Thursday, January 26, 2017

20th Century Women and Dependent's Day

                        Living (more or less) in the Material World

                                                    Reviews by Ken Burke

Take care, curious readers, for plot spoilers gallop rampantly throughout the Two Guys’ insightful reviews.  Therefore, be warned, beware, and read on when you’re ready to be transported to … wherever we end up.  Please protect your eyes from the dazzling brilliance.
               
                              20th Century Women (Mike Mills, 2016)
              
In 1979 Santa Barbara, CA an older single mom faces difficulties raising her 15-year-old-son so she turns to her friends (a 30-something-woman photographer/boarder and a 17-year-old-girl, close companion of the son) for help, although none of it works out as intended; 
all the writing, characterization, acting, and sense of humanity in this film is absolutely marvelous.

As publicity stills go, this one's seemingly a bit flawed, but I purposely use it
because it's perfectly in character with the attitudes of this unusual film.
What Happens: In Santa Barbara, CA in 1979, 55-year-old Dorothea (Annette Bening) is beginning to feel inadequate in giving proper parental guidance to 15-year-old-son Jamie (Lucas Jade Zumann), the result of a marriage long-gone-upon-the-rocks.  She has a job I never did get clarity on (except that she works at a drafting table in some sort of design firm), so with that and rent from a couple of boarders she’s able to maintain a huge, multi-story-house that was built in 1905 (constantly in a state of repair by one of the boarders, William [Billy Crudup]), where she’s at home much more than the boy (although he gets plenty of late-night-visits from long-time-but-still-just-17 [and you don’t know what I mean … yet] buddy, Julie [Elle Fanning]) or the other boarder, Abbie (Greta Gerwig), a photographer for a local newspaper but constantly challenging herself with projects such as shooting everything that happens to her in a day or cataloguing all of her various possessions (from shoes to underwear).  William’s a friendly guy but he's a bit overly-focused on his construction interests as opposed to other aspects of human interaction so Dorothea turns to Julie and Abbie for help in raising Jamie, although their responses don’t pan out as Mom had planned.  

 Julie usually climbs the outer scaffolding of the reconstruction to Jamie’s bedroom window, often sleeps with him (but no sex) because she wants to escape the confinement of her own single Mom (played by Alison Elliott as a psychotherapist who oddly forces her daughter into Mom-run-group-counseling-sessions, giving Julie the exact opposite of anything therapy’s supposed to deliver); she even fondles him a bit before pushing him away while telling him of her many sexual exploits (about half of which bore her, possibly because she’s yet to have an orgasm), although later on she admits she lies so we’re not sure how truly experienced she is, but Jamie would certainly like to be on her list of hot-blooded-conquests, despite the frustration of her insisting he’s just a very close friend.

 Abbie goes whole-hog-wild-feminist-educator, getting bedazzled-Jamie into a nightclub he’s too young to attend so he can understand adult desires, providing him with a wealth of literature and other insights about women and their needs (including a copy of the now-famous Our Bodies, Ourselves [produced by the Boston Women’s Health Book Collective, 1971], leading to Jamie getting beat up after trying to talk with one of his teenage “colleagues” about the need for clitoral stimulation after the guy brags about his [unlikely] sexual prowess)—which Dorothea must eventually complain is beyond what her son can comprehend at this stage in his life— while complicating things in the home by seducing all-too-willing-William (who admits he can’t handle the complexities of relationships very well but is willing to enjoy what we now call “benefits” [although for Abbie to be comfortable with it they have to play out a fantasy where he’s a photographer who seduces her as a model], who later offers such to Dorothea but she abruptly declines; he also tries to teach her to meditate which she derails by lighting up yet another cigarette).  Jamie finds himself in over his head with all this advice, deciding to buy a pregnancy-test-kit for Julie because one of her conquests, Tim (Finn Roberts), didn’t pull out when needed so she’s terrified of being pregnant (she’s not, then teaches Jamie a “cool cigarette walk” emphasizing “strength” in thanks, trying to help him be a stud for local girls) but then he ends up accompanying Abbie to a follow-up-clinic-appointment (she’s recovering from cervical cancer) where her biopsy is negative yet she now has an “incompetent cervix,” devastating her hopes of ever having children.

 Ultimately, Jamie’s totally overwhelmed by all that’s going on around him so he pushes his Mom to her limits by such things as running off to a club in L.A. (which, while a bit of a lark for a 15-year-old, isn’t really that far from home [about 95 miles]; in west Texas there are folks who’d easily drive farther than that for shopping and lunch in Fort Worth just to add some diversity to what’s not available to them in Abilene) without first telling her about it, later stealing her VW bug with Julie to head north looking for adventure in whatever comes their way (but they just get as far as San Luis Obispo, roughly another 95 miles) only to have that happy, spontaneous trip seem headed for immediate disaster (Jamie admits love for Julie [Abbie encouraged him to do so], she pushes him away, he hikes away from the motel where they’re staying) until Dorothea, Abbie, and William drive up (in his marvelously-restored-old-Chevy that looks a bit like a tank without a cannon), Jamie returns to the motel on his own, reconciles with Mom over his desire to focus on a parent-child-relationship with her, after which they’re all eventually back in Santa Barbara dancing in the house, hopefully ready for the next stages of their lives.  Each of these major characters has at some point been given a brief on-screen biography, with images from their lives and times (often some poignant black & white photos, along with appropriate newsreel-type-footage that gives us a solid grounding on the 
situations and troubled-motivations of each of them) which are then updated at the end with each character quickly pushing the story’s timeline into the future, past Dorothea’s death (from lung cancer in 1999; she admits her constant smoking is deadly but, sadly, also part of a lifestyle image she’d inherited long before the Surgeon General’s warning in 1964).  We get concise ending-explanations that Dorothea finally remarried before her death; Abbie married and successfully had 2 children, medical science be damned; William moved away to Sedona, AZ, married but divorced; Julie went to college at NYU, then she traveled to Paris, never had kids.  This all ends with a voiceover from Jamie about how he’d tried to explain his complicated grandmother to his own son but failed because this unique, individual woman was just too hard to reduce to words: 
throughout the story we’re amazed at how specific she is, seemingly ready to dismiss any of the social conventions she’s expected to follow—including offering obnoxious verbal banter to a cop who stops her for a minor traffic problem one night, resulting in Abbie and William having to bail her out of jail—but yet also hesitant to expose her so-much-younger-son to the harsh realities of adult life until she thinks he’s ready for it, as with her disgust at a large dinner party where Julie describes her 1st sexual encounter in detail and Abbie gets huffy over social niceties, eventually leading the whole group in a chant of “menstruation”.  Dorothea finally tells Jamie she just wants his life to be happier than hers has been, which has led her to decisions that he feels are arbitrarily-restricting.

