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Laura Lin­ney is, accord­ing to many peo­ple who know more than I do, sup­pos­edly a good actress,¹ but it’s hard for me to see what all the fuss is about. When I see her I think she’s either just alright in a role or down­right wrong for the part. It’s prob­a­bly just me, but she seems to have this snooty arro­gance to her, like if you met her at a party in New York or L.A. and you didn’t know about some oppressed Iran­ian poet or an obscure the­atri­cal ref­er­ence she men­tions she might just stop talk­ing with you and turn away. Like I said, maybe it’s just me, but I just don’t get her.

In her favor, she’s been in some fine movies but that doesn’t mean that she’s been fine in them. Sev­eral cases in point I’ll go over here — Dave, The Tru­man Show and Breach. Let’s break ‘em down.

I loved and con­tinue to love Dave. Why wouldn’t I love it, given that it was the first “date” I went on with my wife in col­lege? In Dave, Kevin Kline is thrust into the role of Pres­i­dent of the United States when the man (the real Pres­i­dent) he was dou­bling for has a mas­sive stroke. Lin­ney plays the Oval Office sec­re­tary that the real Pres­i­dent was hav­ing an affair with when he had the stroke and her “fawn­ing” and “relief” when the “Pres­i­dent” returns to office ring hol­low. You can tell that Dave is a lit­tle freaked out by her reac­tion and with good rea­son — he has no idea who she is and she’s chomp­ing at the scenery. Not a good choice for a rather impor­tant plot point.

I also love The Tru­man Show and still think that Jim Car­rey has the mak­ings of an actual liv­ing breath­ing actor in him, if he can just get away from main­stream fare like Fun with Dick and Jane or Bruce Almighty. But in The Tru­man Show, Lin­ney once again rears her bad-actor head, this time in the role of Meryl, Carrey’s tele­vi­sion wife. She’s over-the-top skit­tish and not lik­able at all, and maybe that’s the point, but it doesn’t make her sym­pa­thetic in any way when she breaks down while Car­rey inter­ro­gates her in their kitchen about his sit­u­a­tion. The only good that could have come from that scene would have been if Car­rey had killed Meryl with that jar of Moco­coa she was holding.

And what can you say about her in Breach? It wasn’t a big money maker, but it wasn’t a bad movie at all, far from it. It was bet­ter than I thought it would be, but Lin­ney plays tough-as-nails FBI agent Kate Bur­roughs, and she wasn’t a very good choice for the part. Get some­one else, Holly Hunter, Jodie Fos­ter, just don’t pick Lin­ney to talk tough to Ryan Phillippe. It’s flat and silly and we know that she’s doing the one thing she doesn’t want you to know she’s doing : act­ing. She was just wrong for the part.

In her favor though she’s done some won­der­ful (or at least, good) films also where she too has been won­der­ful. You Can Count on Me, where she plays big brother to the way-cool Mark Ruf­falo, is excel­lent, and she is too. She’s also great in Love Actu­ally as the pathet­i­cally lonely Sarah who pines away for Rodrigo San­toro. She hits all the right notes as she tries to woo San­toro and take care of her men­tally imbal­anced brother. And while it wasn’t (any) good, The Life of David Gale fea­tured her as an anti-death penalty advo­cate and she was very good. It always seems that the parts she’s best in are where she’s a pathetic lit­tle crea­ture try­ing to get by in the world or fight for a higher cause. Unfor­tu­nately, you don’t get too far in Hol­ly­wood play­ing the same char­ac­ter over and over.²

When Linney’s good and cast in the right char­ac­ter she’s great, but when she seems com­pletely out of her league it’s embar­rass­ing to watch. I just don’t “get” Laura Lin­ney. I’m sure I’m not the only one.

1. She’s been nom­i­nated for two Acad­emy Awards for Best Actress and Best Sup­port­ing Actress as well as won many other act­ing awards. [↩]
2. Or maybe you can. Case in point — Robin Williams. [↩]

There is a film that pre­miered at Cannes this year called Short­bus. I don’t expect you to have heard about it or John Cameron Mitchell, the direc­tor of the film, but I read about this stuff, hence my knowl­edge of its exis­tence. The film is pretty much polit­i­cal porn, at least that’s what Mitchell says it is.

“It’s a lit­tle bit of a cri de coeur to us, a lit­tle bit of a call to arms” against the pre­vail­ing con­ser­vatism, he told a media con­fer­ence, adding that his coun­try was liv­ing in “the era of Bush, which is about clamp­ing down, being scared.” The 43-year-old, whose pre­vi­ous work was Hed­wig and the Angry Inch, about a trans­sex­ual rock singer, said the film was his own small act of defi­ance against Bush. “If you can’t do elec­tions you might as well do erec­tions,” he said.

More…

One scene likely to cre­ate con­tro­versy in the United States and some other coun­tries shows a gay three­some in which one par­tic­i­pant joy­fully bel­lows “The Star Span­gled Ban­ner.” The actor with the singing voice, PJ Deboy, said he did the scene to show that he was as Amer­i­can as any­one, despite resis­tance to gays in parts of the coun­try, includ­ing Washington.

“I thought to myself: “Can I do it…?’ And I decided I could, because it is a patri­otic act.… There’s noth­ing un-American about gay sex and there’s noth­ing unpa­tri­otic about it,” he said.

