sick day

I'm finally on the mend after two days of nose-running, body-aching, head-clunking illness. I even took a sick day on Friday, so I turned into the office guy who talks about never getting sick who actually got sick. Staying in hasn't been fun. I've decided that New York may be the least pleasant place to be sick. There's stuff going on everywhere, and to be stuck in a bedroom this small for so long feels criminal. It would feel like a jail cell if it wasn't so well-decorated.
When I was a kid, my mom made the prospect of staying home sick as unpleasant as possible. No TV. No action figures. No coloring books. It was all throat-mopping, pedialyte-swilling contemplation. Feigning illness came with no incentives. So even during this quarantine, when I flipped on the TV, I felt like I was cheating. And while I would have much preferred being at work (and being able to go out this weekend), I was able to catch up on a load of movies I missed that are now on video.
Here's a rundown:
I started with Hairspray, which I resisted for a number of reasons when it was released this summer. I saw the show when it was new to Broadway, and was totally unimpressed. I thought it sucked the crude joy out of the John Waters classic ... the only thing that didn't make it Disney was a lack of mouse ears. The movie's no different, but it works better here. It's a fun, bubble gum trifle, and that's fine. It's a far better screen effort than Dreamgirls ... this one glides from dialogue to song effortlessly, and the talent is pretty consistent. Nikki Blonsky is adorable in the lead, Zac Efron is pretty, John Travolta is from another planet. It works. The only one that doesn't fit is Michelle Pfeiffer, who can't sing, is too thin, suffers from a Nicole Kidman-esque inability to make a facial expression, and doesn't seem to be having any fun.


After having seen Death Proof, Quentin Tarantino's lackluster contribution to Grindhouse, I wasn't too eager to catch Planet Terror, Robert Rodriguez' zombie-fest companion. I caved ... and am totally glad I did. Plant Terror delivers everything Tarantino couldn't muster. It's shamelessly campy, intentionally bad, it's in on the joke and doesn't care. Blood oozes through every frame, the audio crackles and the reels skip and shudder along. It's as fun and entertaining as anything I've seen recently. Josh Brolin gamely plays a masochistic doctor ... he's had a killer year. The best part? Anyone who loathes Fergie will get to see zombies eat her brains. When I saw that, I was sold.

I thought I was done with horror films after Planet Terror, but the real monster movie turned out to be La Vie en Rose, the biopic of French songbird Edith Piaf. Marion Cotillard has gotten heavy awards buzz for her portrayal of Piaf, and I can see why. It's yet another impersonation that finds an actor mouthing lyrics in between shots of whisky (see also Ray, Walk the Line, The Rose, The Doors ... the list goes on and on). This one, like the rest, chronicles the hard-knock life of a budding artiste. With Piaf, it's almost too much to believe. Raised by prostitutes. Goes blind as a child only to regain sight at the most dramatically opportune moment. Grows up to drink like a fish. Has a romantic life akin only to Elizabeth Taylor's. Looks 75 by the age of 40.
The production design, costumes and cinematography cannot be faulted. And Cotillard? Well, maybe I'm being too harsh. Her Piaf is a slurry, sloshing beast. She rips through the picture with teeth gnashing, her nails like talons and her lips aflame. At moments she looks more like one of De Kooning's devouring women than anything else. I normally enjoy watching despicable characters on screen (I find villains and deadbeats to be infinitely more interesting than heroes), but Piaf is too vile even for me. She's the cinematic equivalent of a spilt bottle of wine. It doesn't help that Cotillard is weighed down by fake teeth that jut from her mouth like something out of the Jerry Lewis canon and penciled-in eyebrows that wouldn't suit even the least-convincing drag queen. These snafus make the artifice surrounding the performance glaring and distracting. The seams totally show.

For a more convincing bit of stunt casting, I would recommend Angelina Jolie in A Mighty Heart, which finds the most photographed woman in the world masquerading as the wife of slain journalist Daniel Pearl.
The movie itself isn't as good. It plays more like Law & Order: Pakistan than anything else, an intricate investigation that leads to an inevitable result. It works because Pearl is a fascinating heroine who refuses to succumb to weepy-wife cliches (I was waiting for the Reese Witherspoon "Tell me where he is!" catharsis). Instead, she's seething with anger, confusion and emotion. It's an astonishingly subtle portrayal until the requisite purging of rage when she learns of her husband's fate. I wished she and director Michael Winterbottom would have held back in that moment, but I'll forgive the misstep. To play against the grain and avoid the cloying sentiment that trivializes heartbreak and loss in so many films is commendable. Even if the rest of the movie feels like a cable-ready crime drama.