For those of you interested in being Irishy without getting a green hangover for tomorrow, I might suggest a number of fine Irish films as a possible vector of appropriately Irish enjoyment.  For a long time my favorite was, corny as this may sound, Darby O’Gill and the Little People. Good luck tracking it down, though – I don’t think it’s even been made into a dvd.  For the more serious-minded, Michael Collins may be a good choice – it is a compelling look at some of the most pivotal events in Irish history – the ones that led to most of Ireland being its own country today.

Other than those, there are a slew of wonderful comedies set in Ireland that I can recommend – Waking Ned Devine being perhaps foremost, or maybe A Separate Piece.  Finally, any of the “Barrytown Trilogy”: The Commitments, The Snapper, or  The Van, would be a good decision.

Happy St. Patrick’s Day!

We were all wrong, as it turns out.  By backing off just a tiny bit from the more difficult aspects of the film, or glossing over/streamlining just a couple of the more unwieldy elements, the film preserved  as much of the original’s virtues as can be expected from any cross-media adaptation.  Like the Lord of the Rings movies before it, it took a beloved piece from a different medium and adapted it at a standard which met the high expectations of a die-hard fanbase.  If one is new to the whole Watchmen phenomenon, I would recommend reading the graphic novel first, because it is still better, but then, by all means, go see the movie.  It stands with Sin City as the shining example of how to adapt comics to the big screen.

It is no real secret to those who’ve known me for any length of time that an important influence in my childhood was Nickelodeon’s rerunning of various old television shows, particularly old episodes of Saturday Night Live (the “not ready for primetime” era).  I devoured all of these I could get, and they helped me develop an adult sensibility about comedy and a liberal worldview well-laced with irony.  Which may not have been good things to acquire when your age was still in single digits, incidentally.  If I had needed any help alienating myself from my peers, my trenchant observations about the Carter administration would certainly have finished things off.

Still, this would’ve just been an odd detail from my childhood had Comedy Central not syndicated the episodes from the show’s second golden age, the era of Hartman, Myers, Carvey, Farley, Sandler et al.  I was again immersed in the irreverent sketch comedy, and getting to watch several episodes a week allowed me to get it at a higher dosage than watching just the latest new episode each Saturday.

I have spent a lot of my life with SNL, and for better or worse I know that it has been an influence on my own thought, speech, and writing.

I spent some more time with SNL recently, this time in the form of a pair of dvds.  The first was The Best of Christopher Walken, who has hosted SNL on numerous occasions, and done some great work.  I must confess to being somewhat disappointed in this one, actually.  Sure, it has the legendary “cowbell” sketch, and one of my favorite recurring characters, “the Continental”, but that is really about it.  If you are a big fan of SNL’s brand of humor, and you haven’t seen these sketches, it is definitely worth a look, otherwise give it a pass.

The second was Saturday Night Live: The First Five Years.  This is a documentary about the shows origins and that amazing first cast of Akroyd, Belushi, Chase, Curtin, Morris, Newman, and Radner (and Murray starting with season two).  It provides some very cool insight into the show’s beginnings, but is still just a bare overview – I found myself willing/wanting to spend another couple hours on the subject when it was over.  In addition, there was very, very little actual sketch material on the disc, so potential viewers looking to catch their old favorites are out of luck (though I understand the first few seasons are available in their entirety in expensive box-set form).  Ultimately, it is for already devoted fans who are looking for a bit more info, not people looking to get a feel for what the show itself is about.

I recommend it.

The film is called Smoke Signals, and it does a very good job of selecting a single strand of narrative from the book’s tangled skein and running with it.  It lacks starpower (Tom Skerrit is in the film for 5 minutes, and you’ve never heard of anyone else in the movie), and the production values are minimal, but it is just about the most accessible independent film you’ll ever see, eschewing convoluted narrative structures, experimentation with cinematic techniques, or bizarre symbolism in favor of a well-told tale from a fresh perspective.

Well, it appears that I have staved off a total breakdown this week, but I have really spread myself thin.  I can tell because alot of the negativity which roils around inside me more-or-less all the time seeped out into the wider world this week.  Sorry to anyone whom I managed to hurt.  I’m trying to feel better, to be better.

Anyway, I’ve always loved this movie, because it is just so high-concept for a western, a genre which is often seen as a collection of simplistic tales promoting the cult of an outdated masculine ideal.  It is thematically dense, raising a number of provocative themes – age, the romantic myths which surround violence, revenge, etc.  – and it does all this from a stark, morally ambivalent perspective that has more to do with film noir than it does with Bonanza.  In addition, it benefits from so much acting horsepower – Clint Eastwood, Gene Hackman, Morgan Freeman, Richard Harris – that it feels like almost an embarrassment of riches.

