On DVD Now: Bernie

At Netflix

I usually avoid Jack Black movies. I don’t think he’s as bad as it gets in Hollywood, I just don’t think I’m in his demographic. Had I seen this movie at a Blockbuster or Red Box myself, I would probably would have skipped right past it.

Fortunately though, Angel and Adam saw it and rented it. I was in a ‘meh, whatever’ mood so I decided to approach it with an open, and by that I mean completely empty, mind. I had wine in my glass and a dog in my lap and could pretty much take anything put in front of me.

I’d never heard of the movie and what little Adam and Angel told me about it beforehand didn’t seem familiar or very interesting.

“It’s got Jack Black.” They told me.

“Oh.”

“And Matthew McConaughey.”

“I assume he’ll be taking his shirt off then.” I said, assured that I’d found the reason that Angel rented it.

“And Shirley MacLaine.”

“Now you’re just trying to piss me off.”

“Seriously.”

“Seriously.”

So it started. Jack Black in the title role as Bernie Tiede. Then the ‘Based on a True Story’ screen comes up. I doubted it. Jack hardly plays real people, just larger than life, annoying caricatures of ignorant jerks.

He’s in his car, singing. “Love Lifted Me” An updated, upbeat version of the familiar, tired old hymn. And Jack is actually singing it. “The man has decent pipes!” I whispered to my dog, Pip. She was paying the song some attention as well, not something she does often.

Bernie is a mortician, rather as the character corrects, an assistant funeral director. The early scenes show him as genteel, chubby(puffy in fact), moustached and a little light in the loafers (not judging, just describing). He’s giving a guest lecture on the cosmetic care of the deceased, details, trimming the nails “to match the person” and “Tilt the head just slightly to the right as if to acknowledge the viewers.”

Then the documentary style of the movie kicks in.

The story takes place in Carthage, a small city in eastern Texas, a former natural gas boom town. Throughout the movie we are treated to candid and colorful commentary from Carthage ‘residents’, waxing in past tense about Bernie and all the good things he had done for people and the town.

These characters were marvelous. They seemed genuine. That comforting sweet-tea Texas drawl, the aww-shucks, unflappable attitude. Each told of how nice and friendly Bernie had been.

I wondered where they got these people, they seemed too real to be studio-hired actors. None of them were Hollywood attractive or even remotely like what you’d normally think of as a supporting cast. It was if they’d actually mined the town for real people.

At one funeral Bernie struggles to comfort a wealthy widow. She, according to the townspeople, was not well liked and in fact was considered downright mean, even by her own adult children who no longer communicated with her. Bernie accepts the challenge and starts visiting her home, every day, with gifts of flowers, chocolates, etc. until she finally invites him in.

For the next several months the two start traveling together to exotic locations. MacLaine, as the sour old widow does an outstanding job of being completely unlikable.

Eventually Bernie wins her trust completely and she actually redrafts her will, removing all her children and naming Bernie as the sole beneficiary. She becomes more and more possessive and abusive in their relationship and Bernie soon realizes that she is indeed nothing more than a mean, evil woman.

Then he kills her, Hilarity ensues.
Well, not laugh-out-loud hilarity, but gut-jiggling chuckles anyhow. This is not a laugh-out-loud, over-the-top comedy that Black is famous for. This is a darkish story populated by regular-like people caught in a bizarre and surreal situation.

The townspeople’s reaction to the murder is such that the local prosecutor asks for a change in venue for Bernie’s trial because he doesn’t think he could possibly get a conviction in Carthage, even with Bernie’s confession. This is the opposite reason for which venue changes are usually requested.

This isn’t actually giving the whole movie away. This movie is not a teaser or a surpriser, the story is about the whole story, a character/situation study. One that is in fact, based on real people and events. Were you to Google ‘Bernie Tiede’ you’d find  the whole thing, the real life Bernie, currently serving  a life sentence.

Black’s portrayal of Bernie is fair and respectful. He restrains himself and actually becomes likable and somewhat sympathetic. McConaughey plays the prosecutor, almost a stereotype, but oddly believable and to his credit, he never does take his shirt off.

The movie is fun, light and dark at the same time. It is engaging in a simple, yet rich, ‘Ripley’s Believe it or Not’ way. You wonder just how much is real story and how much is embellishment. The frequent interviews with the 'locals', who are used as much to narrate the story as the actors themselves, becomes, at some point, poignant. There will be a moment for you when you finally get what is actually going on.  