So What? So far, Mike Mills is making a fine cinema-career out of recycling his own life, making his 1st significant impact with his 2nd filmic-feature, Beginners (2010), as Christopher Plummer took the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor (at age 82, the oldest male for this award [the oldest Best Supporting Actress is Peggy Ashcroft in A Passage to India {David Lean, 1984} at 77 years]) playing a character based on Mills’ father who also came out as gay—at age 75, then died 5 years later—now giving us the wild-delights of 20th Century Women with the central presence of Dorothea based on his mother and the other primary female characters inspired by real women that he knew growing up (how much his own life is supposed to resemble Jamie he doesn’t note in an extended interview, the 3rd listing connected to this film in the Related Links section far below).  But, as with Fellini inserting experiences from his life into his work (especially with his masterpiece, [1963]), Mills fictionalizes his autobiographic elements enough so that they have appeal beyond his own inner circle, creating a collection of marvelously-unique-screen-people who can speak to a wide range of audience members.  I was thoroughly impressed, could find resonances with the doubts, fears, and unleashed-exuberances (when they’d finally emerge) of Jamie and William but also saw a serious explication of individuality in the females that I can’t truly understand as much, even as I empathize with them; however, my insightful wife, Nina, was overjoyed with the unique, humane, struggling-for-completion-personas of these women (as were Bening and Fanning, as stated in the aforementioned video far below, giving praise to Mills as director and screenwriter, finding truthful nuances that they could easily embrace as actors in this drama; so says Gerwig also, although she has to testify in another interview video below because she couldn’t attend the previous one cited).

 This film is filled with marvelous elements, such as the car that Dorothea’s husband left them after the divorce—a vehicle she really liked—spontaneously bursting into flames in a parking lot due to an electrical problem (then she invites the firemen who helped extinguish it over for one of her many large-group-dinners) or the little off-white VW bug that she replaces it with getting spray painted by punk-rock-activists advocating the assaultive-sounds of Black Flag vs. the “arty” punk presented by the Talking Heads, which Dorothea and William acknowledge they prefer after attempting a night at the local club where they don’t fit in any better than elsewhere in their current decade which seems to have completely left them behind—him as a reclusive hippie from Cleveland by way of northern CA, her as a 1924-born-woman shaped by the Depression and WW II (not unlike my own mother, who began her long life in 1920 but was not as willing to publically declare her own cluster of complexities as is Dorothea, but then my Mom always had my Dad to share her life from 1942 until 2005, leaving her only 3 more years to negotiate on her own), events merely abstractions to the others who share Dorothea's life, leaving her in a state I’d call “realistically cynical,” while Abbie—as a member of a generation falling between Dorothea and Jamie (him along with Julie)is characterized by her fascination with the (actual) group The Raincoats who offer passion without talent (her opinion, but I don’t disagree).

Bottom Line 
Final Comments: This is a fascinating study (shown in 4K-resolution-video at my screening, a pleasure to watch from a crystalline-cinematic-perspective) of a mother-son relationship where she can be furious with him for almost dying from playing a fainting game with his friends while he can chastise her for being “sad and alone” because she keeps herself apart from close relationships, possibly even with him, yet it also encompasses a much-wider-look at this long-ago-era when a big group of our characters find themselves watching President Jimmy Carter’s 1979 sobering "crisis of confidence" speech in which he talks against consumption as a “mistaken idea of freedom,” a call to rise to our better nature (something that most of the principals in this story have yet to be able to do) which actively resonates against our current President’s insistence on an “America first” policy of expectations about a resurgent economy, restored jobs, a "huge" triumph of New World capitalism that rejects the attempts of certain national leaders over the last near-half-century to be more globally-oriented, more environmentally-astute, more inclusive rather than protectionist in the multiple-interpretations of the “American dream” (one viewer in the film presciently notes that this speech will end Carter’s political career).  There are other references to those times in this film, especially from a wealth of books too extensive for me to have taken note of, with graphic identifications of authors and titles on-screen, along with short, pertinent voiceover quotes that add marvelous depth to what we see.

 You don’t have to be saturated in all of this depth of allusions offered to be able to fully appreciate 20th Century Women (although if you can catch some of the references you might have a jolly time exploring the books and the music), but you certainly can’t deny that, even if you don’t have full insights into this period (or might have forgotten—intentionally or not—much of what you lived through then, as is my case), you'll find a certain sense of a tangible-but-lost-era is coming alive again on screen here, intriguing and encouraging us to know more about it or even just fully appreciate this era as it rolls by in a compelling manner due to the brilliant acting, especially by Bening (a solid contender for Oscar’s Best Actress honor for me, even though she didn’t get the nomination; for that matter, I'd have put Fanning into the mix for Best Supporting Actress, though again the Academy felt otherwise*) but a success equally-apportioned to all of this stellar cast.  Critics-at-large have been supportive of this film with 90% positive reviews at Rotten Tomatoes, an 83% average score at Metacritic (more details below in Related Links)—giving further support to my easy choice of a 4-of-5-stars-rating—although it hasn’t had much chance to build support at the box office yet (despite being in release for a month) as it’s just now gotten to 650 theaters, taking in a mere $2.3 million domestically (U.S.-Canada) so far, but it may become an attraction now after last weekend’s worldwide-success of the Women’s March against the regressive policies associated with Donald Trump in various cities.  (If you’ve got time and money for a double feature you might want to pair 20th Century Women with another story somewhat from that time [the early 1960s], the unknown-until-now-rendering of Black female mathematicians making a huge impact on the American space program shown in Hidden Figures [Theodore Melfi, 2016; review in our January 4, 2017 posting].)

*In Related Links you’ll find info on the Oscar nominations for 2016 films.  In the near future (after I’ve seen a couple more potential-worthies I haven’t gotten to yet to affirm my choices in various categories) I’ll post my usual listing-with-commentary, but I’ll note for now that on my potential lists of top 5 choices in 8 major categories I generally sync up on about 3 of 5 of the actual nominees.

