebound. Any time Angels in America embraces both modes simultaneously, it wins.

"Best Shot" Angels
Thank you to these fine heralds for spreading the holy 'Best Shot' word. "I... I... I... I... I..."

• Crossover Man 'Joe & Roy gathered at the edges' is totally interesting. Read it.
• Serious Film "The magic of the theater" ohmygod. almost picked this same shot.
• Nick's Flick Picks the always provocative Mr Davis, picks a naked addition to the text as an emblem of his feelings.
• Low Resolution Belize and Ethel and the most potent of Angels many messages.
  
• Well, Hello Achilles divvies up the best shots to part 1 (Prior) and part 2 (a chaos of character)
• Much Ado About Nothing highlights the characters and great quotes (but doesn't like the way the movie treats Joe Pitt)
• Against the Hype goes all Lust, Caution on us. Not only do I think Angels in America is brilliant but I think it tends to inspire brilliance in the audience, too, lifting them up. It's just so rich for personal connections and time and place cultural slotting.
• vg21random Redemption as Orgasm. See what I mean?
  

 Other Films in This Series

• Angels in America (2003)
• X-Men (2000)
• Showgirls (1995)
• Bring It On (2000)
• Black Narcissus (1946)
• A Face in the Crowd (1957)
• Pandora's Box (1929)
• Se7en (1995) 
• Requiem for a Dream (2000)

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Red Carpet Rendezvous

Fashion break! I enjoy a little premiere finery as much as the gossip blogs but it's just not my goddamned raison d'etre. I'm too busy talking about movies. And Oscar. Oh shiny Oscar. He who wears nothing but a sword. (Weird that he's so connected with fashion) Anyway... here's a random sampling of what some actresses were wearing this past week at premieres, awards and parties and whatnot. Just for fun. Maybe I'll arrange a rendezvous every Saturday?

(Because I am a giver I even tried to keep their heights in scale while bringing them all together for you)

Sarah Jessica Parker celebrated the launch of the Sex & The City DVD as some sort of punk Holly GoLightly. Am I mistaken or is the print doing the actual cigarette smoking for her? That's one way to not blacken your lungs. Dakota Fanning finally resurfaced to promote Hounddog. Renée Zellweger (yes I'm saying her name. I'm trying to be nice!) has wrapped herself up for a night on the town with Viggo & Ed (lucky girl) to promote Appaloosa. Mary Louise Parker didn't win the Emmy. boo. (I also love Tina Fey so that "boo" is said in knee jerk non-committal fashion) Madonna is "Sticky & Sweet" and still rock hard at 50 as she traverses the globe to Entertain You. Her pal Gwyneth Paltrow at a party. Sandra Oh is about to go blind in Blindness (previous posts) but she wasn't blind when she chose this Emmy gown, was she? Great stuff. And finally Kiki. She's just walking down the street. Just because.
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EMMY *Live-Blogging* (God Help Me)

Refresh your screens regularly and watch the post grow. Oh the magic of technology...

6:36 (Arrivals) Ryan Seacrest says that he was "instructed not to touch the women" Heh. As if this is a temptation.
6:41 Kristin Chenowith is getting tinier. Which would seem impossible, but no. She reveals she will sing again on Pushing Daisies. Something from the 80s. Wheeeee. She also has a bow on her cleavage. Which is funny since she clearly does view her breasts as a Gift to All.
6:43 Marcia Cross just air kissed Kristin. I suddenly felt territorial. Marcia is Crazy (Kimberly) and Brittle (Bree) so please stay away from my diminutive diva. Marcia has apparently sprayed adhesive to her pink tulle and rolled around on a pile of carefully dried dusty flowers.

6:50 The boyfriend says "someone appliquéd hubcabs to their dress" Hee. She went by too quickly. Who was that? I think it was Mrs. Mad Men January Jones. But the camera cut away quickly.
6:54 Tina Fey is talking but she is not wearing her sexy glasses, so I'm not hearing her. Instead I am lost in the blue of Mary Louise Parker's gown. Mmmmm Mary Louise Parker.
7:04 Patrick Dempsey starring in a remake of The Picture of Dorian Gray right there on the red carpet.

7:11 I'm bored. Too many Housewives and they're not visibly Desperate enough. The red carpet being old hat to all of them. E! is a bit like Top 40 radio was in the 80s. There was like 10 songs in rotation. E! is like that with TV shows. They assume we only care about like 5 of them.