The brilliance and uniqueness of the film is the quiet, gestalt-like connection you will make when it finally all snaps together for you. This will not happen in the same place at the same time for everyone. But I assure you it will happen. Even without that though, it is a nice, friendly, funny and completely enjoyable movie. Even without a dog in your lap.

On DVD Now: The Artist

The Artist

(2011)

Directed by    Michel Hazanavicius

Produced by   Thomas Langmann

Written by     Michel Hazanavicius

Starring        Jean Dujardin, Bérénice Bejo

Music by        Ludovic Bource

Cinematography Guillaume Schiffman

I’m not an automatic fan of Academy Award winners.  “The Kings Speech”, "Million Dollar Baby”, “A Beautiful Mind”, “Shakespeare In Love”, “Titanic”, “The English Patient” are among ‘Best Film’  winners that I, even to this day, have not worked up enough interest in to actually watch. That’s right, I haven’t seen ‘Titanic’. I don't need to since about 90% of it is shown, ad nauseum, in previews, post-views, TV shows about movies, etc. Enough so that just hearing a few notes of that brain-scraping Celine Dion song makes me want to punch someone. Crying out "I'm the king of the world!" leaning out on the prow-like structure of anything, has the same effect.

Another award-heavy movie, filmed in black and white, “Raging Bull” I actually went to see with some friends, but ended up walking out of it a third of the way in due to 'raging boredom'.

It takes more than Oscar-accolades and artsy, old-style cinematography to make me want to see a movie.

So I was a little worried about “The Artist”. It won more awards, foreign and domestic, than many of those I listed earlier. It’s not only in black and white, but it’s also ‘silent’.  Gimmicky? Maybe. Trying too hard to be artsy? I suspected as much.

Adam said he wanted to see it. This surprised me. Adam’s taste in movies is pretty much the same as the rest of the family. Explosions? Bonus. High quality CGI? Yeah, that’ll do nicely.

It was a sultry Friday evening and Adam volunteered to visit the local Red Box. Sure, why not.

Like I said, my hopes were not very high, but there was nothing else on after ‘Whale Wars’ (or as it’s also known as: “Whacky tree-huggers pretend to know how to crew a ship and conduct a non-violent war.”) So I settled in for a long, quiet evening.

What happened next was exceptional. We were all glued to the tube. For the next one hundred minutes the three of us barely spoke, except for the occasional oohs and ahhs.

The story is not complicated. A renowned silent film actor Valentin, finds his whole world crumbling away beneath him as the new medium of talkies takes hold. The studio flushes out the ‘old’ actors in favor of younger, flashier, more vocally talented folk. One of whom is ‘Peppy’ a rising starlet whose career Valentin had helped launch.

As the Job-like Valentin suffers layer after layer of loss, failure and increasing humiliation, Peppy, in the background, helps keep him afloat, never forgetting his contributions to her new-found fame.

The award-winning musical score is pretty much all you ever hear. Even the scenes depicting ‘talkies’ reading their lines into crude microphones are silent.

The actors, all of them, play their parts flawlessly, hyper-emoting to make up for the lack of actual dialog. The makeup is stark, as is the lighting. Shadows, reflections and high-contrast shots are the norm, fluid and flawless. Extreme closeups are pore-counting-ly brutal.

On the artsy side, metaphors and symbolism abound. Valentin, who refuses to accept the new technology is even scolded by his wife “Why won’t you just talk?” she silently and coldly cries. Of course we have to read that scold on a title card.

One of the scene-stealing heroes of the film is Valentin’s little Jack Russell Terrier, Jack, played by Uggie, often seen silently yapping away in alarm or hiding his face in shame.

The film also occasionally points inward on itself, sometimes mockingly, often with a wink of the eye, not taking itself too seriously. I found this element very appealing.

The winning element here is not the silence, the score, the top-notch acting, the careful camera work or the wonderful editing and framing, it’s the entire package altogether. Had any of these elements over-reached, or under-reached, the result would have suffered immeasurably. As Adam said on his Facebook wall:

‎"(5 stars) A brilliantly acted, directed, and scored film. As someone who has seen maybe one silent film, I wasn't affected by nostalgia goggles, and my eyes remained glued to the screen, awaiting the next masterful frame. Flawless may be underselling it; if you have so much as an inkling of interest in films, watch The Artist."

This time my beloved son and the the Academy got it completely right.

So go ahead, I insist, watch this movie!

