Michael Connelly & Steve McQueen



Michael Connelly

USA Today has a good article on Michael Connelly, author of the Harry Bosch detective series and the Mickey Haller "Lincoln Lawyer" series. Connelly has become one of my favorite writers. I love his Harry Bosch series.
The article page also features a video interview of Connelly, in which he reveals that his vision of the best actor to play Harry Bosch onscreen is the late Steve McQueen. Connelly says when he created Harry Bosch, he was picturing McQueen in his role as the detective Bullitt.



 

Steve McQueen in
The Great Escape



That was a surprise to me, because I hadn't pictured Bosch as being anything like McQueen. But then, it's been a long long time since I saw the movie Bullitt. I'll have to put that on my NetFlix queue. My favorite of the roles he played was his character in The Great Escape, Virgil Hilts, "The Cooler King."



McQueen, who was nicknamed the King of Cool, died 30 years ago. If he'd survived he'd be 80 years old now. It's hard to picture an 80-year-old Steve McQueen.



Robin Hood 2010

Continuing my Robin Hood musings from yesterday, here's my review of the new version of Robin Hood, a 2010 movie directed by Ridley Scott and starring Russell Crowe.

It's a prequel--that is, it tells the story of how the expert archer Robin came to be "Robin Hood." Crowe plays Robin Longstride, a yeoman archer who's been following King Richard the Lionheart on crusade for ten years. Worn out, bitter and disillusioned, he sneaks away after King Richard is killed while besieging a castle in France. Along the way Longstride and his three soldier buddies happen on an ambush massacre. They repel the attackers and discover the victims are a group of Englishmen who were trying to return King Richard's crown to England. One of the dying victims, Sir Robert Loxley, begs Robin with his dying breath to return his sword to his father at Nottingham. Robin promises he will. He and his buddies return to England disguised as knights--Longstride calling himself Robert of Loxley and bearing the Loxley sword as well as the royal crown. Thereafter plot complications ensue. (For a full plot summary, including spoilers, see the Wikipedia site on the film.)

It has great production values, cinematography, costumes, and period detail. It has lots of action--battle scenes, swordfights, fistfights, chase scenes, executions, etc., as you would expect in a movie by Ridley Scott (whose work I greatly admire--Blade Runner is one my favorite movies).  It has Russell Crowe, a great actor, as well as a cast of other top-notch performers--e.g., Max von Sydow, Cate Blanchett, William Hurt.

But...I was disappointed.

Why? Because there was none of the joie de vivre I associate with the Robin Hood tales. All the movie/TV versions of Robin Hood I've seen have had strong explicit or implicit wit and good humor--an optimism, an underlying happy feel. The Scott/Crowe Robin Hood, however, is grim. Really grim. Everybody is grim. Everything is grim. Oh, unquestionably real medieval times were grim. And yes, the whole Robin Hood thing is just a legend. But we expect legends to fulfill our (often subconscious) mythic fantasies. Mine went unfulfilled by this version of Robin Hood. There's no real humor or happiness anywhere in the movie. Robin Longstride becomes a hero as the movie goes along--he helps save England from a French invasion, and directly saves the perfidious King John from being slain--and he's clearly a leader of men. But even at the end, when Robin, Lady Marian (or, as spelled in the movie cast list, Marion), and the merry men are living in Sherwood Forest as outlaws, purportedly one big happy family, the smiles and merriment seemed forced. And the romance between Robin and Marian (Marion)? Hah. I did not sense any chemistry between Crowe and Blanchett, good actors though they are. I didn't get the feel-good ending I hoped for.

Oh, and I have some quibbles with accuracy, if one can expect historical accuracy from a movie about a legend. The movie has King Philip of France invading England, himself along for the ride. It never happened. And the French troops are being landed in boats with drop-down fronts, just like the Higgins LSTs used during the D-Day invasion in WWII. I didn't tear out my hair at the movie theatre, but I did tug on a few strands from time to time.

If you want to read a review of the film by a real movie critic, the esteemed Roger Ebert, go here.

Does all that sound like I'm bashing it? Yet, I still recommend you see it if you love costume dramas, historical settings, medieval battles, and watching great actors in cinematic tropes. It's worth the price of admission, but it may not be what you expect out of a Robin Hood remake.

