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Friday, February 16, 2007
Save us from cultural comic-bookification, please…
There are people who are movie stars for no apparent or explainable reason, and Ben Affleck has always struck me as one of those. Why’s he so famous? Matt Damon did most of the heavy lifting on that writing Oscar they shared, I bet, and Affleck makes mostly crummy movies. There was the whole J-Lo thing, and good for him. But should you be able to build a career on that?
So my interest was piqued when I read the glowing reviews he got for “Hollywoodland,” a movie from earlier this year in which, sure enough, Affleck demonstrates quite clearly that I’d been a bit harsh. He can indeed fill a complicated role, and do so quite nicely.
He plays George Reeves, the grade-B actor who rocketed to fame playing Superman on TV in the 1950s. Reeves died of a gunshot wound to the head after several years on the tube, and Hollywoodland turns questions around his death — suicide? murder? — into intriguing melodrama with a brisk film-noir flair. It’s a good flick.
Reeves, we learn, never wanted to be Superman. He wanted to be a serious film actor in an era when TV was still in its toddlerhood and wasn’t considered important or even remotely artistic. He needed the job but hoped to get back into movies — and in fact landed a bit part in an important film in its day, 1953’s “From Here to Eternity.”
During the screening for “Eternity,” the audience breaks out in giggles when Reeves comes on. They think it’s funny to see Superman trying to act. He’s just a guy in tights, right? Who can take him seriously?
The camera dwells on Affleck’s face, his countenance falling as he keeps up a brave front. It’s heartbreaking and the beginning of the end for him. Affleck handles it brilliantly, and the scene was singled out in many of the reviews he got.
“Hollywoodland,” however, did only marginally well at the box office, and I wonder if the reason why might also be the moment in which Affleck shines so well. What I mean is this: For a contemporary audience to understand Reeves’ torment, we have to be able to understand why the audience laughed.
Today, heroes in tights are all the rage. The comic-bookification of popular culture has gotten to the bizarre point in which fine actors fight and claw to get prized roles in blockbusters fashioned after stories we enjoyed as adolescents.
Halle Berry wins an Oscar and then plays Catwoman. Oscar nominee Robert Downey Jr., a serious actor’s actor, graces the cover of Esquire this month talking about his next big role — as Iron Man.
Oscar winner Nicolas Cage is playing “Ghost Rider” — truly one of the most minor characters in Marvel’s vast stable, suggesting that our craving for comic-book movies has reached a point of insatiability where we’re filming fourth-rate characters most of us forgot existed, once we grew up and got this thing called a driver’s license.
Even weirder is to contrast DC’s superstars, Superman and Batman. Consider that two years ago Christian Bale took exactly the opposite route as Reeves. He realized that he was about to be stuck forever in overly serious, indie roles that paid little — and so he actively sought out the chance to play Batman.
I’m not the first to wonder how we got to this strange place, or to fret about where this all fits into the general infantilization of our society. But thinking back to “Hollywoodland,” I wonder whether those people in the darkened theater, cruel as they were to poor George Reeves, might not have been onto something that we could use a little of today.
Another American Idol CD…
Pop disc of the day:
Katharine McPhee’s debut disc, “KATHARINE McPHEE”
It may come as a shock to some of you to learn that there are still, even in these “American Idol”-drenched days, those of us who do not keep track of the show and its results. Even worse, we approach any music produced by those results with a certain mixture of disdain, dread and apprehension. Sorry, but it’s true.
But it’s also true that for every Clay there seems to be a Fantasia, or something like that, and so it would be unfair and untrue to argue that one should ignore Katharine McPhee’s self-titled debut album.
Turns out, in fact, that the woman who came in behind Taylor Hicks (who?) has put together a crisp and clever blend of pop and R&B that’s downright listenable and for the most part quite pleasant.
McPhee’s an appealing package, and has been wisely spiffed her image into something both sultry and girl-next-door, with the songs it takes to back it up. She sings a lot about heartbreak, as heartbreakingly good-looking singers all seem to do, but brings the right amount of sob to the tunes to suggest ambivalence; “Over It” works because you get the idea she protesteth too much. Smart girl.
She’s snappiest on the quick-paced numbers, such as the very spunky “Not Ur Girl” and “Open Toes,” a shout-out to the fact that a gal just can’t have too many cute shoes (while obliviously accepting the wildly mistaken premise that guys actually pay attention to what’s on a woman’s feet).
McPhee, as Idol watchers know, has a convincingly broad range, and she maneuvers the hills and curves quite skillfully. Her voice is better than most of the other pop-tart competitors out there, but also restrains herself from the sort of hammy, Whitneyesque hyper-singing that gave us the awfulness of American Idol in the first place.
See? I told you she was smart.
Grade: B
iPod picks: Not Ur Girl, Ove It Dangerous, Love Story
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