Accent on Youth - Mad Comedy Scientists Create Romance With No Heart

David Hyde Pierce [revisits his award winning role as Niles Crane? - not entirely fair] milks every laugh from some witty dialog in the otherwise unremarkable Accent on Youth, a Manhattan Theater Club production now in previews. Steven Gaye (Pierce) is a playwright with a long string of successful Broadway comedies under his belt. After rounding age 51 ( or 53 or maybe it's 54) he writes a tragedy dealing with themes of December-May romance. Attempting to cast a leading lady, Gaye meets with a much younger old flame (Rosie Benton). Sparks fly. Gaye is prepared to chuck it all and flee to Finland with his renewed love when his (much younger, naturally) assistant Linda Brown (Mary Catherine Garrison) surprisingly declares her adoration. Gaye is smitten yet again, with inspiration. Suddenly, it's forget Finland. With a new first act inspired by Brown's revelation, the play succeeds. The former assistant captures the female lead in Gaye's new play and his life. Dickie Reynolds (David Furr) a handsome, inarticulate man's man, looms in the background as the male lead in that new play. Comedy ensues.

With sometimes inspired dialog and a few characters successfully walking the edge of farce, there are laughs present here. Pierce captures them with help from Rosie Benton and Charles Kimbrough (Jim Dial from Murphy Brown) as his valet. The predictable plot, thin characters, uninspired performances from Garrison and Furr and a somewhat one dimensional performance from Pierce himself don't generate much empathy, nor much joy when all is resolved. The result is a comedy that gets laughs, but doesn't explore any new ground and doesn't produce much of that Broadway non-black comedy staple, the emotional uplift.

Pirate Problem Solved

Fuji Watch - Day 12 - Fuji is sentenced to 25 years for human rights abuses (these abuses included 25 killings by government controlled death squads). He was already serving a six year term for ordering an illegal search of the home of Montesinos, his intelligence chief and henchman. One likely result, 31 years is enough so that Fuji will never stand trial for turning Peru into a near kleptocracy (or at the very least, standing by and cheering for his bagman Montesinos) in the 1990s. Many who aided and abetted this broad conspiracy, including members of the elite who are still serving at high level jobs in government and the private sector, are breathing a sigh of relief.

Phil Spector - Now convicted of murder. Will he go over the Wall (of sound) or just scare the guards to death?

Pirates - Really? Pirates who capture ships, not just guys in costume who tell a lot of ARRRRRRRRRR jokes? Yes, Pirates. Pirates who kill people, not just a team that hasn't won anything since Barry Bonds left? Yes, Pirates. Pirates who take hostages and vow revenge, not just kids, and movie critics, who revel in illegal downloads? Yes, Pirates. What do we do, it's not like Somalia is going to stop them? It's all taken care of. What? The pirates have decided they would rather surrender to the French than run into any more Navy Seals.

Why Treeless Montain is different from One Tree Hill, coming to terms with the Neo-neo Realists and the Holden Caulfield School of Cinema.

OK, the title alone is too long to tweet, but hang in there. If you read this post you will be able to comment on A.O. Scott's recent NY Times piece Neo-neo Realism and the subsequent exchange between Richard Brody of The New Yorker and Scott. You will not necessarily be able to comment intelligently (since you will know only what I tell you), but when the subject comes up (and it will) you shall name relevant names to the wonderment of those around you who had you pegged as an unemployed beer taster on a busman's holiday.

Why should you come to As Good As News for a neo-neo realism primer? Because we'll cover it all in the form of FAQs. Take that Times and New Yorker.

