Learning By Doing: HP ProCurve event

This video isn't my best ever, but the shoot went very smoothly. The sound guy gave me a cable into the board so I didn't have to drag out my own and put it away. Everything sounded great. After the presentations I just did some brief interviews and shot b-roll. No big pans or tilts this time. They're overrated. And then as I was about to leave I started chatting with this guy who really hit the nail on the head. Knowing I had the footage put me at ease, so I got set up quickly. My Manfrotto tripod feels heavier all the time, but it totally rocks. Or more to the point, it doesn't.

Review: Revolutionary Road

With his latest film, Revolutionary Road, director Sam Mendes atones for much of the sin in his previous tale of suburban ennui, American Beauty. The 1999 Best Picture winner drew a cartoon version of American suburbia and then condemned it in a story that was simultaneously farfetched and intellectually lazy.

Working from evidently better source material in the form of a novel by WWII-generation American writer Richard Yates (adapted by Justin Haythe), Mendes has created a film that pierces the myths of postwar life so well in its first half that the dramatic tropes that dominate its second half are easier to take.

Revolutionary Road is the story of a young couple raising two children in a suburb of New York in 1955 who decide to drop everything and seek adventure overseas. They want to live life to the fullest and find their true vocations before it's too late. But there are surprises along the way, and one thing gradually turns into another.

The film kicks off in much the same world as the great TV series "Mad Men", but naturally, it delivers a more concentrated dose of the period. At its best, Revolutionary Road feels less self-aware than "Mad Men," though on the other hand, it's impossible to deliver in two hours the depth of a character like Don Draper.

As in American Beauty, Mendes (a former stage director) gives us a lot of monologues, set pieces and theatrical devices. But Revolutionary Road has a more sophisticated take on the staid universe that inspires rebellion in both films. The interplay of the dreams, glamour and reality of the Fifties, along with our nostalgia for the time, is exquisite. Roger Deakins's cinematography is excellent and the cast is generally impressive, especially leads Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio. At its height, Revolutionary Road rises far above mere period drama.

Party time! (In three weeks...)

Don't say I didn't give you adequate warning: Three weeks from tonight, on Feb. 13, the 27th San Francisco International Asian-American Film Festival kicks off with a launch party at 111 Minna. There will be deejays, snacks, a (cash) bar, lots of cool people, and most of all, programs! Relax with a drink and find out whether that movie about the children or that other one about girls who like boys who like boys are showing, and when.

And don't forget about the documentaries. SFIAAFF screened two of them at a members-only preview event last week. It was a very good pairing, especially given the momentous events of this week.

A Song for Ourselves, a work in progress that will have its formal premiere in Los Angeles on Feb. 28, is an intimate portrait of Asian-American musician and activist Chris Iijima, who died in 2006. Patsy Mink: Ahead of the Majority is a conventional public television documentary, well crafted and exhaustively researched, about the life of the late congresswoman from Hawaii.

Both are about people who questioned the status quo and took action to change things. Both films delve into the Vietnam War, a watershed in Asian-American politics, which Iijima fought against at the grassroots level and Mink opposed in the halls of power. Both explore Hawaii, where Mink grew up (and fought racism) and where Iijima settled with his family (and found racial harmony). Both films deal with interracial marriage. And both deal sensitively with death and its aftermath.

What struck me most was the way these two movies portray interracial relationships. Mink married a white man, and Iijima married a white woman, at very different times in history. Both films briefly touch upon onetime objections to interracial marriage but never dwell on the subject, as they tell the stories of two families in the unique state where our new president was born.

Thinking about the nominations

No big surprises to me. I'm glad Milk got eight nods, all well deserved. Not to sound like a fanboy, but Hellboy II and Iron Man probably deserved a few more. The endless Benjamin Button nominations are kind of a waste, because it's one of those "tasteful" gimmick movies that people like to praise but don't really care about. It won't win many.

One oddity is Wall-E's nomination for best original screenplay, considering about the first half of the movie is virtually silent -- and it's the better half. I'm a big fan, though.

FNL opener, Part VI

Yeah, looking better than Season 2. Back in fighting shape, being a show about high school and football. The bar engagement scene has to be the highlight of this one. Especially with the little foreshadowing line about the Jumbotron. And Tami kickin' ass and takin' names.

FNL opener, Part V

Isn't Smash jumping to conclusions a bit? Even his mom, I'm surprised at that. This is a little trumped up. but I like the overly backlit headshot.

Grandma Saracen, little cameo there. Do she and Matt purse their lips the same way? That's amazing.

Huh. Special "bonus scenes" online. And I like the ad for DirecTV right after the episode.

FNL opener, Part IV

Tami!! Pullin' rank!

*"End of discussion!"*

And ladies and gentlemen, Miss Adrianne Palicki. And what a role.

FNL opener, part III

Even with budget cuts, would a bunch of teachers really all start talking out of turn like that?

Loving Tyra and Tami on the high-speed walk-and-talk....

FNL opener, Part II

Buddy: "We don't need one, Tami, but we want one."

Love her enthusiastic-yet-scared look.

Lot more creative with the music this season. Did they cut the hourlong episodes to fit ads by cutting down musical montages?

FNL Season Opener, Part 1

Principal Taylor?!
She totally deserves it.

Landry: "We're takin' a break."
Tyra: "We broke up."