Tim Rob­bins, an actor I’ve liked for a long time, is cur­rently star­ring in a stage pro­duc­tion of George Orwell’s “1984?. His thoughts on the play -

“We have right now a media that is will­fully ignor­ing the high crimes and mis­de­meanors of the pres­i­dent of the United States…””(Bush) got us into (the Iraq) war based on lies that he knew were lies. … His war has recruited more al-Qaeda mem­bers than Osama bin Laden could ever have dreamed for … yet no one in the media is call­ing for impeach­ment,” he said.

“Unfor­tu­nately, the book and the play is more rel­e­vant now than it ever has been,” he said. “(It) talks about con­tin­u­ous war­fare as a means to con­trol the West­ern econ­omy, and as a way to con­trol rebel ele­ments within soci­ety through the use of fear, con­stant fear.”

“In my coun­try we seem to be sanc­tion­ing ren­di­tion­ing of inno­cent peo­ple with­out trial… put them in jail with­out telling any­one… and tor­ture them out of sus­pi­cion of what we think they might do,” Rob­bins said.

“This is exactly what Orwell was talk­ing about when he spoke of thought crimes,” he added.

You may not know this, but as soon as the 3 peo­ple above said what they said, they were whisked away to a secret CIA prison camp where they were tor­tured and humil­i­ated for say­ing and doing what they did.

Yeah, right.

Why do film mak­ers feel that they’re under con­stant per­se­cu­tion, when they live in the freest coun­try in the world? Many places, they wouldn’t be able to even make these films or say what they are say­ing. It’s just foolish.

Clerks II is com­ing out! Run for you lives!

For some of you, you’re won­der­ing what I’m talk­ing about. Like my par­ents. If you’re like me, you know that Clerks II is a sequel to Clerks, the 1994 film that cleaned up at Sun­dance and made a star of direc­tor Kevin Smith, who, upon find­ing out his film had been selected for Sun­dance, had to close up the con­ve­nience store he was work­ing at at the time. It was a great rags to riches story, very Capra-esque.

At the time I loved Clerks. At the time.

After repeated view­ings I think it grows less and less funny, but that first time that you see it it is hilar­i­ous, usu­ally. It’s very much a guy com­edy, though, I don’t know many girls that like Clerks.

And then he started mak­ing movies, none of which really did as well as Clerks. It’s like the story of a band’s 2nd album : the first album took 8 years to make, the 2nd, 3 months. And they’re never as good.

He made Mall­rats, Chas­ing Amy, Dogma and then Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back. After that came the worst of the worst, from what I hear, yes I haven’t seen it, Jer­sey Girl.

And now, with fail­ure star­ing him in the face, he comes full cir­cle with what made him pop­u­lar. A Clerks sequel.

Lame!

We’re get­ting a new James Bond film, with a brand freak­ing new guy play­ing James Bond, later this year. Yipee.

If you’re like me and kind of lost inter­est in what James Bond does along about when Tim­o­thy Dal­ton took over, you prob­a­bly won’t care about this new film either. But I like the old school James Bond films, they’re fun and have their silly kitsch fac­tor about them. And go ahead and make fun of me, but after Con­nery my favorite Bondie is George Lazenby. Yes, I like On Her Majesty’s Secret Ser­vice, ‘cause the movie rokkks, man. It’s got one of the bet­ter story lines and it’s the deep­est you ever get into Bond’s char­ac­ter, since he gets mar­ried and all. And then she dies, which is gold, man.

But I’ve got a the­ory about all this James Bond stuff.

It started out with the last Bond film, Die Another Day. It was the 40th anniver­sary of the Bond jug­ger­naut and they had a scene where the then-current Bond, Pierce Bros­nan, was with John Cleese’s Q, and in the scene they’re walk­ing through Q’s work­shop and they have a lot of dif­fer­ent gad­gets and weapons that Bond used over the decades. Bond picks up the shoe dag­ger from From Rus­sia with Love and looks at it like he has no idea what it is, just this quizzi­cal look. He puts it down after pon­der­ing it a moment, but it sparked some­thing in me. And I think I fig­ured out who “James Bond” is.

Another thought — in the new film, Casino Royale, new Bond, the butt-kicking Daniel Craig, is shown earn­ing his two zeros the only way that he can earn them — by assas­si­nat­ing two peo­ple. Later on Judi Dench’s M speaks with Bond. Now, if this were some sort of ori­gin story, as it’s being pur­ported to be, shouldn’t M look a lit­tle bit like Bernard Lee, who played him for decades before he died? If we’re going waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay back to tell how James became who he is, why is M a woman? I don’t think MI6 from 1964 would want any­body else but Moneypenny.

Because there are many James Bonds, and the name is a pseu­do­nym for some­one else hid­ing behind the persona.

And it’s backed up by the line said by Lazenby in On Her Majesty’s Secret Ser­vice -

James Bond: [to the cam­era)) This never hap­pened to the other fellow.

It makes sense. If Daniel Craig has to earn his ‘00’ title then Judi Dench can be there, since Daniel Craig’s “James Bond” is circa 2006, not 1964. And it explains why Bros­nan can eye a dag­ger shoe like a dork.

It totally makes sense. And you know me, I’m never wrong. Ever!