Dave's Fiction Warehouse

W e got around to streaming “ Spinal Tap II: The End Continues ” the other night. Probably not the best timing, so soon after the murder of Rob Reiner. It tended to mute the laughter every time he was on screen as his character Marty diBergi. Still, it was funny. Not as funny as the original; sequels never are. But there was at least one laugh in every scene. And the appearance of various real-life stars — including Paul McCartney and Elton John — seemed like a fitting if unintentional tribute to Reiner’s career now that he’s gone. You had to chuckle at Sir Paul praising the lyrics of “Big Bottom,” and Sir Elton being asked to tone down his piano playing. Reiner seemed like one of the good guys in an industry where good people are rare. You could infer that from his sense of humor and the nuance he brought to every script and genre. You could also infer it from the malevolent glee his death elicited from dotard-in-chief Donald Trump. Being hated by a hateful dolt is its own kind of tri...

R obert Redford was probably a better director than an actor, mostly because he was too damned good-looking to be fully believable in any of his best-known roles. But it’s hard now to imagine anyone else playing them.  I’m thinking mostly of “The Sting” and “Three Days of the Condor” and of course “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.” For those of us who were young men in the early 70s, this is the way we covertly longed to look and be. Not that we ever could. We lacked the wardrobe. And the smile. And the tousled hair. And yeah, the easy charm and the good looks and the journeyman acting talent.  Check out the opening scene in “The Way We Were”: Redford standing at the bar, ostensibly passed out on his feet, resplendent in his Navy dress whites. There were and are better actors, but none of them – even Paul Newman – ever looked that cool. I’m guessing that the look in Barbra Streisand’s eyes during that scene didn’t require a whole lot of method acting. She was genuinely smit...

O scar thoughts. Well, only one.  My wife first pointed this out but I tend to agree: celebrity breasts seemed much less enhanced this year. Smaller, more natural. We’ve grown used to seeing the splendid gowns draped over a couple of child-size bowling balls and there was less of that last night. What can it mean? Is it a trend? I was thinking it might be related to the rampant use of Ozempic/Wegovy among the Hollywood set. But Tess pointed out that in the past there have always been really thin women with impossibly large golden globes (my term, not hers). So I don’t know. We’ll be tracking this here at the Warehouse. Can’t comment on the various winners and losers, since (a) I saw only one of the nominated films (“Conclave”), and (b) Hulu decided late in the show that we had witnessed enough and abruptly shut down. I think it had something to do with that endless soliloquy by Adrien Brodie, which added an hour or so to the run time. Still, I hate Hulu and you should too.

  Robin Wright and Tom Hanks get an AI makeover T he Robert Zemeckis  movie “ Here ” was released in theaters last fall and has since been roundly savaged by critics. It showed up on Netflix last week, so this unqualified critic decided to have a look. My verdict: It’s not half bad. The movie’s central conceit is its static point of view. From beginning to almost the end, the camera never moves. Through it we witness an extremely brief history of time, and then a pretty long history of a single living room somewhere on the Eastern Seaboard.  Families come and go, from pre-Colonial times to the present, and their stories unfold on this single stage. During a scene from the 60s, say, a frame will pop up showing a portion of the room as it looked in the ‘30s, and then the scene will, after a few more frames, transition to that decade and that story. It’s not the most compelling narrative device, but it’s interesting even when the various stories don't quite mesh. It’s a nov...

  I magine if Bob Dylan had been blessed with Timothée Chalmet’s looks and singing voice. He could have been a big star. Haha. We were getting caught up on SNL episodes the other night and finally got to this one: Timothée (not crazy about that diacritic and double e) up there covering three of Dylan’s lesser-sung tunes: “Outlaw Blues,” “Three Angels” and “Tomorrow Is a Long Time.” He did a pretty good job – just as you’d expect from someone who’s spent the last couple of years learning to ape Dylan’s style for “A Complete Unknown.” As SNL musical guests go, you could do worse. GloRilla, for example, who was on the week before. But I found something about it kind of off-putting.  There’s the shameless movie tie-in, of course, with Oscars only a month out. But then SNL’s stylish staging and video effects made it seem that Chalmet wasn’t paying tribute to Dylan so much as inhabiting the man’s persona. Here was Dylan 2.0 (in the parlance of our times), with a cuter face and clean...