I grew up watching Eastwood in innumerable westerns; it was some of the best quality-time my father and I spent together.  Now, later in my life, I choose this one again and again as the one to grow old with.

The biggest exception I have found in my career as a reader and moviegoer has been The Godfather.  This was a very good book, but it was a great movie, for two primary reasons that I can discern.  First, whereas the novel tends to sprawl a bit, spinning out a couple of secondary plotlines that frankly don’t add much to the book, the film is more tightly focused and compact, trimming away the extraneous bits and gaining power and momentum because of it.  Second, while Mario Puzo was an adept writer, and skilled at characterization, the film had the advantage of employing a handful of  the most brilliant actors in the profession to invest these same characters with a humanity and intensity Puzo did not achieve.

This stood as a lone example in my experience for many years, but recently it acquired a companion when I finished reading Robert Ludlum’s The Bourne Identity.  Now, the gap is much narrower in this case, and I admit that I wasn’t sure I liked the movie more until the very end of the book.  Which I suppose is a backhanded way of recommending the novel.  Ludlum, unlike Puzo, is not a terribly good writer.  The following passage from early in the novel is fairly typical: “the white sprays caught in the night sky cascaded downward over the deck under the force of the night wind.”  Why not throw “night” in there a couple more times, really drive the point home for the reader?  And how about stacking some more prepositions into this sentence?

“The white sprays caught in the night sky plummeted downward through the night toward the benighted ship below, cascading over the deck beside the cabin ahead of the stern under the force of the night wind, all beneath the concealing cloak of night?”

Anyway, Ludlum also has a mild case of Clancyitis, drawing characters that are occasionally unrealistic or corny.  On the other hand, he came up with a very good premise, and is clearly ferociously intelligent, twisting and turning a convoluted plot in ingenious ways and using cleverly constructed traps and dangerous situations to produce crackling action sequences.

Ultimately, the movie transcends the book because it, like The Godfather, trims away the extraneous (and in this case, that includes some of the thinner characterizations) to weave a tighter version of the story.  Also, director/producer Doug Liman and company are clearly more adept at the execution of their craft than Ludlum was at his – the film has a terrific economy and intelligence in its selection of shots, cuts, etc.

The Commitments is based on a novel by a superb Irish writer named Roddy Doyle, and is set in the poverty-stricken northside of Dublin, known as Barrytown.  Against this somewhat bleak working class backdrop, a group of young unemployed types form a soul band (The Commitments) with big dreams.  What follows is a charming tale with more funny moments than sad ones.  For people who think this sounds suspiciously “artistic”, I offer the additional enticement of a terrific soul soundtrack, complete with some dynamite performances by the band, which turns out to be quite good (and it is really the cast members performing).  If you’re one of those people who loves live music in small clubs you will recognize that the performance scenes do a terrific job of capturing that atmosphere.

As a final endorsement, I’ve discovered that this film, released in 1991, was voted “The Greatest Irish Film of All Time” in a 2005 survey sponsored by Jameson’s Irish Whiskey.  Just for fun, I thought I’d append the top ten finishers in the survey

1. The Commitments

2. My Left Foot

3. In the Name of the Father

4. The Quiet Man

5. The Snapper (sequel to The Commitments!)

6. Michael Collins (One of my personal favorites)

7. The Field

8. Intermission

9. Veronica Guerin

10. Inside I’m Dancing

I can personally vouch for both The Snapper and Michael Collins as being outstanding films, though the latter is pretty heavy fare, so be warned.

As some of you are likely aware, The Day the Earth Stood Still has been remade recently, and to be honest those previews looked kind of intriguing to me.  So, being in general a fan of old movies, I promptly netflixed the 1951 original, which I knew only by reputation.

While my particular neurosis for trying to fit things into a linear framework with a clear beginning and subsequent progression made watching the original film first nigh-mandatory for me, it is an idea which may have occurred to others of you as well.

Don’t bother.

Although I am generally able to adapt my expectations a bit when watching older films (ask ‘Bekah about the time we watched Arsenic and Old Lace, for example), I still can’t get to a place where this movie is a good watch for the contemporary viewer.  Even allowing for the dated acting styles and special effects whose chief value is now their quaintness, this movie was not that good.  Its chief claim to greatness has always been its criticism of the politics of fear which dominated Western society in the 1950′s (and, some would argue, today).  Unfortunately, the film’s criticism itself no longer stands up to a critical viewing.  Characters presented as moral authorities in the film now appear to be open to the charge of hypocrisy, etc.  Personally, I have seen the subject treated approximately as well in certain episodes of the cartoons I watched as a child.

Although it doubtless exercised a great deal of influence on subsequent films, its only interest now lies in that historical significance.  Unless you are a film student writing a paper, leave the original on the shelf.