 For my regular choice of a Musical Metaphor for 20th Century Women 
(my standard end-of-the review-tactic for giving a last look at what I’ve been discussing in the film under review but from the perspective of another art form) I’ve easily chosen to borrow something from its own soundtrack, “As Time Goes By” (written by Herman Hupfeld in 1931 for that year’s Broadway Musical, Everybody’s Welcome), used so very effectively in one of the 
5-star-worthy-all-time-classics, Casablanca (Michael Curtiz, 1942) but I’ll be a bit non-standard in not just using the song but also embedding it in clips from that eternally-magnificent-movie of yesteryear so we can all appreciate again the context it carries as sung by Sam (Dooley Wilson; however, the piano work for this singer/drummer/actor was dubbed in by Elliot Carpenter) in that story of the fateful re-meeting of former-lovers Ilsa (Ingrid Bergman) and Rick (Humphrey Bogart), which is a complex, melancholy, ultimately-sacrificial-situation that resonates so well into the complex, at-times-melancholy, often-wistful-lives of all the main characters in … Women, especially Dorothea who’s old enough to have known that movie and all it represents about lost love in its original 1940s context (although the others could just as likely have seen it on video or at a repertory theater well after its initial release, as I'd done several times by 1979).  To get all you need to recall—or learn, if you’ve never seen it—you’ll need to watch 2 clips, the 1st when Ilsa comes upon Sam in Rick’s CafĂ© AmĂ©ricain at https:// www.youtube.com/watch?v=7vThuwa5RZU, the 2nd later that night with Rick reminiscing about his dark past at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bAlzmRjixr0 (where you can also verify that the proper script line is “play it, Sam,” not “play it again, Sam” no matter how much Woody Allen might have confused the issue with his pun of a title to his 1972 movie of that name—screenplay by Allen, based on his 1969 Broadway play, but directed by Herbert Ross, one of the very few times Allen’s not directed his own scripts; note that the audio's a little lower in this clip than the previous one).
                  
 Once again Two Guys have been asked by a director to review his independent movie so we willingly accept the offer via the following analysis with our great thanks for being recruited.
                
                 Dependence Day (Michael David Lynch, 2016)
             
In this romantic comedy an aspiring actor pushes the limits of his girlfriend’s patience by contributing little to their joint income with all of his hopes always getting sidetracked, as when he gets jobs with 2 different Hollywood producers but only to do babysitting rather than acting with the 2nd situation the beginning of many more difficulties to come for both of our lovers.
                       
What Happens: We begin in a scene where Cam Shuer (Joe Burke [no relation to me that I know of]) and his girlfriend, Alice Rivera (Benita Robledo [just for the record, she’s also no relation to me, but it’d be nice if either of them ever wanted to invite me to a family reunion, given that most of my relatives are dead—once again, something I had nothing to do with]), are in the office of their tax accountant (Brian George), who agrees that with their $165,000 income last year (but $150,000 of it from Alice, who works for a fashion design house) they’d be much better off if she took him as a dependent, given that she supporting much of his life's activities (he does get occasional work as a children’s party clown, although he—living in L.A. of course—has aspirations of being a movie actor).  Cam’s taken aback by the suggestion but agrees for financial reasons.  His embarrassment is intensified when he attempts to pay for dinner with Alice and their married-couple-friends, Luke (David August) and Kaylee (Shannon Lucio), only to have his card declined, then after Luke pays they all walk out to see his expensive Mercedes (although Cam will, much later, get dessert at home via explicit 69 sex with Alice [this movie’s NR—not rated—but it’s definitely for an adult audience]).  Pushed to help with their finances Cam tries to get a $500 loan to his friend Josh (Josh Staman) repaid but all Josh can come up is $16 and items of “legal tender” (stamps and some videos).

 However, Josh’s minor role in the film biz is pressed into service to get Cam an interview with producer Renee (Ashley Dyke), even though the only job she offers is babysitting her young girls, Sophia (Ella Simone Tabu) and Stephanie (Mma-Syrai Alek) at her Beverly Hills home.  That works out, though, so she refers him to Hank (Todd Bridges) and Larry Wright (Charlie Hofheimer), a gay couple who also just need a babysitter, despite Cam’s confused attempt to audition.  In their case, they need a overnight sitter for son Charlie (Zachery Alexander Rice), an extremely cooperative kid who goes to bed on time, leaving Cam to fill his night by watching the movies he got from Josh.

 One's an old VHS called 
All Anal 5, which quickly gets Cam excited enough to start unzipping when the scene fades out.  All’s going well the next day when Alice comes to pick him up until he realizes he forgot to get his check.  When he knocks, Hank’s not going to pay because they found the lurid sex tape still in their machine (although Larry’s trying to a be a peacemaker, just to get rid of Cam).  When Cam returns to the car, he's forced to explain the whole awful thing to Alice who first berates him for his interest in such butt-based-activity (“That’s not what we do!”), then gets upset that she’s not sexually-satisfying enough for him (he retaliates 
by berating her for reading Fifty Shades of Grey [E.L. James, 2011], a not-helpful-response), finally storms back to the door to get the check (after all, Charlie was asleep, never saw the tape); that night at home she banishes Cam to the couch.  After all that, things really get bad because Alice manages to get Cam a receptionist job at her office (not that he’s very good at it) where her boss, Bette (Lisa Ann Walker), doesn’t care for Cam but starts sexually harassing him (rubbing her bare foot into his crotch), followed by the false charge he was harassing her (just because she can get away with it), leading to an attempted defense by Alice which gets both of them fired but poor Cam
can’t even leave their apartment (Alice has decided to throw him out) without having to spend the night after all as her bubbly-parents (Bertila Damas, Javier Ronceros) suddenly show up during a layover in L.A. on their way to Hawaii for their 2nd honeymoon.  Next day, Cam’s moved in with Josh (who’s not happy either, as his fragile film career’s in jeopardy because of his known 
connections to Cam), offering the advice to just pretend Alice is dead, then move on with his life.  Instead, Cam ends up at some club where during open mic time he pours out his heart (“What I hate most is how much I still fucking love her.”), then stumbles onto a job as a busboy at a bar/restaurant owned by Toni (Jules Willcox), whose sister, Kathryn (Erin Pineda), is a director so Cam gets a small bit part in her current film which he finally nails after a series of miscues over a mere 3-word-question.  As all of this wraps up, Alice gets a fashion design job at a better location (considerably less pay, though), she makes up with Cam after Josh sends her a video of Cam’s club monologue (which has a good number of insults about her, but they pale in comparison to his affection), they dine with Luke and Kaylee again, this time with Cam paying and our reunited-couple not accepting the offer of seeing their friends’ relationship-counselor, then we finish with the tax accountant where this time the previous year sees more parity in their income contributions (Cam’s getting some film work apparently) but it still works out better for her to claim him as a dependent which he’s now ready to happily accept.