Book Report: 'Death of a Red Heroine', et al

Death of a Red Heroine

When Red is Black

A Case of Two Cities

And others in the ‘Inspector Chen’ series, by Qiu Xiaolong

I don’t know how to pronounce it either, but that’s not important. I came across the author after hearing something on the local public radio station, or perhaps it was in the Post-Dispatch, I don’t recall exactly. What drew my attention is that he lives in St. Louis and has written a series of Shanghai-based detective novels. It sounded intriguing, certainly worth a try.

From his bio on Amazon.com:

“He originally visited the United States in 1988 to write a book about T. S. Eliot, but following the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 a newspaper reported on his previous fundraising efforts for Chinese students, and he was forced to remain in America to avoid persecution by the Communist Party of China.”

As for the 'Inspector Chen' series:

“All books feature Chief Inspector Chen Cao, a poetry-quoting cop with integrity.”

Poetry-quoting? Really?  Better yet, he most often quotes ancient Chinese poetry*.

From ‘Death of a Red Heroine’:

“He went to the balcony, but failed to catch a glimpse of her slender figure retreating into the night. He heard only a violin from an open window above the curve of the street. Two lines from Li Shangyin’s “Zither” came to his mind:

The zither, for no reason, has half its strings broken,
One string, one peg, evoking the memory of the youthful years.

A difficult Tang dynasty poet, Li Shangyin was especially known for this elusive couplet. Certainly it was not about the ancient musical instrument.”

The novels are liberally sprinkled with these somewhat confounding bits, it might seem distracting, but really, it’s not.

What it does, brilliantly, and beautifully, is help wedge your mind out of the typical western-based procedural crime novel formula.

But there are indeed crimes to solve. Murder.

The place is Shanghai, population around twenty three million. Yeah, twenty three million. Roughly ten thousand people per square mile.  That’s more people in one city than in the entire states of New York and New Jersey, combined.  Yet another thing to wrap your head around.

The timeframe starts in the 1990’s. This is important. Culturally, politically, economically, China, with Shanghai at the forefront, was in often-turbulent transition. Youth trying to be modern, older folks still stuck in a past under Mao, the oppressive Red Guard and the brutal cultural revolution. The all-powerful central party struggling to stay in total control, to remain relevant, yet at the same time trying to evolve. Old institutions, shadows of their former selves, clamor to hang on to a mythological, never-fully-realized ideal.
This era of turbulent transition has jaded many of the characters Chen comes across. Many are pensive, shy, reluctant to engage in conversation at all. I got the sense that the culture, for so long held accountable for every syllable, for every action, spoke only, when at all, in layered dialog. Rarely direct, nearly always suspicious of how their words would be received or possibly used against them.

The books also highlight the world’s largest analog social network, family and individual connections being the most powerful force in that society. Favors are meted out like currency, social niceties come at a price and have tangible value. Every hello and fare-thee-well is weighed and measured by the recipient. Even more powerful than the central party itself, it is here that Chen struggles the most, yet yields the highest return.

Chen walks the narrow lanes and visits the crammed, cramped housing to investigate the crime. You get a sense of the very, very rare and confined personal space afforded the common denizens of this city. Housing is assigned, when available, unless you have means other than your official stipend. Street level capitalism is spewing out between the trembling, tight-wrapped knuckles of the old, faltering socialist system. Street venders sell anything they can get their hands on to supplement their sub-poverty income. Chen notes that his official, executive-level government income is less than that of a waiter at a private restaurant. He supplements his with English-Chinese translations of American novels and the occasional contract work for successful businessmen.

An even more tantalizing and fascinating trip into this foreign, alien culture is provided by Chen’s love of common, traditional foods. He spends a lot of time tasting and describing local, pedestrian meals from the streets to dingy one-table noodle shops, then occasionally to upscale, modern establishments. We dine on pork noodles, (best served early, before the noodles cook too long), green-onion cakes and thousand year-eggs.

All the while on this culturally unfamiliar journey, we are still trying to solve a crime. Few clues, no obvious motives or suspects. You will recognize the crime solving techniques as rather typical and familiar. Questioning witnesses, gathering and analyzing evidence, and a strong, intrusive and all-powerful political machine standing at every corner.

As a special treat in “A Case of Two Cities” Chen travels to the U.S., to St. Louis specifically, where a young translator in his group is inexplicably murdered. We get a glimpse of the city as viewed from the unique perspective of foreign academics.

