Winter's Bone

Seventeen-year-old Ree, forced to drop out of high school in order to take care of her mentally ill mother and her two younger siblings, is faced with an even more serious problem when her absentee, methamphetamine-cooking father uses the family's Missouri homestead to cover his bail bond. And, daddy's unlikely to show for trial, so the property is all but lost. In desperation, Ree begins to search for her father to try to make him show for his trial. In the process, she must rely on the network of her large, extended family living in the Ozark hill country, most of whose members are hostile to her desperate situation.

A mystery as stark and spare as the rocky Ozark oak forest in which it is set, Winter's Bone succeeds best as an amazing character study of Ree and her kin, isolated, suspicious, and stricken with poverty.

There's also an incredible sense of place here, too. Ree's despair over losing the homestead--in addition to the fact that she and her family will be homeless--is further exacerbated by her awareness that the 100-year-old oak forest that has sustained her family for generations will be cut down for timber.

Winter's Bone was awarded several prizes at the Sundance Film Festival, and for good reason.

Avatar: Seeing the Natural World Anew

The Hammerhead Titanothere from Avatar

During a coffee break at a meeting with my colleagues last week, the conversation turned to Avatar, arguably the greenest (or bluest?) mainstream film to date. One of my friends commented, "Great! Now we're not "green" enough! How are we going to capture the public's attention about the frightening loss of biodiversity unless we've got bioluminescence and floating jellyfish?"

Then, I read a slightly different take on the topic in an article by Carol K. Yoon in the New York Times ("Luminous 3-D Jungle Is a Biologist's Dream," 1/19/2010). Here's an excerpt:

Please excuse me if I seem a bit breathless, but the experience I had when I first saw the film shocked me. I felt as if someone had filmed my favorite dreams from those nights of sleep when I wander and play through a landscape of familiar yet strange creatures, taking a swim and noticing dinosaurs paddling by, going out for a walk and spying several entirely new species of penguins... Less than the details of the movie, it was, I realized, the same feeling of elation, of wonder at life.

Perhaps that kind of potent joy is now the only way to fire up a vision of order in life. Many of my fellow Gen-X biologists were inspired to careers in science by the now quaint Time-Life series of illustrated books on animals or by the television program Wild Kingdom. But maybe that isn't enough anymore.

Maybe it takes a dreamlike ecstacy to break through to a world so jaded, to reach people who have seen David Attenborough here, there, and everywhere... Maybe Avatar is what we need to bring our inner taxonomist back to life, to get us to really see.

And waking up and seeing is what Avatar is about...

Personally, I don't think either take on the topic is exactly right, but I'm leaning toward Ms. Yoon's sentiments.

Taking Woodstock

Taking Woodstock is a pleasant diversion but not one of Ang Lee's better films. There are two principal problems. First, the main character, Elliot Teichberg, is so bland that it's hard to develop much interest in him. Second, his mother is so patently unpleasant from beginning to end that you can't muster any sympathy for her plight. (Near the end of the film, Elliot asks his father why his father has stayed with his mother for 40 years. His father replies, "Because I love her." This woman is so unlovable that you don't buy it for a second.) Furthermore, any film in which the second-tier characters are the most interesting (e.g., Liev Shreiber as the transvestite ex-Marine Vilma and Eugene Levy as dairy farmer Max Yasgur) is in trouble from the get go.

The Proposal

We went to the movies to see The Proposal this weekend (along with lots of other folks, apparently--it was the top grossing film nationwide). A winner, for lots of reasons. First of all, I love good romantic comedies, and this one is well-written and well-directed. Sandra Bullock and Ryan Reynolds--in fact, all the cast members--are great; the leads give this formulaic script lots of sizzle and fizz. Betty White, an actress and comedian whose talents I have only lately come to appreciate, is superb--not too silly or over the top, but spot on.

And, of course, there's Ryan Reynolds (or did I say that already?). He is to die for. He's unbelievably appealing in his role, and he appears shirtless in one scene so that we can appreciate his perfectly hirsute chest and his abs (which, in the film, are not as defined as they are in the image above, but who's complaining?). In fact, we get a bare ass shot, too!

In addition, the film's a hoot--I laughed out loud more than at any film that I can remember in quite a while. So, while our local film reviewer only gave the film 3 out of 4 (probably because of its rather predictable trajectory), the reviewer enjoyed it immensely anyway, so go see for yourself.