So What? According to director/ co-screenwriter (with Josh Staman) Lynch, Dependent’s Day was put together for under $50,000, amazing considering the quality he came up with in this movie, which—although a bit sparse and meandering at times but not too much of a problem considering the easily-digestible 1:28:00 running time—offers a lot of unexpected plot twists (especially Bette’s hostile attitude toward Cam which she then turns into a nasty, unwarranted sexual-power-trip for no other reason than to show what a celebrity boss can get away with [Now where have I heard a similar story in the last few months?  I know this film was released way before that infamous Trump tape became public, but it does make for a most interesting coincidence here*—just as the return of Sleepy Hollow {on Fox TV of all places!} is now about a legion of demons being let loose in Washington, D.C.; who could ever have thought that such a set of grim “alternative facts” would become the norm?]) that ultimately prove to be quite humorous such as: Josh’s attempt to pay off a loan by dumping whatever items he can scrounge up into Cam’s hands as part of his debt settlement; the surprise appearance of Alice’s parents (although overnight is an odd layover from L.A. to Hawaii, just as their trip to a leper colony is an odd 2nd honeymoon) with Mom’s questioning of her daughter the next day about her sex life (she has concerns—as does Alice—about why Cam’s been so slow in proposing to her), giving her advice that men need to feel like heroes (even though Alice has chosen to end the relationship but she doesn’t want to ruin her parents’ trip with that somber revelation); and the abrupt end to Cam’s
audition for Hank and Larry, given that we’d been set up to believe they wanted to see him for an acting job.  What’s most satisfying, though, is that other Burke’s terrific performance; while he has support from the rest of the talented cast 
(especially Robledo), Joe essentially carries the whole project, is a joy to watch (as Cam blusters through everything while forced to bike around the vast landscape of L.A.), with the solid prospect of a more-widely-known-career (something I can also hope happens for filmmaker M.D. Lynch**).

*Another coincidence 
concerning me a bit, though, is the mild similarity of the characters of Cam here and in the ABC-TV hit comedy Modern Family where both of the Cams live in L.A. (Eric Stonestreet on TV), both have careers as clowns for children’s parties, and both tend to either fly off the handle or else attempt to cover up their mistakes through fabrications.  It’s no big deal, but unless there’s a solid reason on Lynch’s part to use this given name of Cam for his movie's lead I do wish he’d picked another one just to avoid “fake news” speculations such as I’m making here, possibly irritating Mr. Lynch when I could have discussed this directly with him but I’ve bugged him enough already with other emails about cast members so I’ll just leave him alone, letting him speak in the Comments box below if he cares to (including correcting any mistakes that I may have made in viewing what he’s created). 1/26/2017: Director Lynch did get back to me on this issue; his explanation of pure coincidence about Cam is now available in the aforementioned Comments box at the bottom of this posting.

**Here are links if you’d like to know more about Burke (an experienced filmmaker himself, in addition to his acting) or Lynch  (extensive credits in many aspects of production).  Additionally, you can go here for an interesting “behind the scenes” look (brief—7:00—active, pleasant to watch).

Bottom Line 
Final Comments: While you’ll find only a couple of reviews for Dependent’s Day in the "industry standard" RT or MC collectives there is (at my "press" time) 1 User Review as well as about a dozen other External Reviews within IMDb, with Katie Walsh of the Los Angeles Times saying “The loosely plotted story moves forward almost effortlessly” even though it “waffles on whether Cam is a no-good screw-up” as part of her overall-positive-analysis.  You can tell that I’m generally-positive as well (especially regarding Burke’s performance—you know, maybe he’s a relative after all so that I can claim to be in such a talented-gene-pool) with acknowledgement that the story does ramble around a bit at times, although it holds together well enough to get our pleasure-to-watch-lovers back together by the end.  Regarding a Musical Metaphor for Dependent’s Day I’m drawn to “Act Naturally,” not only because of Cam’s dream that “They’re gonna put me in the movies They’re gonna make a big star out of me” but also because as his situation evolves it’s seemingly clear that his only shot at “the big time” would be “a film about a man that’s sad and lonely And all I gotta do is act naturally.”  Neither Cam nor Dependent’s Day are likely to “win an Oscar”—although, given the occasional vagaries of Hollywood, “you can never tell”—but I will say that if enough people (including you, faithful readers) see Lynch’s movie that at least Joe Burke may someday get into a bigger-distributed-vehicle that’s “gonna make [him] a big star ‘Cause [he] can play [a] part so well.”

 So, I encourage you to visit the Dependent’s Day website (noted in the Related Links section just below) to see how you can acquire Lynch‘s work, well worth your time to see, cheap to rent, not that expensive to buy, and it's certified-embraceable by the attendees of my local Cinequest San Jose (CA) Film Festival where it took one of the top prizes, the Audience Favorite Choice Award for Narrative Feature: Comedy (truly, there are a lot of solid laughs in it, especially with Cam’s never-ending-unanticipated-situations).  Now I’ll shut up and get to the song (written by Johnny Russell and Voni Morrison, originally recorded by Buck Owens and the Buckaroos as a big hit in 1963 [found on their 1964 Best of Buck Owens album]), where I’m partial to The Beatles’ version (from their 1965 Help! album in the U.K., 1966 Yesterday and Today album in the U.S.) at https://www.youtube.com/watch ?v=b5rpAqfd35Q, a live performance with date and location unknown to me; however, if you prefer Buck’s version here it is at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fOpgL4mqEis (which is another live performance, but it starts instrumentally under a black screen so please don’t try to adjust your TV computing device; this one’s from 1966, at Carnegie Hall no less), given that he’s associated with his long-time-residence in Bakersfield, just 112 miles north of Cam and Alice’s L.A. on Hwy 99.
                     
Related Links Which You Might Find Interesting:
               
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AND … at least until the Oscars for 2016’s releases have been awarded on Sunday, February 26, 2017 we’re also going to include reminders in each posting of very informative links where you can get updated tallies of which 2016 films have been nominated for and/or received various awards 
and which ones made various individual critic’s Top 10 lists.  You may find the diversity among the various awards competitions and the various critics hard to reconcile at times—not to mention the often-significant-gap between critics’ choices and competitive-award-winners (which pales when compared to the even-more-noticeable-gap between specific award winners and big box-office-grosses you might want to monitor here)—but as that less-than-enthusiastic-patron-of-the-arts, Plato, noted in The Symposium (385-380 BC)—roughly translated, depending on how accurate you wish the actual quote to be—“Beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder,” so your choices for success are as valid as any of these others, especially if you offer some rationale for your decisions (unlike many of the awards voters who simply fill out ballots, sometimes for films they’ve never seen).

To save you a little time scrolling through the “various awards” list above, here are the Golden Globe nominees and winners for films and TV from 2016 along with the Oscar nominees for 2016 films.

Here’s more information about 20th Century Women:



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XGuAY7pf2y0 (23:44 press conference from the 2016 New York Film Festival with director Mike Mills and actors Annette Bening, Elle Fanning, Billy Crudup, Lucas Jade Zumann—the audio’s just a bit low at times though); because the other major player in this film, Greta Gerwig, wasn’t at that occasion I’ll add this short interview (4:26) with her at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C-2Zh9YOZmY 



Here’s more information about Dependents Day:

http://dependentsday.com (very detailed, marvelously informative website)


http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3511220/?ref_=nv_sr_2 (IMDb; the usual additional details plus 1 user review and a dozen external reviews)

https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/dependents_day (2 positive reviews—one from Katie Walsh of the Los Angeles Times—but nothing else yet)


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If you’d rather contact Ken directly rather than leaving a comment here please use my new email at kenburke409@gmail.com.  Thanks.