Favorite Gossip Tidbit of the Day

My favorite gossip tidbit of the day appeared on the Answer B!tch:

Why did Tom and Katie have to publicize how much money they spent for their wedding?
—Florence, Oak Forest, Illinois

Stars often feel the need to remind us they're larger than life. Especially when they are, in reality, rather short.

OD'd on celebrity gossip

Last night I discovered Ask the Answer B!tch at the E!Online website. I spent the next couple of hours overdosing on it. Readers can ask the Answer B!tch any question they like about Hollywood filmdom and celebrities...the AB can probably find the answer. Her snarky, witty, smart-ass approach makes her columns fun to read. Her archives contain over 170 questions. The mixture ranges from the serious ("What is Method acting?", "What do stand-ins do, exactly?") to the inane ("Which cell phone plans do the stars get?", "Why hasn't Britney Spears written me back?", "Does everyone in Hollywood get colonics?"). The Answer B!tch's responses not only offer interesting facts, but also make inanity a hoot.

Even the AB, however, has to tiptoe around some topics ("Who in gay Hollywood can I look up to?"). At least one query is of interest to writers: "Why don't writers have any power in Hollywood?"

Stranger Than Fiction

I recently saw the movie STRANGER THAN FICTION, which stars Will Ferrell, Emma Thompson, Dustin Hoffman, and Maggie Gyllenhaal. It was well-worth seeing, especially for writers/booklovers. Not great, but entertaining, and thought-provoking in a Hollywood way. It poses two questions: (1) If you discovered that your life exactly parallels the life of a character in a book, and the book has a tragic ending, what would you do? (2) If you were a novelist and discovered that everything you write comes true, what would you do?

Kay Eiffel (Emma Thompson) is a famous novelist who's having problems completing her eighth book. The main character of her book is Harold Crick, an uptight, repressed IRS auditor who lives a carefully structured, precise existence in which he does the same things every day in the same order, in the same way. Emma's book deadline has long expired and she's agonizing over how to finish the book.

Harold Crick (Will Ferrell) is an uptight, repressed IRS auditor who lives a carefully structured, precise existence...in which he does the same things every day in the same order, in the same way. One day Harold hears a voice narrating everything he's doing--while he's doing it. The narration continues, day after day. He starts talking back to The Voice--actually, shouting back to it. His boss is concerned, so Harold ends up seeing a psychiatrist--in fact, two psychiatrists. Neither can help him. The first one suggests that he needs a vacation and a hug. The second one tells him that the word for his condition is schizophrenia and he needs medication. When he refuses meds, the second shrink tells him that if the voice narrating his life is telling a story, then maybe he needs to see a literature professor.

So Harold finds a literature professor, Professor Jules Hilbert (Dustin Hoffman), who doesn't laugh at his claims, but tells him he needs to figure out whether he's in a comedy or a tragedy: "If it's a comedy, you get married. If it's a tragedy, you die." Hilbert is indifferent to Harold's plight until one day when Harold bursts into his office and tells him he heard The Voice narrating, "Little did he know his death was imminent." Hilbert becomes hugely excited, telling Harold, "Little did he know! Little did he know! I wrote a book on 'little did he know'! I've done papers and seminars, I've taught courses on 'little did he know'!" From that point on Hilbert actively assists Harold as Harold searches frantically for The Voice.

A simultaneous plot thread follows Harold's budding romance with Ana Pascal (Maggie Gyllenhaal), a rebellious young woman whom he's assigned to audit for the IRS--an opposites-attract pairing, because he's stilted and inhibited and doesn't know himself at all, while she's wild and crazy and believes in following her muse wherever she leads.

The third thread follows blocked author Eiffel's despairing progress as she tries to squeeze out the final section of her novel--and her horror when she eventually discovers that her character Harold Crick is a real person.

Will Ferrell plays against type as the extremely repressed Harold, but does it well, showing his acting chops go well beyond the zany comedy for which he's known. Emma Thompson does a good job as the Tortured Author (Thompson wouldn't give a mediocre or bad performance in any role). Maggie Gyllenhaal is delightful as the kooky, rebellious free spirit Ana. But Dustin Hoffman steals the scene from all of them as the literature professor: the "little did he know" scene is priceless (especially to this former English major).

I rate it 3 stars on a scale of 5.