Coming up: Patsy Mink: Ahead of the Majority

I'm looking forward to a sneak preview tomorrow night of Patsy Mink: Ahead of the Majority. Especially after reading a glowing review of director Kimberlee Bassford's earlier film, Cheerleader, at Haro Online. Apparently, Patsy Mink was not just the first woman of color in Congress but also ran for president in 1972. I'm curious to learn more.

Friday Night: Lights!

Shows in which the frame is dominated by objects that are in focus, step aside! "Friday Night Lights" is back. After appearing on DirecTV, Season 3 is coming to NBC this Friday at 9/8 Central. Apparently, the episodes are listed as repeats, but they've never been on broadcast TV before. Here's hoping there's more of the usual: Natural light and blown-out backgrounds. Football plays shot like love scenes and love scenes shot like football plays. Lots of Coach Taylor, Tami Taylor, Saracen, Buddy ... well, everybody. And no far-fetched crime stories.

Quick take: The Savages

Sometimes I wonder why movies like The Savages get made. The widest it was ever released in the U.S. was 201 theaters at a time. It only made $10.6 million in box office worldwide, according to Box Office Mojo. Here are some possible reasons why: It's frequently funny, but not enough to be marketed as a comedy. It's a drama where people grapple with relationships, but it's not a relationship drama. It's about aging and death but isn't a poignant weeper featuring a "brave" career-capping performance by a legendary actor.

Yet those are also all reasons I loved this movie. It has an honesty and a realism about adult life today that's rare in the movies. The settings and character types, on the surface, are exaggerated and contrasted to maximum effect. This is most true in the first part of the film, in which two East Coast intellectuals go to a stunningly shot Sun City, Arizona, to get their father's affairs in order. But as the film progresses, the details of the characters' lives add up to much more than caricature or cliche. Laura Linney and Philip Seymour Hoffman are excellent, of course, but the cast is fine all around.

The Savages is a "small movie" and may not leave you with a single impression that lasts a long time, because it isn't a Big Message movie. Its truth is that life isn't made up of Big Messages that are revealed in Big Moments. That reminder is reason enough for movies like this.

It doesn't take much...

You don't need big sound stages, stunning locations, or armies of CG animators to make a wonderful movie. The folk group The Mittenstrings have made seven of them. They're like exquisite little video snacks.

Quick take: The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian

I like the premise of The Chronicles of Narnia, with four kids in World War II Britain finding their way into a magical world. The first movie based on C.S. Lewis's books, The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe, spent a lot of time exploring that premise. The second film, Prince Caspian, bogs down in one big battle after another. We jump into Narnia through a complicated time-warp twist that deserves more explanation. Instead, there's a series of pitched battles and hand-to-hand struggles that are pretty much like those in any generic good-vs.-evil movie. According to an IMDB commenter, the seemingly 45-minute raid against the bad guys' castle was blown up from almost nothing in the book just to make Prince Caspian more of an action movie. Despite the chaste romance that grows between the eldest girl and the handsome young prince (not even very interesting itself), the first film's nice balance between chick-flick fantasy and guy-flick heroism is gone.

Quick take: The Lady Vanishes

Befitting its name, Hitchcock's The Lady Vanishes is light as a feather. Though it's more comedy than suspense, its mystery keeps the story compelling while the script and performances provide comic relief. The film starts in a fictional Northern European country as a mixed group of tourists are waylaid at a small mountain inn and then scramble to get on a train that will take the British passengers toward home. Then the eponymous lady disappears, and no one is quite who we thought they were.

Of course, we've seen that kind of premise a million times, and this is a 70-year-old movie made on a tiny set with projected scenery outside the windows. The ancient sound is as good as it could be, given this is a Criterion Collection DVD, but it's still impossible to hear all the lines. Yet there's enough to think and laugh about in four out of five lines that the fifth would just be icing on the cake. The barely veiled references to European politics in the lead-up to World War II, which are explained further in the DVD extras, are fascinating.

This isn't just a droll little English film. It's laugh-out-loud funny. And Hitchcock makes it all look easy.

Quick take: Costa-Gavras's Missing

Missing is a 1982 film based on the true story of an American, Charles Horman, who went missing in Chile after the 1973 Pinochet coup. Horman's wife (played by Sissy Spacek) and father (Jack Lemmon) go to Chile to look for him and learn some disturbing things about their own government in the process.

Missing isn't a thriller, but rather a story about the scales being gradually lifted from two people's eyes. Spacek and Lemmon both give excellent performances. Lemmon's character, the quintessential postwar Organization Man that he played in so many films, has more to learn, and his performance is the more powerful.

At its core, this is a very smart and politically forceful film. Costa-Gavras contrasts the blithe life of rich foreigners amid the country's ongoing violence, and he associates American busines with the Chilean political situation by strategically placing American brands in the backgrounds of several scenes.

But the most remarkable contrast in this film is between the story and the style of filmmaking. The DVD box made me think of Antonioni, but that couldn't have been further from reality. Ricardo Aronovich's cinematography has the dull colors, flat light and uninteresting framing that were endemic to American TV shows of that era. Much of the acting is bad, apart from lead performances. And strangely, it looks as if there was no attempt to give the film a 1973 appearance. The hair, costumes and cars are all straight out of 1982.

The effect, as the story gradually picks up steam, is like watching an episode of "Fantasy Island" interrupted by random gunfire. Missing has some electrifying scenes and is well worth seeing, but for content rather than style.