By the way, if you’re ever at The Hotel California knock on my door—but you know what the check out policy is so be prepared to stay for awhile. Ken*

*Please note that YouTube keeps taking down various versions of this majestic Eagles performance at their induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame  so I have to keep putting in newer links (of the same damn material) to retrieve it; this "Hotel California" link was active when I did this posting but the song won't be available in all of our previous ones done before 1/26/2017.  Sorry, but there are too many postings to go back and re-link every one; the corporate overlords triumph again.

P.S.  Just to show that I haven’t fully flushed Texas out of my system here’s an alternative destination for you, Home in a Texas Bar, with Gary P. Nunn and Jerry Jeff Walker.
              
WE DO OUR VERY BEST TO PRESENT THESE TWO GUYS POSTINGS IN A VISUALLY-CONSIDERED GRAPHIC LAYOUT, BUT EXTENSIVE TRIAL-AND-ERROR HAS SHOWN US THAT UNLESS YOU’RE READING OUR REVIEWS ON A MACINTOSH COMPUTER USING MAC OS X 10.10.5 AND SAFARI 10.0.2 YOU’LL LIKELY SEE A SLOPPIER PRESENTATION THAN WHAT WE INTENDED (but Google Chrome 55.0.2883.95 usually comes fairly close to our intentions).  OUR APOLOGIES FOR ANY INADVERTENT MESS THAT WE HAVEN’T YET FOUND A SUCCESSFUL WAY TO CONTROL.

Wednesday, January 18, 2017

Paterson and Julieta

                    “The Moving Finger writes; and having writ, 
               Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit
               Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
               Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it.”
                                                                  The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám (verse LXXI)
                     written in 1120, as translated by Edward FitzGerald in 1859

                                                                   Reviews by Ken Burke

Take care, curious readers, for plot spoilers gallop rampantly throughout the Two Guys’ insightful reviews.  Therefore, be warned, beware, and read on when you’re ready to be transported to … wherever we end up.  Please protect your eyes from the dazzling brilliance.
                  
                                                         Paterson (Jim Jarmusch, 2016)
                   
A bus driver named Paterson working in Paterson, NJ writes poems in a private notebook but his girlfriend keeps insisting he make copies of them to share with the world to match her own ambitions in baking, fashion design, and country music; this story’s low-key but marvelously engagingespecially the very subtle poemsas it captures rhythms of ordinary life.
               
What Happens: Well, in truth, nothing much happens, but that’s the whole point of this slow-moving-but-regular-week in the life of a quiet municipal bus driver in Paterson, NJ who happens to be named Paterson (Adam Driver—whose character also happens to drive a bus, in a matching coincidence).  At home (a modest house—with a perpetually-leaning-mailbox—filled with black-and-white-dĂ©cor) he has an especially-loving-wife (some reviews refer to her as “girlfriend,” but the official website [see the first entry for this film in Related Links far below] says “wife” so I’ll follow that, although I didn’t notice any wedding rings on either of them nor pick up any further definitive relationship-status-clues in their dialogue), Laura (Golshifteh Farahani), who truly adores Paterson's personal poetry (which he always keeps hidden in a small notebook) while displaying her own more-flamboyant-ambitions to be an interior designer, hence all the achromatic decorations everywhere—including on all her clothes—largely accomplished by painting circles or lines of white on black (or vice-versa) on just about everything except their dog, Marvin—who runs outside once a day to push the mailbox into a lean for Paterson (never got his given name) to straighten up when he gets home.

 He wakes up without an alarm at roughly 6:15am Monday-Friday, makes coffee, eats a small bowl of Cheerios, goes to work where boss Donnie (Rizwan Manji) has a never-ending-litany of problems while Paterson’s always “OK,” drives his bus mostly in silence while listening (along with us) to the interesting conversations of his passengers, writes poems in his head which he then transcribes to his notebook (all with never an edit), then after a lunchbox break at his favorite Great Falls of the Passaic River site and finishing his route he’s home for dinner, encouraging talk with Laura, and a walk with Marvin which always involves a beer-stop at a local bar run by Doc (Barry Shabaka), with his “wall of fame” for various Paterson celebrities (Lou Costello, Rubin “Hurricane” Carter, etc.).

 His poems are normally based on everyday objects or fundamental situations (matches, the number of dimensions in the universe) but they evolve into quite-compelling-observations* which demonstrate how much talent lies in this reticent man that’s such a contrast to his constantly-effervescent-wife, who's a woman determined to make good money for them either by selling her cupcakes at a flea market or becoming a country-western singer like Patsy Cline (that last dream has to wait a bit, though, for her expensive b&w guitar to be delivered, after which she’ll need to learn how to play it while also figuring out how to write songs, but her self-esteem is never in question, even if the cost of the necessary [?] guitar is really straining their tiny budget).  The highlights of the week include Laura making a Brussels sprouts-cheddar cheese-pie for dinner, Doc’s wife storming into the bar angry that he took her cookie jar money to enter a chess tournament, bar patron Everett (William Jackson Harper) desperately trying to win back ex-lover Marie (Chasten Harmon) even to the point of pulling a gun to kill himself but Paterson wrestles the (toy, as it turns out) weapon away from him, and, on Friday, the bus breaking down so it has to be towed.  On Saturday, though, Laura makes a couple hundred dollars selling her cupcakes (black 
with little white frosting 
squiggles, of course) so they go out to dinner and a movie only to return to a living room full of paper scraps because Marvin chewed up the poetry book.  Despondent on Sunday afternoon, Paterson wanders to the Falls where he finds a serene Japanese man (Masatoshi Nagase) is reading poems by their mutual favorite, William Carlos Williams (who also wrote in Paterson, while primarily being a doctor), then gives a blank note book to Paterson who’s inspired to begin again. When they wake up on Monday morning, the rest of their normal lives also resume (although Laura’s future successes are still yet to be determined …).

*Bus driver-Paterson’s poems in Paterson are actually composed by noted writer Ron Padgett (a 2012 Pulitzer Prize Finalist in Poetry, along with many other honors).  You can get the entirety of one from the film, “Love Poem,” at this site, but just to give you a quick sense of how they all evolve beautifully from the mundane to the astute, here’s a sample of how "Love Poem" begins and ends:

               We have plenty of matches in our house.
                We keep them on hand always.
                Currently our favorite brand is Ohio Blue Tip,
                though we used to prefer Diamond brand. 
                […]
                That is what you gave me, I
                became the cigarette and you the match, or I
                the match and you the cigarette, blazing
                with kisses that smolder toward heaven.”

(“Cigarette” is likely used as a metaphor here because neither of these characters is ever shown smoking, except in the smoldering manner the poem notes about their passion for each other.)

