Liars and Saints

 Judi Dench was drawn to Shakespeare because of the swearing. She wanted to swear on-stage. Her early performance as Ophelia wowed no one (or almost no one), but she persisted. She did "Juliet" at the age of twenty-five. Her director wanted her to seem fourteen; when she sobbed, she collapsed on the floor, as a child would collapse. Dench also noticed Juliet's 3-D nature. Despite her youth, she has brains. When Romeo becomes florid, Juliet sticks to the facts. "Who are you? What do you want? What is your plan?" In the middle of her career, Dench triumphed with "Macbeth." She loves this play because it is fast and well-constructed; she says, "Do it without an interval." The Macbeths are not the Nixons; they are the Kennedys. They must seem "aglow with love" at the start. Because Lady Macbeth's "screen-time" is minimal, the actress must plant "seeds of madness" early on; we must see LM slipping as early as the ...

 Thinking--and thinking--and thinking......about Sondheim this week......I put together my three favorite clips. They certainly aren't heretical choices. Here they are. (3) Bernadette Peters, "Move On." Sondheim himself said that Peters's work here was among the five most-wonderful inventions he'd seen in a theater. (Other winners: Alfred Drake, in "Kismet," John McMartin, in "Follies," Ethel Merman, in "Gypsy," Angela Lansbury, in "Sweeney Todd.") So: you have Peters's charisma. You have Mandy Patinkin's perfect voice. And you have a series of smart lines: "I chose and my world was shaken. So what? The choice may have been mistaken....The choosing was not....." And: "Stop wondering if your vision is new. Let others make that decision. They *usually* do...." And: "Stop worrying where you're going. Move on." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HVC4MrUEBRo (2) Patti LuPone, "Gypsy...

 "The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel" is a movie invented in a laboratory, and the lab was staffed by people who know exactly what I want. These people had an x-ray of my heart on display, and this x-ray led them to toss together: Judi Dench, Maggie Smith, Tom Wilkinson, a majestic ibis (I think it's an ibis?), and many stunning shots of glittery palaces and broad rivers. This is all I want from a film. Why do others find this hard to grasp? The story doesn't matter, but basically it's Judi Dench emerging from a forty-year marriage and realizing she has never had "agency." She travels to India, to a new "retirement" home, to try to do something with her life. She finds a job (her first); she seems to be a kind of coach for telemarketers, and this is appropriate, because she herself has been brutally mistreated by telemarketers. ("I'm sorry your husband has died.....Let me tell you about our attractive new offerings....") Meanwhile, To...

 "Philomena" is an odd-couple story. A cynical journalist semi-randomly meets an old lady whose son was robbed from her by the Catholic Church. Then, like detectives, the two new friends go off in search of the son. One would expect the search to be moderately challenging, but not impossible: Hasn't the Church kept records? No, a mysterious fire has interceded. Also, you can't talk to the elderly nuns who might remember Catholic misdeeds from the fifties and sixties; these nuns are locked away like Mrs. Rochester in shadowy hallways. Bizarrely, at an Irish bar, our heroes discover that the Church actually sold abducted babies to wealthy Americans mid-century. This leads to an intercontinental flight, and then one new horror after another: The full discovery of the Church's wrongdoing is saved for the climactic scene. "Philomena" won many awards, and it nearly won a Best Picture Oscar; that's partly because of the script, which manages to be a serious...

Wading into the "Cats" discussion.... My husband and my mother both say they liked this film, and that's a fact I'm struggling to digest. That said, I don't actually think it's the apocalyptic disaster that various tweeters have invented in their memories. It's a not-good adaptation of a not-good musical with a few moments of cleverness. Specifically: *Giving octogenarian legend Judi Dench vast swaths of screen time is always a smart idea. Dench does her dignified, twinkly act, here, and it's charming. It's especially fun to see her opposite Ian McKellan; these two have obvious, infectious chemistry. *Ian McKellan himself is the reason to make it through the first hour. Actors talk about "lightning in a bottle moments": a scene where an actor captures a truth about the human condition, almost casually, without a sense of laboriousness. McKellan gives this movie its one true "lightning in a bottle" moment: An aging ...

Your boss is from another era. "I don't like science," he says, breezily. "I'm just not a science guy." He is an academic dean. Having recently seen an indie film, he has thoughts: "I just don't understand why those people use the N word with one another. Doesn't that seem offensive?" Consider white-splaining: Consider a speech in which you speculate about minority groups, and about how sometimes a word is "re-claimed." All of this seems unwise. Stay silent. You have a convenient fund of cowardice whenever people say something offensive. Just recently, the nanny you're hiring muttered something about "other cultures" and about how "some people" feel it's "acceptable" to keep the house temperature at "like, 900 degrees all the time." And did you say anything? You did not. Leave unstamped mail in a mailbox, accidentally. Nervously bend your metro card, so that it ceases to func...