The pacing in the books is not quite as high-speed and action driven as you will find in popular western fiction, but that’s quite okay. The cases themselves are not as twisty and complex either. The fun of the books is the journey to a far-distant, and thoroughly unfamiliar place, walking in the shoes of someone straddling both worlds. We learn as we go, and after a while it starts to become more familiar and comfortable. We become  aware that regardless of vast differences in politics and culture, at the street level, people are still people.

The writing style, though different, is splendid, engaging and compelling. We spend a lot of time in Chen’s head as he tries to balance the east with the west, the old with the new, the logical reasoning of a police detective combined with the mind and free spirit of a poet.

Patterson, Lehane, Connelly, Grisham, this is not. This is more like Stieg Laarsen’s works in that you get to peek into the world of a different culture, a different pace, a different palette of people, places and history.

As any of my writer’s club buddies can attest; a book riddled with poetry that I still enjoy? It must be really, really good.
I've read the three books listed above already. I plan to read the rest of the series as soon as I get them.  Highly recommended for a break from the same-old summer blockbusters.

 ___________________________

Tang Dynasty Poetry, a primer, written by a guy that doesn't like poetry, usually.
Having read  many lines, couplets, and had them somewhat explained over the course of the novels I've read so far, I was curious. So I looked it up.
The Tang Dynasty (618-907) was a period of relative peace, with a few short interruptions. This peace saw the rise of the arts in the great kingdom. During this period a structured form of poetry arose, rules were set in place to match the forms. Poets, even then apparently enjoy imposing strict, somewhat superfluous rules on themselves. The most prevalent forms of Tang poetry dictated the number of characters per line, and the number of lines per poem. For example:
錦瑟無端五十弦，一弦一柱思華年。
莊生曉夢迷蝴蝶，望帝春心托杜鵑。
滄海月明珠有淚，藍田日暖玉生煙。
此情可待成追憶，只是當時已惘然。

See how pretty that is? How great it would look artfully caligraph'ed on silk?  (as it often is)

This is typical of the seven-character form, in this case the formerly mentioned Tang poet, Li Shangyin. In fact this is his work about the zither, the couplet that appears in the quote from the book is the first line of this poem.
Translating into English is no small task. Of course the visual appeal breaks down immediately with our clunky alphabetic script rather than symbolic form of writing. And of course any rhyming, which was also common in Tang poetry, is lost as well.

So translations, and there are many, many attempts, are pretty tough, and obviously, you lose a little. So rather than 'translations' it is better said that these English versions are 'interpretations.'

But if you read enough of them, you start to get a feel that it's not just about the rhythm, the meter, or the rhyming. There's a beauty, a flow. The imagery is other-worldly, but there's an almost misty, surreal, dare I say Kafkaesque, quality to them.  I also felt that the poems were a little familiar, though I could not figure out why.

Until I Googled'd the poet's name and on the second or third page of results I found a link to this:

Little by little the night turns around.
Counting the leaves which tremble at dawn
Lotuses lean on each other in yearning
Under the eaves the swallow is resting

The thing was though, this was not written in China, nor even in the Tang dynasty. It was written by a living Brit by the name of Roger Waters, of the group 'Pink Floyd'.

Mr. Waters borrowed quite a bit from Tang poets. Consider the following line from a Li He work: "Witness the man who raved at the wall as he wrote his questions to Heaven" Which appears, pretty much intact, in Waters' lyrics for the song "Set the Controls": 

"Witness the man who raves at the wall
Making the shape of his questions to Heaven"

I've been a huge fan of Pink Floyd for many, many years. The lyrics often haunting, obscure, surreal, symbolic. I never fully understood them, but I liked them.

If all poets, ancient and contemporary wrote more like this I'd probably like poetry more than I do.

 ______________________

*** A preemptive apology: I do not pretend to be an expert of any level, on China, its culture or its geography, people or art. I certainly do not mean any offense. I became more and more fascinated with the culture as I read these books and began a little novice research, and wished to share my findings, thus far. That's all. 

On DVD Now: Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy

John le Carré can spin a whale of a cold war spy story. Take The Spy Who Came in from the Cold for example, it doesn’t get much better.

In his writing, le Carré fills the page with excellent prose, efficient, minimal dialog and he paints a dreary scene beautifully. He populates the story with a broad cast of characters, most of them minor, but none wasted.

I could go on cooing like this if I were reviewing his books, but sadly, I’m not.

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy was filmed in 2011, but set in the early seventies, around the time the book was written. You remember the seventies don’t you? The cold war, the global tensions, the secret battles fought between agents of the superpowers?

