Yesterday I got all my rewrites done on the first 7000 words of the novella in progress to change one event and propagate its impact through the rest of the story. The way people react to a disappearance is perforce different than they would to a death. One is more absolute, the other is nebulous, especially since there’s no clear reason to suspect something nefarious. Yet. Gives me a lot more to play with for the next 8000 words. The main character can spend more time trying to do something and less time flagellating himself. That comes later, of course. Maybe.
My April essay is up at Storytellers Unplugged today. It’s called Rejection, rejection, rejection…acceptance! Rejection, rejection… and deals with my strange calculus concerning rejection.
For Burn Notice fans: The Fall of Sam Axe airs on USA tonight. This is a prequel movie event that detail’s Michael’s colorful sidekick’s past.
A fascinating episode of Fringe this week. When things got animated I couldn’t help but think of the video for The Alan Parson Project song “Don’t Answer Me.” The funniest part of the episode was the slack-jawed look on Broyles’ face after he accidentally ingested some of the LSD. At first he was supremely fascinated by one of Walter’s strands of red licorice. Then he became more maudlin: I have seen death, and it was me. Perhaps he was visited by a vision of alternaBoyle’s death when Fauxlivia was transported back to the other side. Atrid (or Astro, as Walter called her this week) was left in charge of the asylum and even got in a little dig by calling him “Wally.” Peter made fun of Broyles’ shiny head and whispered, “I think he’s an observer.”
The acid-infused trip into Olivia’s mind was reminiscent of Inception. Her dreams and fears created a world that was hazardous for Walter, Peter and William Bell. Walter got to drive a car like a pro (Peter! I made us skid!) and the program runners found another creative way to bring back Leonard Nimoy: as an animated version of himself. “How wonderful,” the thought balloon next to Walter says when they make this discovery. It also allowed them to do things like bring in a bunch of zombies in lab coats to chase Peter into leaping from a tall building at a ladder dangling from a zeppelin. In addition to rescuing Olivia from her own mind, the episode allowed Olivia to put her biggest fear to rest. As Bell told her, “You have never felt safe. You are your own worst enemy. You took the opportunity to let your fears overwhelm you. But you just fought back. You’re just as strong as Walter and I always believed you were. And now you know it, too.” She’s not afraid to move forward any more, even if she thinks she’s going to be killed by the man with the cross on his chest. Just three episodes left, and the season finale is, according to Torv, mind blowing.
Last week’s episode of Body of Proof was a mixed bag. From a character development point of view it was quite good. The mother seen through the eyes of the daughter as she interviews her coworkers to find out what her job is all about. From a crime story point of view, though, it was terrible. The suspect is tricked into blurting out the fact that he was surprised the body had disappeared, thereby betraying the fact that he knew there was a body in the first place. Completely unbelievable.
On Friday night we watched Burlesque, starring Christina Aguilera, Cher and Kristin Bell. I expected it to be a period piece until someone slipped a CD into a player. It wasn’t bad. Aguilera held her own as an actress and when she took the stage and let her pipes do the talking she owned the screen. Cher is looking more like something out of Madame Toussaud’s wax museum than a real person, though her show-stopper performance was powerful, and Kristin Bell’s character was a cardboard cutout villainess. However, I liked the fact that they didn’t make Eric Dane’s character wrong. He was just wrong for her. The geography of the burlesque club was a little vague and malleable during the film, but it was a fun flick for a Friday night. Sort of a cross between Cabaret and All that Jazz.
A movie that required a little more thought was Certified Copy, a French film starring Juliette Binoche, directed by an Iranian and costarring an opera singer in his first acting gig. It’s set in Tuscany and the characters alternate among English, French and Italian, sometimes within a single conversation. The movie gets its title from the name of a book written by Brit James Miller, who hopes to challenge the art community’s reverence for original works. Copies are just as important and artistic as the original. And what is an original? Isn’t the Mona Lisa just a copy of the person in the painting?
Miller is in Tuscany giving a lecture about his book to an appreciative audience and bemoaning the fact that it wasn’t as well received back home. Binoche arrives late to the lecture and has to leave quickly because her teenage son is restless. She leaves a message with the book’s translator, inviting Miller to her dungeon of an antiques shop. He shows up and displays little interest in her collection, asking instead to get some fresh air. She takes him to a nearby village, where she’s eager to show him a small painting that was long heralded as a fine work of art until it was determined to be an 18th century copy of a detail from a medieval fresco. She wants to both prove and challenge his thesis, but it’s not a game he wants to play. He’s more interested in personal details, like Binoche’s character’s sister, whose husband in unable to say her name without stuttering.
Then something strange happens. They bicker in a coffee house over inconsequential matters. When he steps outside to take a call, the woman running the place assumes that Miller is Binoche’s husband and calls him a good man. When he comes back in, Binoche convinces him to play along, except the way she does so takes him to task for his perceived failings as a husband. He doesn’t speak either French or Italian, for example, which the Italian shopowner can’t understand. “I live my life, they live theirs,” he says lamely. From this point on, though, they begin to behave as if they really were husband and wife, and the audience is led this way and that into wondering if they really do have a 15-year relationship or if it’s all just a big put on. They seem to have a long history together, but is it real or just a copy? The movie never answers this question. Binoche’s marriage isn’t a happy one: her husband fell asleep on the evening of their most recent anniversary after she had prettied herself up for him. At times she seems terribly desperate and needy, starved for love, but she isn’t going to get it from Miller, who is cold and aloof, whether he’s the real husband or not. And then the credits start rolling, just as they tend to do in a French film, when you least expect it! Thought provoking but not exactly uplifting. Why bother with a copy if it’s just as bleak and dreary as the original? But it’s impossible to take your eyes of Binoche, who is in almost every scene and is as beautiful and captivating as ever.