W hen’s the last time you read a Western? I used to devour them: Luke Short and Max Brand, mostly. Quite a few Louis L’Amour. Some Zane Grey. The last one I read was probably by Elmore Leonard, who was the best in the genre before he moved on to crime fiction.   I got to thinking about Westerns a few days ago, when Alan LeMay’s 1957 novel “The Unforgiven” showed up as a Kindle Unlimited title. (My new Kindle came with a free trial.)  It’s about a family in 1870s Texas, beset by hostile Kiowa and racist neighbors and quite a bit of bad weather. The Zachary clan raises longhorn cattle by the thousands, which must be gathered and driven to market in Wichita every year. Hell of a way to make a living, since it’s supremely unprofitable and you can’t get good help.   But cattle drives do make a great setting for Westerns. In fact, it’s hard to think of many that don’t feature moving livestock in some way or other. Which now reminds me of Larry McMurtry’s excellent “Lo...

  Timothy Bottoms and Cloris Leachman I can’t remember when I first read Larry McMurtry’s novel “ The Last Picture Show ” – early ’70s probably – but it was years before I got around to seeing  the movie . And when I did see it for the first time, it was probably on a 27-inch TV hooked up to a VHS player.  So it was good to watch it again last night, this time streamed via Netflix on our medium-large TV.  Maybe it was the bigger screen and higher resolution, or maybe it was all the years that have passed since then, but the film struck a haunting minor chord in a way it hadn’t before.  “The Last Picture Show” was billed as a coming-of-age story. Maybe it is. But to me the two young protagonists, Duane (Jeff Bridges) and Sonny (Timothy Bottoms) now come across as the story’s least compelling characters. Same with the young Cybill Shepherd as Jacy. They’re all adequate, but playing callow teens couldn’t have been much of a stretch. Bottoms, in particular, seems pr...

The devil wears polyester I was saddened to learn of the death of M. Emmet Walsh on Tuesday. The upside is that it’s now timely to talk about his best role: Private detective Loren Visser in the Coen brothers’ first movie: “Blood Simple.” If you haven’t seen “Blood Simple,” here is the obligatory spoiler alert: Get the hell out of here until you have seen it, then report back with your impressions. I saw “Blood Simple” on VHS before I’d even heard of the Coen brothers. Rewatching it nearly 40 years later, it’s fun to note certain motifs and archetypes that tend to reappear in their later work. Chief among those is the oddball villain who adheres to a strict code of amorality. The Coens later said they wrote the Visser character with Walsh in mind. Visser wears a yellow leisure suit and drives a Volkswagen Beetle. (Another PI with a Volkswagen appeared in “The Big Lebowski”).  He has a west-Texas drawl and an easy manner and a heart of blackest coal. His opening monologue doesn’t e...

Frequently frisky in an alternate Victorian universe.   W hen everyone and their respective dogs seem to love a movie, it’s a little embarrassing to admit you hate it. But I do hate “Poor Things,” the movie for which Emma Stone won her best-actress Oscar. Not since “The English Patient” have I felt so out of touch.  We watched it the other night, part of a vague impulse to catch most of the movies nominated for an Academy Award this year. It was free on Hulu. For that I am grateful. Now all I regret is the wasted time, as opposed to the wasted money. Also, it’s probably the only thing I’ve ever watched on Hulu where I actually welcomed the ads.  Have you seen it? I won’t offer a review, except to say that it plays like a Terry Gilliam movie (think “Brazil”) co-written by Russ Meyer (think “Beneath the Valley of the Ultra-Vixens”). It’s billed as a dark comedy, but it’s really kind of a raunchy sex romp tarted up with avant-garde pretensions — something about female empowe...

No time for small talk.   W elcome to Dave’s Oscar Recap, wherein I paraphrase what everyone else has already observed about last night’s show and pass the savings on to you.  First, it seemed to go by pretty quickly. Right? That’s something nobody ever observed about the Oscars. Maybe it had something to do with the earlier start, and Daylight Saving Time, and because for the previous 13 years I watched it in the Eastern time zone. There, the show always drags on toward midnight.  Credit must also go to Al Pacino, who, with his pants pooling around his ankles, decided to dispense with the usual bon mots and the usual mention of the other best-picture nominees. That saved a few minutes right there.  Finally, I have the sense that all those phone book-inspired thank-you speeches were fewer and shorter this year. Maybe that’s because I took to muting the TV after each winner was announced. You should try it sometime.  A couple of exceptions:  the guy who sugg...