FAQs sound too good to be true, does As Good As News actually know anything about neo-neo realism - most of your reviews seem to revolve around the question of whether Joe Sixpack will like a movie or not? Fear not. Through an unlikely chain of events, yours truly saw Treeless Mountain tonight, attended a Harvard Film Archive presentation of Goodbye Solo featuring a post screening discussion with director Ramin Bahrani on Saturday and watched The Little Fugitive on Wednesday. All three films play a role in the neo-neo realist debate, as do Wendy and Lucy, reviewed here, and Man Push Cart and Frozen River, viewed fairly recently thanks to the wonder of Netflix and my ever vigilant spouse. True, As Good As News takes Transformers (a dreadful movie with Megan Fox) over Truffaut, thinks Rossellini is a guy who married Ingrid Bergman and is not intimately familiar with the works of legendary Iranian indie filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami (does Iran even have studios). Unlike the rest of the Harvard archive audience, As Good As News has not taken the Boston University course on Japanese director Yasujiro Ozu (confused here, but only momentarily, with ouzo). BUT, with a writing class at the New School and a session at the Manhattan Comedy School under my belt (not to mention three dusty diplomas in the attic) I have the credentials to prove I can bs when necessary, so I can and will provide enough information to help you out in that potentially embarrassing bar room discussion.

I'll bite, what's neo-neo realism? That question may be the core of the Scott-Brody debate and it's too complex for comprehensive coverage here (1). One thing Ramin Bahrani said on Friday (he said it more eloquently, this is not a quote) goes to the heart of the question. His goal is to avoid any artifice in story or production that would be noticeable to the viewer. The movie might be set in an unusual corner of the world, but within the context of that setting everything should occur just as it would in real life. No plot twists. No against the odds happy endings. No special effects. No "acting". The writer, director, even the cast in a way, must be an invisible hand, guiding the story while rigorously avoiding anything that feels phony. The neo-neo movies that Scott and Brody have put into focus are blue collar (or underclass), character driven indies, but is there any theoretical reason why a neo- neo could not be a carefully crafted studio pic set on the polo fields of Saratoga Springs - rarefied, but real nonetheless? Maybe, there are no rules on defining neo-neo realism, but there is a tendency to include an element of social realism, limiting the field to the everyday lives of the proletariat.

Nothing phony - OK, now we get that Holden Caulfield reference in the title, but is MTV Road Rules neo-neo reality TV? A million monkeys banging on a million keyboards might produce...so MTV might..NO, NO, NO. Neo-neo realism is a narrative form. Character development and story exist under very complete, careful control (2). In fact, the directors tend to extreme control. Many use non-professional actors, keep the scripts (which are detailed) in high security lock-up, feed the actors their lines just before a take and then shoot take after take- until the actor is just too worn down to attempt anything phony.

So the neo-neo directors are in complete control of every detail in something that's supposed to be "natural", isn't that phony? Every storyteller has a point of view. Even Holden Caulfield was deciding subjectively who was phony and who wasn't, all the while establishing his own personae (and we won't even mention Salinger and the whole anti-Hollywood thing, it just gets too complicated). The point of neo-neo realism is not to achieve some abstract nirvana of anti-phoniness, the point is to never, ever seem phony to the viewer.

Nothing that SEEMS phony, got it. But are you telling me Michelle Williams didn't even get to see a script for Wendy and Lucey? No. Don't know for sure, but As Good As News is betting she read a script before she agreed to do the picture. Her performance was a bright spot in a dismal swamp. Similarly, Ramin Bahrani used professional actors (Red West and Souleymane Sy Savane) for the first time as the leads in Goodbye Solo. They got scripts and the results were two very strong performances. The whole avoiding "acting" by using amateurs and keeping the script secret schtick (3)may be more budget side effect than control issue. Let's see what happens when more of the neo-neo directors can afford to hire expert, established experienced (4) actors who expect to be partners in a creative process.

Why neo-neo, isn't it all just realism? Not clear. Brody points to The Little Fugitive (American indie pioneers Morris Engel, Ruth Orkin and Ray Ashley take the first chest mounted cam to Coney Island in 1953 and phoniness is scarce indeed) and asks the same question. Must we divide Less Than Zero, Last Exit to Brooklyn and Red Badge of Courage into neo-neo, neo and realism? If we accept a new label, do we risk limiting the artists working in that genre? Maybe no one will ever shoot that great, and totally realistic, movie about the polo set in Saratoga Springs because neo-neo realism will turn into a blue collar ghetto once the concrete sets around the definition. This is a point Brody makes in a more negative way, but let's view it as a plus. The best efforts of the neo-neos link to older traditions and show a curiosity about the unexplored corners of society, why wall off a new genre. If one accepts the "nothing that seems phony" definition , then a neo-neo picture can still have a big (but very carefully considered) budget, it can use stars, maybe even some (very carefully considered) special effects. So neo-neo is OK by As Good As News, provided it's not a blue collar ghetto (and we mean that in every sense, bigger budget pictures, middle and upper class subjects- all OK if treated properly). As a genre, neo-neo need not be about separation, but about restoration of the no phonies allowed ethic that can be applied with any budget to any subject if the artists are sufficiently dedicated and skilled.