If you don’t, then this movie will have very little meaning to you.

FLR-9 Antenna array, Misawa AB Japan c. 1980

On the other hand, old farts like me will recall the era well. Some of us even served in one capacity or another as soldiers in the cold war. We were constantly briefed on the dangers and clever, devious shenanigans of Spy vs. Spy encounters. We were to report any strange contacts, especially with too-curious strangers with accents. My own role was never front line - James Bond stuff, just a technician in support of an electronic eavesdropping operation. Hardly clandestine, the site I was at was well established, and its mission was well known. The Godless commies knew we were listening, as we knew they were listening to us. That was part of the conundrum, the paradox, the duality of cold war Spy vs. Spy.

By the seventies the cold war was twenty years in, rules of engagement established, entire careers contained within that framework. That era was also economically stagnant and politically corrupt. In the U.S. as well as our western allied nations, unrest had surged, activists set fires, riot-geared police and national guard troops quashed large protest rallies with teargas and rubber (mostly) bullets. The innocent fifties and age of Camelot and Aquarius had subsided, the world simmered in a stew of paranoia, unease and restlessness. The once proud intelligence agencies were starting to unravel, interventions had loudly and publicly backfired, good intentions soured with age.

Thus is the backdrop for Tinker, Tailor. . .

MI6, the Circus, The U.K.’s once vaunted foreign espionage office is in the throes of a catastrophic and embarrassing international incident, heads rolled, loyalties vanished, leaving the politicos and department heads rushing toward the exits.

‘Control’ (John Hurt) Is canned, as is his much less gregarious ally, Smiley (Gary Oldman).

With the death of the old department head, Smiley is called back in from retirement to hunt down a mole, an unknown Soviet agent within the highest echelons of the Circus.

Hilarity does not ensue.

This is a serious, somber, dark and dreary tale of treachery, espionage and epidemic distrust. Nothing that is meant is said, and nothing that is said is without motive and double or triple entendre.

This is managed very well in le Carré’s books. Not so much in the film adaptation. As a book, outlined with the author’s rich writing, you ride along with the characters, get to know them as they creep in and out of dank shadows. In this film they walk on, deliver some lines, and make prolonged facial expressions, mostly in silence.

Gary Oldman does this to perfection. His character you get. You know there’s much more going on in his mind then most mere mortals merely watching the flick will ever comprehend. The other characters, scores of them, come and go. We’re supposed to be engaged, aiding in the hunt, figuring out who’s lying, who’s betraying whom.

I understand the period, the agencies, the tensions, of the era. I’ve read dozens of novels about the time and the global intrigue presented. I should be the target audience for this work.

Yet I drifted. Too many characters, too many sub-plots, too many complex relationships. I even mentioned to Angel that to keep up with the story that it might be wise to start taking notes. Everyone in the film had code names and human names and those were bandied about interchangeably. The dialog was mostly whispered, always guarded. By the second hour I’d started getting easily distracted by a couple of moths flitting around the lights. By the second half of the second hour, I’d gone to bed. On my way I mentioned to Angel the character I suspected was the mole, based not on the clues in the story line, that was deliberately written evasively. I made my pick based on the star-power among of the cast of suspects. You don’t blow big dollars on xxxxxxxxx just to have him end up as an also-ran. I was proven right.

The movie is slow, whispery, drab, and populated mostly by sleazy middle aged British men, fops. The kind of cold, calculating, understating, humorless men that most of us have virtually no interest in and cannot identify with, and are wholly unable to stir up any feelings for. Executive and bureaucratic spies ordering hits on and ratting out other spies is about as empathy-vacant as brutish thugs bumping off other brutish thugs, but without the gory, bloody footwork and fisticuffs.

I don’t walk out on very many movies, especially cold-war spy movies, but this acclaimed work failed from the beginning to get even a modest rise out of me. I didn’t care, couldn’t be bothered with the effort of sorting out the twisted storyline, and was bored by the multi-layered, deliberately deceptive, plodding pace.

Angel thought better of the film than I, she stuck with it to the end, and though she said she enjoyed it, there was reservation in her remarks. There was no high praise, only a lack of tangible dislike.

Once again, a movie that I wanted to like. The cast was first-rate, the cinematography captured the era splendidly, no expense was spared to make it look and feel like the time and place. But it simply lacked the symphonic pacing and intricacy required to maintain interest in an eventual crescendo. Like a Beethoven work without the brass, tympani and crashing cymbals, nothing but strings and woodwinds pointing and counterpointing for two hours before eventually just stopping.
Go ahead and watch it, but have a crossword puzzle on hand. 