7:15 OK. I take that back about the lack of Desperation. Gabrielle (aka Eva Longoria) just said "I don't really care" about not getting a nomination. Then she let loose a disproportionately loud laugh that might have come directly from Annette Bening's mouth while portraying a Woman Who Lies To Herself™. I ain't lying.

D E S P E R A T E !

7:18 Glenn Close is wearing black sunglasses and the same Armani dress she wore to the 1986, 1987 and 1989 Oscars. I'm kidding but I might actually be right. How does one tell the difference. Black, lace sleeves, the whole thing. Same as it ever was.



7:21 David Boreanz is wearing Paul Smith socks -- very cute. The Boyfriend approves. I'm totally confused because he's out in the sun and not bursting into flames? I know even the minor character actors in movies but when it comes to TV stars I always think of them as strictly their characters. So they're like fake celebrities to me. "Angel" is a celebrity. Boreanaz? Not so much.
7:25 Christina Hendricks is on the red carpet to suggest that maybe she isn't padded on Mad Men. STACKED. yum yum.

7:40 HOLLY HUNTER. Thank God a movie star showed up. I didn't want to have to wait for stray reaction shots of La Pfeiffer on hubby's arm.
7:50 OMG... I just flipped over to ABC and so glad I did. Salma Hayek is singing in despair because Jimmy Kimmel just said "She's no Penelope Cruz."



Hee. So fun when stars have a sense of humor about themselves.

7:55 Back to E! just in time for Wayne Brady to make sure everyone knows he's heterosexual. 'It's a little metrosexual. But only a little bit!'. Zzzzz. Suppressed sexual panic is so unattractive. Just let it out Wayne. Cry, scream, grab your co-conspirator in sexual panic (the eager accomodating Guilliane) and prove it.

I agree with Project Runway's Christian who, surveying the dresses in this arrival party said:

I need a little more drama

On with the show... (and a new post)

Cast This! The Curse of Chalion

Over a month ago I announced the first book club/movie game. So many things to keep track of if you read this blog --my apologies. I'm not trying to control YOUR ENTIRE LIFE. I'm just ... social.

<-- Our first selection was The Curse of Chalion by Lois McMaster Bujold. It's a historical fantasy novel that trades more on palace intrigues than sorcery (though there's some of that, too) and is very loosely based on 15th century Spain. The story is about a man "Cazaril" who was a young page for the royal House of Chalion. He returns decades later having escaped life as a slave, broken and aged far beyond his thirty-some years. The treacherous men who pushed him toward that surprise ignoble fate --intended to be the death of him -- are now intermingled with the royal family in positions of power. He rejoins Chalion as tutor to the princess and he just might prove to be the savior of the royal family. They're under political duress and a magical curse. When it rains it pours, you know.

The life of Queen Isabella of Spain (portrayed by Sigourney Weaver in the
movie 1492and by Rachel Weisz -sort of- in The Fountain) served as
some of the inspiration for the plot and characters of The Curse of Chalion

It's a complicated story. There are abundant political maneuvers, multiple characters with both unfamiliar names and separate titles (I was confused at first, I admit), and a new concept of religion to understand: There's not a Holy Trinity in this world but a Holy Family; Observant types are part of the either the Order of The Mother, The Father, The Daughter, The Son or the Bastard. I loved the religious angle in this book. It was well portrayed and a fascinating five pronged departure from the Judeo-Christian world we're more familiar with. The plot and characters took longer to sink in but it got there for me. But --joy of joys-- The Curse of Chalion has a beginning, middle and end. Imagine that. I grow weary of fantasy novels that are always trying to sell the next book to me. Franchise be gone! (This is part of a series but never mind: it stands alone.)

Cast This! I'm always bitching at Hollywood's casting directors for their lack of imagination but it's harder than I thought to think outside the box. From the moment I started reading I couldn't get Viggo Mortensen out of my head as "Cazaril", the main character. Is this because Cazaril wears a beard that everyone wants him to shave off --a la Viggo lately? Is this because the actor portrays the noble heroic soul so well? Or because he'll always be Aragorn... and thus fits neatly in the mind's imagination as a fantasy figure. I couldn't think outside this box but I'd love to hear who fellow Chalion readers thought of. Cazaril is only 35 (15 years younger than Viggo) but he looks older. He's a good soul but also human. He lusts after a much younger woman and makes some desperate not entirely reputable decisions. He's frail physically (given his slave years) but a true warrior when it comes to determination and sly heroics. Ideas please. Which actor can carry a movie and pull all of this off? Paddy Considine. I love him. He's such a great actor and this role doesn't really need the overt heroics of a "movie star." Matthew McFayden (34)?