So What? Over the many years of his career Jarmusch has done much contemplation-inspiring-work I’ve admired greatly (not, however, including the one many consider his debut [although that film would actually be Permanent Vacation {1980}, which I’ve never seen], Stranger than Paradise [1984], which I found to be so irritating that I was tempted to run screaming into the night from the theater)—with Mystery Train (1989), Dead Man (1995), and Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai (1999) surely among my favorites—but Paterson actually puts the feel of contemplation into the film itself even more so than what you might want to think and talk about after the screening, especially in the scenes where the bus driver just lets the conversations of his nearby-passengers flow into his brain as 2 young guys lie to themselves about hot they are to women who desire them (maybe … at best) or a young couple (Kara Hayward, Jared Gilman) who are discussing the heritage of anarchy in Paterson (not much, really).  Paterson, the character, is fascinated by the spontaneous aspects of life all around him, including a chance meeting after work one day with a young girl (Sterling Jerins), also a poet, whose lovely little “Water Falls” (about rain) moves him just as he also admires  professional work of someone like Williams* whose Paterson is a 5-volume-exploration (published 1946-1958; this link contains the entire 246-page-text where you can just click your cursor on any right-side-page to go forward, any left-side-page to go back) of many reflections on the city where he actually lived for years, where this fictional film is mostly shot.

*If you’d like to know more about this famed poet you might want to visit this link where you can get biographical info and samples of his work (the latter at the very bottom of this extended source).

 Like poetry itself, what Jarmusch has finely-accomplished here is that his film’s so immersed in the mood and nuances of this normally-verbal-art that it’s difficult for me to transform what I've come to encounter with it into another medium (even words in prose format have limitations in trying to fully bring to life in a different form what the poem accomplished in its own medium) whereas I can usually go on (and on, I'm well aware) at mind-boggling-length in prose about how specific examples of the amazing-multi-sensory-medium of cinema have impacted me in their illusions of real presence. but that's not going to be the case this time.  Paterson, while prosaic in the sense of showing the ordinary lives of people in what appears to be a routine, industrial-heritage-city (as with 1950s Pittsburgh in Fences [Denzel Washington, 2016; review in our January 12, 2017 posting] but with Washington’s work offering much more in terms of dramatic dialogue/plot events, taking us deeper into the incendiary-realm of poetic-power accomplished by exquisitely-delivered-language), isn’t as mundane as the actions portrayed might indicate with its poetry being of the Williams-Padgett sort where simple statements unfold into evocative-truths, encouraging rumination rather than quick observation, hinting at depths that lie quietly in rivers rather than thundering into our lives like waterfalls (or the familial tragedies to be explored in the review below of Julieta)Paterson’s like a known-bus-route you can appreciate only if you look into it rather than just at it, finding the usually-overlooked-aspects of daily existence.

Bottom Line 
Final Comments: Despite getting a solidly-resounding-sense of support from the critical-community-at-large (96% positive reviews at Rotten Tomatoes, a rare high of a 90% average score from the folks surveyed at Metacritic; more details available in the Related Links section farther below)—along with Best Actor awards for Adam Driver from both the Los Angeles and Toronto Film Critics Associations (plus a Palm Dog Award for now-deceased Nellie at the Cannes Film Festival to honor her only screen appearance)—there hasn’t been too much chatter otherwise for awards for Paterson, nor has it yet gotten much exposure (only playing in 14 domestic [U.S.-Canada] theaters after 3 weeks in release so it’s earned only a tiny $355,889 return so far), therefore I can’t even say if you’ll get much chance to see it except through video access (it was #35 in the domestic market last weekend, but when you add in the totals for the M.L. King Monday holiday for a 4-day-take it just falls off the Box Office Mojo list entirely), which I’ll heartily encourage just for the poetry alone in its revelation of thoughtful-beauty hibernating in plain sight.  My poetry (and human-decency)-appreciative-wife, Nina, would give it 5 stars because she’s so moved by it (as you know, I’m stingier than that, except where Fences is concerned) just as Phoebe Snow must have been moved by someone (although not Jackson Browne she said, as it was once rumored) when she wrote her most-famous-song, “Poetry Man” (from her 1974 Phoebe Snow album) so I’ll use this Paterson-inspired-aural-choice for my standard Musical Metaphor to further probe the presence of the film under review (maybe as we’d hear sung by our emerging [?] c&w star Laura to her husband: “you eyes, they light the night They look right through me. You bashful boy”) as I do find a harmonic-interarts-resonance between what I saw in Jarmusch’s work, what I hear from Snow at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7OxTVxGhHFM.

 But yet, there’s one other “mystical” harmonic convergence to share here with you regarding Nina, me, and this film, but to get there we have to push deeper into the arcane realm of oddball-metaphor to finish up these comments not with another poem by Paterson or even Williams but one that Williams acknowledged he liked quite a bit, written in this same sparse style, The Man with the Blue Guitar (1937), by Wallace Stevens, inspired by Picasso’s The Old Guitarist (painted in 1903-’04, during his “Blue Period,” although you’ll notice that the guitar’s about the only item that’s not blue on this canvas) as a 33-canto (excerpts here) poem/conversation between Stevens and Picasso’s musician.  I note it now to illustrate how—especially for those of us for whom poetry is a learned-rather-than-organic-experience (although I did manage to make a rhyme to begin this sentence)—such a seeming-stream-of-consciousness can be impressively-moving when kept short and digestible even upon first encounter—as with “Love Poem” and our Paterson protagonist’s other inspirations—or it can become downright-overwhelming when put into a lengthy context.  Case in point, when camping early on in our relationship somewhere closer to “then” than “now” in our almost 30 years together Nina wanted me to read her to sleep with some poetry so I arbitrarily chose Wallace’s work from a book she had; rather than help her doze off into peaceful slumber, though, I got annoyed by the incessant flow of the lines so by about the 20th time I had to repeat the words “the blue guitar” I was as ready to run out of the tent that night as I had been a few years earlier to escape the moviehouse when watching Stranger than Paradise, so I admit in certain circumstances that a little bit of either Stevens or Jarmusch (Williams as well, I’m sure) can go a long way with me, longer than I’d hoped for when entering into those experiences; however, I think I can safely say that Paterson will provide no such need for wild-departure, just a gently flowing river of appreciation (as I appreciate Nina laughing off my eventual frustration with Mr. Stevens that night so long ago).
                  
                                             Julieta (Pedro AlmodĂłvar, 2016)
               
A widow’s been estranged from her daughter for years, later she’s taken up with a lover and is about to leave Madrid for Portugal when she accidently runs into an old friend of the daughter so she stays, hoping to somehow, someday make contact with her adult child; as she writes a lengthy letter to her daughter we see in flashbacks how the mother's younger self evolved.
                     