Should I tell my new friends in the bar that I like neo-neo realism? It's your call. The neo-neos are choosing to abjure much of what most movie goers enjoy - the plot twist, the car chase, the leading lady more glamorous than real life, the sudden explosion of stars as the ship goes into hyper drive, the dialog that's just too funny to be true, etc. The neo-neos can and do make great movies that appeal to a fairly wide audience, but including the "phony" greatly expands the movie maker's canvas, the scope of stories and experiences the movie can bring to the audience. Audiences are willing to suspend disbelief and accept the phony, up to a point. The location of that point varies with the quality of the characters, the story and the production. Making the audience accept, even love, the "phony" has long been part of the job for most movie-makers. Making the phony "true", that is consistent with the characters and story the movie has created and thus believable to the audience, is an art too. So, do you want your movies to make you believe the phony or just give that phony up for a permanent Lent? Most will miss their phony, but in that bar room discussion, the neo-neos will be the hot team for the next few months.

Enough already, which movies should I see? Hard core Joe Sixpack should pretty much forget every movie mentioned in this post except Frozen River. Mellisa Leo deserved that Oscar, not just for Frozen River but for putting up with being cut out of the movie, but not the credits, in The Cake Eaters. If you are still reading this post, you are not hard core Joe Sixpack. Try two entries from Ramin Bahrani - Man Push Cart (a character study which has some extra impact in the post 9/11 era), then Goodbye Solo (a Winston-Salem cabbie butts into the life of a gruff passenger on a mission). Bahrani jumps into his stories, builds real characters without visible artifice and controls his narrative sufficiently to add suspense. Still interested? Follow Mr. Brody back to the origins. Revisit New York with Engel and Orkin in The Little Fugitive and (and/or Weddings and Babies, Lovers and Lollipops) while the NYC of Man Push Cart is fresh in your mind. If you are still with the program, try Treeless Mountain - a slow-paced, mostly melancholy story with very real and somewhat likeable main characters (two young Korean girls), a discernible storyline and an ending that will not require you to consider suicide. Under no circumstances should you see Wendy & Lucy. It is a darling of the festival circuit. Michelle Williams does deserve all the praise she has received, but the plot is like watching a turd in a toilet bowl after it has begun circling. If you are hungry for more neo-neo, then try something As Good As News has not seen (yes, you can use the links and actually see what Scott and Brody have to say) or see one of two outliers reviewed here - Canvas or The Black Balloon, both are very realistic stories of families dealing with medical problems. Both are only borderline neo-neo candidates because they show a little bit of artifice in establishing the ability of the family to cope with reality. However, the bright side is a realistic bright side and it's not stretching too far to consider these films, particularly Canvas, for membership in the neo-neo club.

(1)(2)(3)(4) - footnotes? you must be crazy, those numbers were just a feeble effort to get Spiro T. Agnew alliteration credit.

Sleep Dealer - It's Not About Black Market Halcion

Sleep Dealer is a story of connection and disconnection set in a future so near it's already the land of the possible. Memo (Luis Fernando Pena) is a bored young man living on a milpa (everyone but me apparently already knew this is a farm where corn and beans grow symbiotically in the same field) in very rural Santa Ana, Oaxaca, Mexico. The town is arid, its river dammed into a reservoir guarded by an electronic perimeter, its water sold locally only by the liter for an exorbitant price. Memo's father dreams of the river's return. Memo dreams of getting away.

