on the emotionally powerful taking chance

Two key quotes in a February interview with L.A. Weekly's Scott Foundas from the filmmakers behind Taking Chance:

From Lieutenant Colonel Michael Strobl, whose memoir inspired the film:

“To me, this is not a movie about Iraq,” Strobl says, “this is a movie about America.”

From director Ross Katz, who wrote the screenplay with Strobl:

“I remember one particular night after reading [Strobl's memoir],” Katz says, “I turned on CNN and yet another roadside bomb had ripped through yet another Baghdad market, and I sat there and I didn’t feel anything. I was extremely angry with myself, because I thought, intellectually I know how tragic this is, but I don’t feel anything, because for years I have been seeing this 24-hour news/cyber/cell-phone footage. I walked out on the street and life was just normal. I thought, there’s a parent who just got a knock on the door, and why does everything look the same? It just didn’t add up to me, and so that was kind of my leaping-off point.”

Taking Chance, which premiered at Sundance before airing on HBO in February, tells the true story of Strobl's journey in 2004 to escort the body of Lance Corporal Chance Phelps, who was killed while stationed in Iraq, to his family.

The film spends most of its short running time revealing the detail-by-detail process that goes in to preparing a dead soldier's body, and the story's emotional restraint (highlighted by a terrifically understated performance from Kevin Bacon) makes the journey both illuminating and almost unbearably poignant.

No speeches, no showy passages, no grand summations -- Taking Chance may be a little too small-screen in its execution, but its formal modesty belies the deep veins of emotion that are pulsing underneath. As Strobl correctly states, this isn't about Iraq -- it's about America and, perhaps more specifically, how difficult a time we have grappling with death. Plus, the movie's clear-eyed respect for the country's military communities -- the small towns where service is passed down from generation to generation and is as ingrained into the fabric of society as the Friday night football game and the senior prom -- is a thing of beauty. All the movie asks is that you feel, and by resisting the story's inherently manipulative elements, Taking Chance accomplishes its mission. It's not an "Iraq War movie," but that's part of the reason it's so terrific.

randy newman - i love l.a.

Since I nominated Randy Newman's "I Love L.A." as the definitive Los Angeles song earlier this week, I thought I'd track down the video. Everything I said earlier about the song goes double for the video, plus it's part of that honorable subgenre of videos made in the early '80s by established artists whose attitude toward MTV seemed to be, "These video things are completely stupid, but screw it, if it'll get some stupid kids to buy our album, let's make one."

By the way, for those who haven't been to Los Angeles in a while, the Disneyland sign looks a little different now.

the dead weather - horehound review

Another day, another new side project for Jack White. This time it's the Dead Weather, which is a collaboration between him and the Kills' Alison Mosshart. The Kills always sounded like a meaner, filthier White Stripes, so this team-up makes a lot of sense. I review the band's debut album, Horehound, at About.

who wrote the definitive song about los angeles?

From an interview between Tom Waits and Beck:

Tom Waits: Not every town gets their song. Actually, Sinatra tried to do a song about Los Angeles. It was really lame. Really lame. It embarrassed the s*** out of me.

Beck Hansen: That was in the 80's right?

TW: "LA, You're a Lady." It was one of those lame, awful... Maybe it's the rhyme or the rhythm of the name Los Angeles.

BH: Yeah I don't think anyone has written a definitive LA song.

TW: Maybe it's the rhyme or the rhythm of the name Los Angeles.

BH: Yeah, I don't think you can...

TW: But Chicago or St Louis, such cool sounding names. New Orleans. So many songs about New Orleans.

Without thinking about it more than three seconds, I'd pick Randy Newman's "I Love L.A." The satire, the bad-'80s quality of the production -- it still feels absolutely right in its depiction of this town. But maybe I'm forgetting a better choice.

dj jazzy jeff and the fresh prince - summertime

Happy Fourth, everyone. Here's a version of summer that never, ever happened to me. But it sounds pretty great, right?

kambakkht ishq review

Kambakkht Ishq is a Bollywood romantic comedy set in the world of Hollywood stuntmen and, er, Santa Monica surgeons. It involves a real Don Juan type who encounters the one beautiful woman who is immune to his charms. The movie is all singing-and-dancing fluff from there, but it's really, really fun fluff. My review is at L.A. Weekly.

the king of comedy

This is a newish feature called Blind Spots that I do occasionally on this blog. It'll give me a chance to write about movies or albums or whatever that I missed during their initial run. I'll write them in the style of Consumables and, ideally, this exercise of going back will help me fill in some gaps. I'll write these whenever the spirit moves me.

The King of Comedy
How can you tell that I'm not a dyed-in-the-wool Martin Scorsese fan? The King of Comedy and The Last Waltz are my two favorite movies of his. It's not that I'm opposed to the four Scorsese films everybody else holds up as his masterpieces -- Mean Streets, Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, Goodfellas -- but none of them fully works for me. (Their men-are-men pathos can get a little thick for my taste.) Hence, The Last Waltz and The King of Comedy, which are certainly centered around men as well but aren't quite so enthralled with masculinity that it dominates the proceedings. The Last Waltz pops up enough on cable that I feel pretty confident of its greatness, but I haven't seen The King of Comedy in probably 15 years. So I re-watched it, curious how it would hold up...

There's nothing like that uncomfortable feeling of knowing that you initially overrated a movie, but, then again, uncomfortable feelings are this movie's reason for being. There are few films that work so hard to make you actively hate all its characters, particularly its thoroughly unpleasant protagonist: Rupert Pupkin (played by Robert De Niro). But where Taxi Driver (another Scorsese film about a loser driven to take matters into his own hands) always felt like a glorification of nihilism, The King of Comedy seems to know full well that these people (even Jerry Lewis's popular talk-shot host) are all miserable wretches you don't want to emulate. And as opposed to another '70s film I find overrated, Network, The King of Comedy continually grounds its satire of television and celebrity in reality -- frankly, I'd be amazed if some lunatic hasn't tried copying this film's kidnapping ploy to get him- or herself on TV.

Still, this movie isn't as perfect as I remembered. De Niro's string of self-loathing performances with Scorsese continues here, and it's hard at points not to wonder what awful thing he did in his personal life that inspired such a willingness to berate himself in front of the camera. With that said, though, he is playing a character who's an acquired taste, and you have to credit the actor for not worrying about making us love him deep down. Plus, I'd forgotten how well De Niro performs Rupert's big monologue -- you believe that this slimy creep really has some (but not all) of the tools to become a stand-up comedian, if only he could learn to self-edit a little.

Sandra Bernhard in the best of circumstances is a dicey proposition, and a little of her goes a long way here. But Jerry Lewis really is fantastic -- without overdoing it, he conveys the sense of a man who got what he wanted in life and is depressed to realize how unfulfilling a realized dream is. He's only slightly less completely miserable than everybody else in the movie.

And then there's the ending. I'm in the camp that believes that everything after Rupert's arrest at the bar is a fantasy -- it has to be, right? No, in fact it doesn't have to be, which is one of the movie's great strengths -- it makes the case that lowlife freaks become famous all the time for the weirdest of reasons. Just about nothing in Network feels believable in 2009, but The King of Comedy still feels ahead of the curve.

the hurt locker, and the los angeles film festival

I'm not due for another Consumables column for about a week, but I've seen so much good stuff lately that I decided to publish the new one now. I review The Hurt Locker, The Girl From Monaco and Soul Power, but the real highlights are the three movies included in the Los Angeles Film Festival's "Films That Got Away" series: Musica Nocturna, United Red Army and especially The Silence Before Bach.