What Happens: Julieta Arcos (Emma Suárez) lives in Madrid but is packing to move to Portugal with her lover, Lorenzo Gentile (DarĂ­o Grandinetti).  However, a chance meeting on the street with Beatriz (Michelle Jenner), an old friend of her daughter, leads to the information that AnĂ­ta—long estranged from her mother—is now living in Switzerland with her 3 children.  Julieta abruptly decides to stay in Madrid, leaving Lorenzo confused (except for the sad sense that their relationship is over), moving away on his own, while Julieta gives up her current address to move back to the building where she lived when last she was in contact with AnĂ­ta, in hopes that one day her long-gone-daughter will find her again.  From this beginning, the film goes into an extended flashback that visualizes what Julieta is finally confiding to AnĂ­ta in a long letter, one that we hear some verbalization of in voiceover.  Back when she was 25, Julieta (now played by Adrina Ugarte) had hopes of being a teacher, at that time with a 6-month-replacement job but hoping for more.  As she’s traveling by train, she gets uncomfortable with an older man who enters her carriage as his conversation leads to unseemly-implications so she rushes off to the bar car where she strikes up a conversation with a fisherman, Xoan (Daniel Grao), in a scene mixing beauty with melancholy as they watch a stag running in slow motion through the train window as he tells her he’s married but his wife’s in a coma.  The train makes a station stop but after starting up again comes to a sudden halt which turns out to be because the older man from Julieta’s compartment was on the tracks, allowing himself to be killed.  She’s distraught, thinking she could have been kinder, more aware of what he was actually saying, but her dismay’s soon replaced by passionate sex with Xoan (shown mostly as reflections in the train window as they’re speeding along—in several ways—at night).

While most of this film's intentionally not as colorful as
AlmodĂłvar' usual palette there are some scenes that 
harken back to his more-expected color scheme.
 Just as her temporary job’s finished Julieta gets a letter from Xoan, implying an invitation to visit so off she goes to find him in Redes, his seaside town, only to learn from stern, icy housekeeper Marian (Rossy de Palma) that the wife’s just died so he’s with close-friend Ava (Inma Cuesta), a sculptor.  Despite no encouragement from Marian to stay, Julieta does so anyway until Xoan’s return (the next day?) whereupon they resume their sexual connection, ultimately resulting in AnĂ­ta, as their hot relationship solidifies into marriage.  Over the years as AnĂ­ta grows older, Julieta becomes disturbed that her mother, Sara (Susi Sánchez), is suffering from dementia while her father, Samuel (JoaquĂ­n Notario), is getting sexual with caretaker Sanáa (Mariam Bachir), even as there’s still some occasion sex happening between Xoan and Ava (despite the latter’s now-close-friendship with Julieta) which brings us to the film’s primary crisis: when preteen-AnĂ­ta’s (Blanca ParĂ©s) away at camp she becomes fast-friends with Beatriz (now played by Sara JimĂ©nez), even to the point of going home to Madrid with her for a week when camp’s over.  During this time, Julieta confronts Xoan about Ava, leaving him upset, heading out to fish despite a storm rolling in; he dies, with AnĂ­ta heartbroken but accepting the harsh fate (without knowing all the causation details) as 
Julieta moves them to Madrid so her daughter can be close to Bea, while Mom shifts away from teaching to find a new career as a work-from-home-proofreader. 
However, when AnĂ­ta’s almost ready for college she decides to attend a 3-month-retreat; Julieta comes to pick her up only to be told her daughter’s found a spiritual calling, then left on her own with instructions her mother’s not to know where she is.  3 years pass, Ava falls ill, reveals to Julieta that Marian finally told AnĂ­ta the full circumstances of her father’s death leading her to cut off contact with Julieta, Ava, even Beatriz (because she felt guilty about having fun at camp while her father died), then Julieta meets Lorenzo at Ava’s funeral.  With all this background filled in we return to the present as Julieta’s aimlessly wandering the streets of Madrid until she happens upon Bea again (shown in the photo above), with the young woman telling her that she’s also estranged from AnĂ­ta.  Distracted, Julieta’s hit by a car but taken to the hospital by Lorenzo who’d returned, essentially stalking his former-lover, hoping to somehow connect again.  Our sad story finally comes to more-hopeful-closure as Julieta suddenly gets a letter from AnĂ­ta about 1 of her sons drowning, giving the daughter insight as to how her departure had hurt her mother so Julieta and Lorenzo are off to re-establish contact, with the past 12 years of cold-silence to be forgiven.

So What? Unlike with Jarmusch’s Stranger than Paradise, my first filmic-encounter with Pedro AlmodĂłvar, the delicious 
Women on the Verge of 
a Nervous Breakdown (1988), provided me with an immediate connection to his work (although he’d had a few other features out prior to that date that I had to catch up with later), which easily found the heights of flamboyant (High Heels, 1991), even disturbing (The Skin I Live In, 2011) or devilishly-comic (I’m So Excited, 2013; see a review of this last one in our August 8, 2013 posting if you like), filmmaking compared to which Julieta is a very subdued experience in which we have to wait quite awhile before clear understanding of why the daughter’s so alienated from her mother, with the tension slowly growing until we get the dramatic reveal (reminiscent of learning about the children’s tragic deaths in Manchester by the Sea [Kenneth Lonergan, 2016; review in our December 8, 2016 posting]).  Starting out in this film you wouldn't necessarily think this acclaimed director’s method would end up so tersely-serious, especially with his signature-colorful-adornments in the opening titles' imagery and the early scenes (especially a striking red)—although not so much so as in the lavish beginnings of La La Land (Damien Chazelle, 2016; review in our December 21, 2016 posting)—but as soon as Julieta encounters Beatriz the  
film withdraws to scenes of considerably-more-restrained-emotional-energy than we’d usually associate with AlmodĂłvar (not a shortcoming, just a challenge to established expectations) although there's still the focus on exceptionally-intriguing-female-characters (which is another hallmark of this auteur’s body of work) as we sense immediately there's something quite significant about Julieta, who’s seen as having such substance that Lorenzo must accept she’s made a decision not to leave Madrid even though she won’t explain why (she’s never told him about AnĂ­ta, either, as he acknowledges she has secrets that will be kept to herself).  A final clue prior to the flashbacks about the yet-unrevealed-relationship between parent and child is that as Julieta’s unpacking to stay in Madrid, she throws away, then retrieves an envelope with the torn pieces of a ripped-up Julieta and AnĂ­ta photo which aren’t immediately put back together as we’d expect them to be, showing visually the rift between mother and daughter, although we’ve yet to find out why, just as when Julieta begins her long letter we might easily make the mistake of thinking the older man on the train would become AnĂ­ta’s father, that is until we see her rush out of the compartment leading to a meeting with another man, a handsome hunk more likely to pair up with this attractive vision in spiky blonde hair and a leather mini-skirt.  Other plot twists (such as Marian’s reservations—at times hostility—toward Juliana) act to further keep us guessing for quite some time before all of the initial ambiguities are resolved.