Casting is a tough job. You completely alter the movie on every imaginary projecting step of your way.

the royal family
"Iselle" (teen) the princess and Cazaril's student: amber hair, heavy-lidded eyes, acts without thinking. Beautiful, crafty and headstrong... like all fictional princesses.
"Teidez" (teen) the prince: curly amber hair, restless, easily manipulated, unpredictable and a touch violent. Can Jamie Bell still play a teenager? He should be in everything. Or wait... I know: Max Pirkis (19). That kid who was so excellent in Master and Commander (2003) and later popped up on Rome. He can do the "entitled" thing.
"Orico" (30s) their king and step-brother: aged beyond his years, sickly, wide, pale and puffy and possibly drugged or possessed? I want to say Steven Waddington but that's probably because I saw him being a bad monarch in Edward II (1991). This is how typecasting works, people. It's where your mind goes immediately. To the familiar.
"Sara" (30s) Orico's wife. Pretty but fading, silent and miserable. Rumors of sexual abuse run through the court.
"Ista" (30s) Iselle and Teidez' mother: possibly insane. Light haired with "a face of the most profound grief" Spends most of her days praying, sleeping or spouting gibberish. I thought of Mary Louise Parker (43) for both the Sara and Ista roles. She does internal chaos so superbly and both women would only seize their scenes if the actress was good at conveying the inner life. Vera Farmiga? Any other ideas people?
"The Provincara" (elderly) the matriarch of the House of Chalion: steely and firm, good natured but impatient. Protective of her brood and disdainful of politics. This is the type of role Hollywood immediately shoves Judi Dench into for biting wit. But to prevent it from becoming too stock in casting, why not surprise with someone warmer than you'd expect like, say, Emma Thompson (49) or more mysterious like Miranda Richardson (50)... or am I going too young here ?

supporting characters
"Lady Beatriz" (20s) Iselle's best friend and Cazaril's love interest: dimpled brunette, smart, patient and quietly self-sacrificing. Looks wise Alexis Bledel (26) could fit the bill... but does she read too naive or immature onscreen? Can she do period pieces convincingly? Anne Hathaway? But she's too big of a star for this relatively small role. The Prestige's Rebecca Hall (26)? She played Bale's wife in that one... and played her well.
"Bergon" (20s) the prince of another royal family: stocky but fit, masculine, smart, exuberant but disciplined. I'm thinking Charlie Cox. I've wanted to see him again since Stardust. Dominic Cooper?
"Umegat" (age undetermined) a mystical and mysterious servant to Orico. Tall, stooped, graying hair. This is the type you see Paul Bettany getting: odd but crucial part.
"Palli" (30s), Cazaril's confidante. Dark haired, very handsome, a strong soldier and humble religious type. Because I was thinking of Aragorn-Viggo-Cazaril I found myself pulling for Legolas-Bloom-Palli but that is 2 times too much Lord of the Rings in the house. All of that hot Viggorli stuff has settled too deep into my marrow. This is the type of role that they'd probably shove Rupert Friend into now. But maybe he reads a little sinister for it. Hmmm...

Alexis Bledel, Ty Burrell, Rebecca Hall, Charlie Cox

the villains
"Dondo dy Jironal" (40s) a rising political power: black hair, stocky, a true glutton in temperament: wine, women, flashing of wealth.
"March dy Jironal" (40s-50s) His brother, tall, tense and formidable. He's the gray-haired general of the military order. I'd love to see what someone like Ty Burrell could do in a larger part. He keeps getting these befuddled intellectual good guy roles (Fur, The Incredible Hulk) but his face is interesting and kind of severe. I was just thinking about him today... but can he do sinister or scary?

Comment
This is tough. I beg for your help in this imaginary ordeal. Together we could save this imaginary movie from ruin. Do something important with your life. ;) Did you even read the book or do you always need moving pictures?

August's "Cast This!" Selection:
Then We Came To The End by Jonathan Ferris. It's supposed to be very funny, brilliant, and I figured it might be good for this type of book club since it's a huge ensemble piece and contemporary too. We'll discuss on Thursday, August 21st. Get reading! Are you joining us?