On DVD Now: Hugo

http://www.amazon.com/Hugo-Three-disc-Combo-Blu-ray-Digital/dp/B006OAXL92

I wasn’t exactly dying to watch this movie. I’d heard about it, seen previews, yawned. The fact that it won lots of snooty awards didn’t help.

But Saturday night came around and I was tired and sore from contorting myself most of the day trying to replace an almost-fits bathroom faucet. I hate plumbing, the outgoing part much more so than the incoming part, but I don’t really care at all for either. It’s all about fiddly parts. If you don’t have the exact right one, you’re doomed to use hammers, slip-wrenches and pliers. Knuckles will get busted, you will get damp, and there’s never any telling what that disgusting, soggy glob that just fell out of the trap is.

So I was not really picky. I’d scanned through the DISH-On-Demand offerings and couldn’t find anything better. Angel and Adam had mentioned wanting to see Hugo, I was indifferent, they won.

It didn’t help that the rental screen indicated that the movie was two hours and six minutes long. That’s about twenty more minutes than any movie should be.

But I was tired and sore, and had a box of wine beside me to take off some of the edge.

The movie is about an orphan boy that lives behind the walls at a Paris train station, circa 1931. His drunken uncle worked there keeping the clocks running. Once taught all the steps, the boy took it upon himself to be there caretaker in the frequent and later permanent absence of his uncle.
It's a very Disney-esque story, an orphaned critter uses spunk and charisma to rise above diversity, with predictable villainy and  pratfalls to follow, and become a hero. As far as story goes, it's nothing unique or especially deep.

He has access through tunnels, catwalks and other openings to just about every nook and cranny in the station, enabling him to spy on the travelers and venders below, unseen. We are shown how he watches the pastry shop for opportunities to steal food. We are never shown how he bathes, if he does at all, but then again it is France. (In 1789 the French revolted, some say they are to this day, still revolting.)

Some of the characters barely rise to the level of easy, lazy stereotype. Even though it is France, no one actually seems to speak French. In fact a key character, the station inspector, wounded in WWI and played by that obnoxious Borat guy, speaks not only in a non-French accent, but inexplicably in a near-cockney British one.

After about forty five minutes watching the kid skulk around looking for mechanical parts for his broken automaton, left to him by his recently deceased father (museum fire), he runs into the cranky old proprietor of a toy shop, who goes by one name, but is in fact a formerly famous movie maker, one Georges Méliès.

Silent movie buffs and students of the arts will recognize that name. He made hundreds of silent movies, some of the earliest ever made. If you’ve ever seen clips showing the jerky and stained scene of a scientist firing a large bullet-shaped capsule to the moon, where it lodges into the eye of the man in the moon, that’s his work.

The movie accurately describes most of the real film-maker’s plight. The only thing not factual is the bit about the boy and his broken automaton.

Man reluctantly helps boy, boy helps man, boy has a crush on the man’s god-daughter, etc. Inevitable, heart-warming happy ending ensues.

In the meantime, the transparent comic relief, Sacha Baron Cohen, three-stooges his way through the movie along with the real scene-stealer, his patient and long suffering Doberman, Max.

    This may sound like I didn’t care much for the movie. This would be mostly incorrect. This Scorsese work is visually stunning. The giant gears, steam venting, slender utilitarian spiral staircases, the large but delicate clockworks indicative of the period and place filmed with a subtle sepia tone are brilliant and engrossing. Originally shot in 3-D, the film in a modern 3-D capable theater I imagine, would be even more so. I personally don’t care for movies in 3-D, they make my head hurt. I prefer my movies the same way I prefer most women, with very few dimensions and silent, whenever possible.

The acting of the lead cast is splendid, even the kids did a fine job. I was a bit perturbed by the background players, they seemed to be barely-believable stereotypical and overly-caricatured French fops as if yanked from a Pepe LePew cartoon.

The story, though based somewhat around a real time, place and person, is far more about the visual appeal than the actual story and it is very, very successful on that front.

It is long, plan on an intermission or two, especially if you have dogs or middle-aged men  that need to go out frequently. Though I can’t say I loved the movie, it was a fine escape and certainly not awful, the boxed wine sort of  helped.

If you have a good TV and Blu-Ray player, you’ll probably enjoy it much more than you would on smaller, lower resolution devices.
Give it a shot, let me know what you think!