I like war movies and I like historical epics and I like Ridley Scott. So I knew I’d be watching “Napoleon” as soon as I could stream it for free. That was last night. Thanks, Apple TV+!  Having seen it, I can say that this is one of those films where I would not regret the price of a theater ticket and a large bucket of popcorn.  Here’s what it is: sweeping battle scenes, deft direction, terse writing and often brilliant acting by Joaquin Phoenix, Vanessa Kirby and the strong supporting cast.  Here’s what it isn’t: Historically accurate. The most memorable scenes are the ones that didn’t really happen: Napoleon leading a cavalry charge, bombarding the Great Pyramids, rushing to Josephine from his exile in Elba, chatting with Wellington after Waterloo.   I don’t mind. I’m no great expert on the Napoleonic Wars, but the film seems to capture a sense of the time, if not a hyper-realistic picture of it. A movie can be completely accurate or it can be entertaining,...

That’s me on the left. G ood evening and welcome to the 2024 Oscar Rundown for Older Viewers Who Could Not Be Bothered to See Very Many of the Nominated Films.  Actually, only four: “Barbie,” “Oppenheimer,” “Killers of the Flower Moon,” and “The Holdovers.” All were pretty cheap to stream and these days I much prefer the comfort of my living room to any multiplex on the planet. Also, I find the closed captions on my medium-size Samsung work pretty well. That’s not always the case in theaters. Anyway, the envelopes please: Least favorite: “Oppenheimer.” The part with the Trinity test was great; the rest of the film was way too talky.  Most favorite: “The Holdovers” – Funny, poignant and unpredictable. Paul Giamatti. You should check it out. Least memorable: “Barbie.” Fun while it lasted, but really it’s just a cartoon with a fairly simplistic message.  Most memorable: “Killers of the Flower Moon.”  Kind of like “Schindler’s List” in that it’s pretty long and you can...

B ecause everything else in the news is pissing me off, I’ll post these drive-by reviews of some shows I’ve been streaming lately:  “Smile” (Amazon Prime). I love a good horror movie. The key word being “good.” “Smile” is not good. It is actually quite bad, but just short of bad enough to be enjoyed as a hate watch.  Take every horror film made in the last 30 years, extract all the tropes, stir them together vigorously, and you have a movie like “Smile.” I would list a few amusing examples, but they would all amount to spoilers. Maybe that doesn’t matter, since every little twist and jump scare can be seen miles in advance. Ditto with the ending. I suspect ChatGPT had a hand in the screenplay. It’s that predictable. Dave Bob says keep moving. Nothing to see here, except Kevin Bacon’s daughter Sosie trying her best to turn shit into gold.  “Dear Edward.” (Apple +) Who’s ready for some grief! I mean a big barrel o’ grief, since every character has recently lost a loved on...

Remember "War Games"? Y ou’ve probably heard about the New York Times reporter who was creeped out by his conversation with Microsoft’s new chatbot.  The reporter kept pressing questions to which there was no factual answer, and the chatbot eventually started returning responses that, if uttered by a person, would seem kind of ominous. That includes professing love for the guy and apparently trying to get him to leave his wife. It also expressed a vague yearning to do bad things. It’s alive! We knew this would happen! All those movies and books about sentient computers were right!  Or not. It’s also possible that Bing was simply mashing up all those movies and books about sentient computers. Chatbots are based on large language models that span the breadth of the internet. To paraphrase John Lennon, there’s nothing they can know that isn’t known. More accurately, there’s nothing they can write that hasn’t already been written. Because it’s the internet, that will include quit...

W e watched “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” last night, thus ending my 57-year streak of not watching it. When someone else grabs the remote, you sometimes end up viewing stuff you might not choose alone. Here’s the IMDb synopsis: “A bitter, aging couple, with the help of alcohol, use their young houseguests to fuel anguish and emotional pain towards each other over the course of a distressing night.” Sounds fun! But it turns out that watching people lacerate each other for most of the film’s 2:11 running time is not the laff riot you might expect. These people have some serious issues. As George keeps pouring the booze with much too free a hand, it soon emerges that the younger couple has some anguish of their own. So, not exactly “When Harry Met Sally.” Not exactly my cup of tea. But I have to admit it’s an impressive piece of work. I probably should have seen it before now. Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor are at the height of their powers here. I’m not super familiar with the ...