Memo hacks into the universe just to hear something that's not Santa Ana, but intercepts the signal from the reservoir security system, igniting disaster for his family. A drone military aircraft, piloted from San Diego by Rudy (Jacob Vargas), a new recruit on his first mission, terminates an aqua terrorist attack on the reservoir with extreme prejudice. The terrorist is cleverly disguised as a thirsty native trespasser and the incident is broadcast on live network TV. The next day Rudy, operating via nodal connections that link his neural system to the drone's controls via the Internet, goes after the site of that signal interception. Memo is visiting relatives, but his father is home.

Memo needs work to support what's left of his family. He takes the bus to Tijuana, meeting Luz (Leonor Varela), an attractive writer with connecting nodes like the drone pilot. The Mexico-US border is closed - with a forbidding wall that extends across the beach and out into the ocean - but Tijuana looks the same. Would be crossers don't need to jump the fence, just enlist a coyotek to implant nodes, show up at the cyberfactory and plug into a net that allows them to labor by operating robotic tools anywhere in the world. Memo gets off to a rocky start. At Luz's suggestion, he prowls the town square for black market nodes, but he's left stunned and broke by a mugger posing as a coyotek.

Luz nodally uploads the memory of her meeting with Memo onto Trulife, a universal blog that seems to accept direct sensory input from its posters, while imperiously prompting them to try again when they dissemble. Luz's other memories aren't selling lately, so when the post on Memo gets a hit and a request for more, she's happy to oblige. She finds Memo in town, hooks him up, literally, with nodes and a job and stays in touch, gathering marketable memories. Memo grows on Luz, while the mysterious subscriber always wants more. The ending may be predictable, but As Good As News will not spoil it here.

Sleep Dealer is worth seeing, at home or in the theater. Do not go with false expectations. It was shot in Mexico, in Spanish on a low budget. You will be seeing subtitles, not billion dollar special effects. Despite the budget, Sleep Dealer is very successful at creating a completely believable futuristic aura, in part because Director Alex Rivera, Producer Anthony Bregman and Associate Producer Mark Russell get tremendous bang for their buck, in part because the sci-fi relies on very credible, incremental extensions of the present. A first world country uses it's drone air force to protect a private water reservoir across the border. The ability to focus the drone attack on a small target is technologically spellbinding, but target selection seems to fall in the unsupervised purview of private industry. The war on aqua terror is mass public entertainment, while the Internet has grown adept at capturing and micro-marketing inner moments (note to twitter - its the marketing that's micro - not the posts). The net and robotics have combined to create an outsourcing model that transcends geographic borders, making physical barriers at those borders all the more possible. If this all sounds like a Law and Order episode, ripped from the headlines, give Mr. Rivera extra credit, he wrote the story in 2001.

There's not much room for character development. Memo, and particularly Luz get beyond simple stereotypes, Rudy not so much. Futuristic setting aside, the plot is simple and serviceable, but sometimes awkwardly paced. These problems, especially the fact that Rudy is critical to the story's resolution but never fully developed, make for a few slow moments and an ending that's not totally satisfactory, but see Sleep Dealer anyway. The story and the characters are good enough, the setting will give you much to think about.

SNL Finally Goes Too Far

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-Yes it was just a Saturday Night Live sketch on the government nationalizing the entire economy and making some tough calls, but even in comedy universe, there is no possible way that the Giants and Cowboys stay in business while the Steelers get thumbs down from Obama. Mass boycott announcements to follow. Girly named Lorne Michaels will now feel the wrath of Steeler nation, starting with a friendly visit from Jack Lambert guesting next week in a skit on Terry Tate, Office Linebacker.

The real crime was the next item in the catalog of who survives - the stroke magazine category. To really make this work SNL should have had Playboy, Penthouse and Hustler all survive (which would have made stroke magazines the only category with no casualty), noting that Hustler was borderline but had saved itself just in time with an extraordinary Miss April from Arkansas then thanked Bill Clinton for his extensive assistance in the stroke magazine selection process.

Jerry's CineKids in Shall We Kiss

As Shall We Kiss opens, Couple A meets classic. Beautiful A-1 asks for directions to a cab stand. Handsome A-2 gives her a lift and almost cadges a goodbye/thank you/it won't mean anything but what might happen kiss. Instead A-1 begins a tale about the danger of a single kiss. The video jumps into A-1's story of Couple B - B-1, a beautiful lab scientist, and her platonic friend and long-time confidant, the handsome, but slightly geeky, math teacher B-2.