Bottom Line 
Final Comments: Given the difficult journey that the characters take in Julieta it’s appropriate that when we do see our younger-protagonist in a classroom scene she’s teaching the Odyssey where she explains to her students that Odysseus is actually a poor navigator because it takes him so long to return home but that seeming-failure as a narrative hero is also what opens him to a life of further adventures he’d not anticipated, so life—as explored in this film—often becomes much more intriguing (if not grimly-challenging) by unintended events, just like Julieta's chance-meeting on a train with a lover eventually leading to their marriage and child, even though those surprises may turn tragic, just like on her final day with Xoan because of an argument she started when she wasn't ready to finish (she had school lessons to prepare; she also wanted to take a long walk to clear her mind before any further accusations).  Julieta’s life will then progress through periods of pain, reclamation, then debilitating distress as she journeys into middle-age, with both actors portraying her doing substantial jobs of giving tangibility to a fictional construct, enlivening the words on a script page just as Julieta’s lengthy letter allows her to give a fleshed-out-understanding to circumstances that AnĂ­ta never had the opportunity to know nor discuss with her mother before cutting off communication (ironically, with the “past is forgiven”-ending-attitude of this story, it’s not clear either AnĂ­ta or Lorenzo will read this lengthy-life-explanation, even though it’s crucial for our understanding of how events evolved with this family).

This is an intriguing publicity still, not a shot
directly from the film because the 2 women
portraying Julieta at different times in
her life never are onscreen together.
 Critical response to Julieta has been solid so far (82% at RT, 72% at MC; more details below), with Spain now offering this film as their entry in Oscar’s Best Foreign Language Film race although it may take such a major-nomination-boost to raise its domestic earnings (a mere $540,276 after a month in release but that’s only in 29 theaters; however, it’s taken in $20.9 million overseas, with likely a limited budget, so hopefully it’ll find eventual-financial-success, Oscar nom or not)An obvious choice for a Julieta Musical Metaphor would be Paul Simon’s “Mother and Child Reunion” (on the 1972 Paul Simon album, his first released after the break with Garfunkel) but that speaks only to the very end of our story (although hoped for much longer by Julieta) so I think we could find a more appropriate decision in Player’s “Baby Come Back” (from the 1977 Player album) at https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=Hn-enjcgV1o (featuring poor old-school-video but lyrics added), where the original romantic-breakup-scenario of the lyrics could—with a little metaphorical-imaginationbe reasonably-reinterpreted to familial-estrangement as Julieta says AnĂ­ta “can blame it all on me I was wrong, and I just can’t live without you […] Have you used up all the love in your heart? Nothing left for me, ain’t there nothing left for me?”  (However, if you want to finish with Paul’s song to shift to the film’s finale, here it is (no video at all but lyrics also added so feel free to sing along until we meet again*).

*Something else that might be interesting to you is a transcript from the press kit of this film of 
what director-screenwriter Pedro AlmodĂłvar himself has to say about his work, which saves me from having to repeat it throughout my commentary.  If you'd like to look into that further, please scroll down to the very bottom of this posting for a sample of that and info on how to retrieve it.
                 
Related Links Which You Might Find Interesting:
             
We encourage you to visit the summary of Two Guys reviews for our past posts.*  Overall notations for this blog—including Internet formatting craziness beyond our control—may be found at our Two Guys in the Dark homepage If you’d like to Like us on Facebook please visit our Facebook page. We appreciate your support whenever and however you can offer it!

*We’re sorry to say that a Google software glitch causes every Two Guys in the Dark posting prior to August 26, 2016 to have an inaccurate (dead) link to the Summary page, but there are too many of them to go back and fix them all.  From 8/26/16 on this link is accurate, with hopefully not too much confusion caused by this latest stupid snafu from the Alphabet overlords’ programming problems.
AND … at least until the Oscars for 2016’s releases have been awarded on Sunday, February 26, 2017 we’re also going to include reminders in each posting of very informative links where you can get updated tallies of which 2016 films have been nominated for and/or received various awards 
and which ones made various individual critic’s Top 10 lists.  You may find the diversity among the various awards competitions and the various critics hard to reconcile at times—not to mention the often-significant-gap between critics’ choices and competitive-award-winners (which pales when compared to the even-more-noticeable-gap between specific award winners and big box-office-grosses you might want to monitor here)—but as that less-than-enthusiastic-patron-of-the-arts, Plato, noted in The Symposium (385-380 BC)—roughly translated, depending on how accurate you wish the actual quote to be—“Beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder,” so your choices for success are as valid as any of these others, especially if you offer some rationale for your decisions (unlike many of the awards voters who simply fill out ballots, sometimes for films they’ve never seen).

To save you a little time scrolling through the “various awards” list above, here are the Golden Globe nominees and winners for films and TV from 2016.

Here’s more information about Paterson:



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JmsiwaGBY2s (45:43 press conference at the 2016 Cannes Film Festival with director Jim Jarmusch, producers Carter Logan, Josh Astrachan, and actors Adam Driver, Golshifteh Farahani)



Here’s more information about Julieta:



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fRSv9_3OS7w (36:51 press conference at the 2016 New York Film Festival with director Pedro AlmodĂłvar [some of his answers are presented in Spanish, then translated into English] and actors Emma Suárez [her answers are all in Spanish, then translated], Adriana Ugarte)



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If you’d rather contact Ken directly rather than leaving a comment here please use my new email at kenburke409@gmail.com.  Thanks.

By the way, if you’re ever at The Hotel California knock on my door—but you know what the check out policy is so be prepared to stay for awhile. Ken

P.S.  Just to show that I haven’t fully flushed Texas out of my system here’s an alternative destination for you, Home in a Texas Bar, with Gary P. Nunn and Jerry Jeff Walker.
                
WE DO OUR VERY BEST TO PRESENT THESE TWO GUYS POSTINGS IN A VISUALLY-CONSIDERED GRAPHIC LAYOUT, BUT EXTENSIVE TRIAL-AND-ERROR HAS SHOWN US THAT UNLESS YOU’RE READING OUR REVIEWS ON A MACINTOSH COMPUTER USING MAC OS X 10.10.5 AND SAFARI 10.0.2 YOU’LL LIKELY SEE A SLOPPIER PRESENTATION THAN WHAT WE INTENDED (but Google Chrome 55.0.2883.95 usually comes fairly close to our intentions).  OUR APOLOGIES FOR ANY INADVERTENT MESS THAT WE HAVEN’T YET FOUND A SUCCESSFUL WAY TO CONTROL.

 Below is a sample of the 8 pages of commentary on Julieta by its director, Pedro AlmodĂłvar, that I noted at the end of the review for that film.  But rather than clutter up this posting with a separate jpg for each page of it I'll just ask that if you'd like a pdf attachment of the whole document to an email simply contact me at the address just above and I'll be glad to reply to you with such an attachment.