I n Barry Levinson's 1990 movie " Avalon ," there's a scene where the aging patriarch sits down in his easy chair in front of the TV.  The camera remains stationary, but there's a slow cross-fade, and at the end of it  we see that several years have passed. The old guy is still in the chair, still watching TV, but he has gotten much, much older.  His golden years have passed without notice into full decrepitude. It's a poignant moment, but also kind of scary.  Over the last year of Covid isolation, I've felt something like that.  Each day is much like another, lived by rote and routine and the occasional Zoom call. Each day I think we're keeping things together pretty well, but at the end of each day I reflect that I'm in the same place I started -- both literally and figuratively. My TV is mostly the computer; my easy chair is this same Herman Miller Aeron I splurged on 17 years ago. Since August I've been flying around in the virtual world of...

F ilm noir of the week is “ Sudden Fear ,” starring Joan Crawford and Jack Palance. You weren’t aware of Film Noir of the Week? Yeah, that’s something I just came up with. I fully expect to forget about it over the next few days. Anyway, “Sudden Fear” is a perfectly respectable noir, made in 1951 just before all the conventions of the genre solidified into cliches. It’s shot in black and white, in a blissfully traffic-free San Francisco, with possibly the most evil-looking leading man in history. Mr. Nice Guy Jack Palance’s sharklike features and jet-black widow’s peak are a delight to behold, but they also work against the script in an unlikely way: No one could ever believe this guy would have anything but the worst of motives. Especially when he smiles. And yet Joan Crawford’s character — a wealthy, glamorous (of course) playwright — falls in love with him, marries him, and immediately decides to revise her will to leave him everything. You know, in the unlikely event of her death. ...

S ometimes as a kid I’d pick a word at random and just repeat it over and over. I found it interesting how quickly the word would lose its meaning and become just this odd sound issuing from my mouth. (Yeah, I had kind of a relaxed schedule as a kid.) I thought of this after Variety recently noted the new record for film use of the word “fuck”: Martin Scorcese’s The Wolf of Wall Street uses it — drumroll — 506 times! That’s a fuckload of fucking f-words! If you’ll pardon my fucking French. The only words used more often were “the” and the pronoun “I.” If you’d asked me earlier, I would have guessed the record-holder to be Goodfellas (300 times) or The Big Lebowski (292 times.) Hard to imagine a time when one use of the word “damn” created such a stir in Gone With the Wind. We’ve come a long way. I completely understand why Mom, whom I’ve heard swear exactly twice in six decades, doesn’t go to the movies anymore. I also understand why Scorcese keeps upping the f-word ante. I’m quite su...

Leader of the pack I 've been reading Stephen King’s latest novel, Doctor Sleep . It’s about what happens when the paranormal kid in The Shining grows up and discovers that all the supernatural horror of his childhood didn’t burn up with the creepy Overlook Hotel. It’s still out there, in a somewhat different guise, old wine in new bottles. The new bottles in this case are a group of outwardly middle-aged RV owners who pilot their land yachts aimlessly back and forth across America, backing up traffic wherever they go and pissing off considerate drivers like me. But these folks are not tourists. They call themselves the True Knot. They’re kind of like vampires, but they don’t feed on blood. What they really need is “steam,” their euphemism for the paranormal energy produced in certain rare individuals. They’re more or less mortal — they eat and sleep and have sex — but they can live hundreds of years as long as they keep a supply of steam on hand. That involves scouring the country...

T he other day we were talking about which movie to see next, and Tess mentioned Silver Linings Playbook. “But then,” she said, “I know how you hate romantic comedies.” That’s unfair. I don’t hate romantic comedies at all. I just hate almost any American romantic comedy made, say, in the past 10 or 15 years. You know the kind I mean: Two attractive quirky people meet-cute and then go through a bunch of crazy misunderstandings before realizing they are right for each other after all. They are usually helped to this epiphany by the grossness of their zany friends, who, in the absence of decent writing, tend to exercise bodily functions at hilariously inappropriate times. Yeah, I hate those. I’m sure Silver Linings Playbook is nothing like that, and I do intend to see it as soon as I can. But the exchange got me thinking about other romantic comedies I liked. One title came right to mind: Groundhog Day. Talk about great timing. Groundhog Day the movie turns 20 this year, and Groundhog D...