[Spoiler Alert - As Good As News is about to reveal much of the plot of this movie and its only funny line. Do not hesitate to read on, As Good As News is also about to recommend that you do not see Shall We Kiss. As Good As News will, however, continue to protect the identity of the cast.]

B-2 is suffering a mysterious malaise brought on by terminal horniness. He suggests, at tortured length, that he can think of only one cure, "but it's unthinkable, but it's..............." His pal B-1 invariably responds, "You can tell me, really, what is it..........................." This extended discussion produces the only discernible humor in a film billed as a comedy, B-2's surprising and well timed revelation that he has already tried a visit to a prostitute in his search for a cure.

The cure B-2 wants is a kiss from B-1. This leads, shockingly, to immediate sexual infatuation, made irresistible by the efforts of B-1 and B-2 to resist. Did we mention that B-1 is married? The tortured attempt at comedic dialog turns into a tortured attempt at comedic mutual seduction. B-1 and B-2 will try intercourse, just to establish the lack of attraction. Guess how that turns out. Finally, they must deal with the problem of B-1's husband. Their concern for his feelings leads to delay and an intricate plan, but the plotting makes the once likably romantic B-1 and B-2 seem sneaky and cowardly, while the delay exacerbates an already serious pacing problem.

A-1 finishes her story, alone in her hotel room with the hopeful, but not pushy, A-2. Both are committed to other partners (we take mercy on the reader by omitting A-2's story about couple C) and conflicted about how to end their night. As Good As News will not spoil this ending (since it is not completely predictable), but you may find yourself singing a few bars from the Casablanca theme.

The cast is engaging, for a while. The story is interesting, for a while. When he's not trying to be funny, the screenwriter/director (and co-star in the role of B-2) does a great job of omitting scenes that aren't needed to move the story forward. Sadly, predictability kills this video's pacing and comic potential, predictability aided and abetted by the impact of cultural differences and subtitles. They can translate the French dialog into English subtitles, but they can't make me like Jerry Lewis.

Woody Allen v. Jerry Lewis - Post-script - to those puzzled by the many comparisons elsewhere of Shall We Kiss to the comedy of Woody Allen; to those concerned that they might miss something memorable; Be not troubled. Yes, both feature a writer/director/star. Yes, this video, like Woody's comedies, spends much time talking about sex, with very little actual sex and much frustration. Woody's talk about sex is filled with witty dialog, most memorably, the one-line skewer of Woody's own potency, magnetism, etc. The theater erupts periodically with laughter. There are no lines in Shall We Kiss that cause the audience to laugh out loud. You will hear only the Silence of The Yawns.

Yes, this video, like Woody's comedies, blends farce with sophistication. Woody's farce is zany, unpredictable, coming out of left field, sometimes coming out of the visiting teams locker room. Think "Suck out the poison". Shall We Kiss surprises only in B-2's visit to the prostitute (a math tutor who requires her customers to shower before sex and prohibits kissing). Most of the farce in Shall We Kiss hammers away on a single note - we will try not to want sex while we have sex thus making us want sex more. The execution does not involve yelling, cowering or mewling, but the repetitious enlargement on the single theme owes far more to Jerry Lewis, another writer/director and star (sometimes starring in multiple roles), than Woody Allen, and the average ugly American audience (moi included) will spend little time laughing and much time shaking heads at the exit door while grumbling "That was very French."

TV All Day

Those who enjoy the Alexander McCall Smith books will enjoy the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency on HBO. Things are not exactly as I pictured them, but the show is true to the warm, wise and gently humorous spirit of the novels.

Tiger Woods is back, with his first win since June. Seems like a mighty long time. Maybe this will get the economy on track. Any chance that Tiger's domination of a game that emphasizes strategy and self-control was a factor in paving the way for Obama's election?

OK, I admit it. I watched TV all day. All my basketball teams lost. This post is humorless and I'm not going to edit it.