I'm always surprised when I look back on a year and see how much or how little I've done. This past year was rather heavy on movie-going, perhaps as a result of living with someone who loves purchasing discount movie tickets. I saw 58 full-length movies in the theaters last year and another 22 short films. Additionally, I watched 25 more movies on DVD, again thanks primarily to The Boyfriend and his "deals" with Netflix and Blockbuster. That's a lot of movies, and that number could account for why I only read 33 books this past year. Granted, some of those books, like Bowling Alone, were very long and took a while to get through, but still, that's a low number for someone with degrees in English. Even worse? I only saw four plays and four musicals in theaters this year. That's very low, and I hope to do better in 2011.
Favorite Movie: Fantastic Mr. Fox and How to Train Your Dragon were both delightful films, a true joy to watch. We seem to be having such a renaissance in animation these days. Every year the bar for excellence seems to be getting higher and higher, and filmmakers just keep leaping over it. Fantastic Mr. Fox has the voice talent of George Clooney and Meryl Streep and Bill Murry and Jason Schwartzman, among others, and the direction of Wes Anderson. It's stop motion animation about a fox (Clooney) who just can't seem to resist stealing chickens even after he's become "respectable." The world of Mr. Fox was created, of course, by novelist Roald Dahl, but Anderson and company bring it fully to life. How to Tame Your Dragon is all computer generated animation, a very different look from Fantastic Mr. Fox, but once again it's the story that is the delight here. A young Viking, one not particularly adept at dragon-slaying, instead befriends one of the wounded animals and begins enjoying the world of flight and adventure. How to Tame Your Dragon, as I've said earlier, is one of the few films released in 3-D and IMAX this year that truly deserved both.
Runner-Up: Piranha (also known as Piranha 3-D) is a remake of a terribly cheesy movie from the 1970s (which I have seen, yes). Why anyone felt there was a need for another version of this film is a mystery, but I'm glad that the filmmakers decided it was worth the effort. I don't think I had a more enjoyable couple of hours in a movie theater this year. Of course, I know this is hardly high-minded cinematic achievement, but everyone involved seems to know that they should be playing this for laughs. Jerry O'Connell, in particular, seems to be having a blast, making what happens to him even more delicious. You know the story: Swarms of the flesh-eating little monster fish are released accidentally into an unusual environment, this time Lake Havasu during Spring Break. What follows is all rather predictable: people become imperiled out of their own stupidity, lots of folks die (not always at the hands, er, mouths of the fish, by the way), people resist efforts to help them. What made this film stand out for me, though, was not the plot but the energy. If you can set aside your predisposition to want a film with a message and just eat the popcorn (no, not drink the Kool-Aid), you can enjoy the goofy fun of Piranha. I'm actually sort of looking forward to the sequel that the end kind of implies.
If you're really expecting me to pick a "serious" film as one of my favorites of the year, the other runner-up would be The Town, the second film to be directed by Ben Affleck. Affleck and Jeremy Renner (in what may be the best performance by a supporting actor in 2010) head a gang of bank robbers who take a bank manager hostage during a heist. The complications that follow from that mistake lead to some intense discussions about loyalty and pride. All of the actors--including Jon Hamm as an FBI agent and the late Pete Postelthwaite as a florist who's really a mob leader--are top-notch, and the movie is filled with action and tension that make for a great moviewatching experience. I had no idea what to expect from this film when we went to see it, but it turned out to be a jewel.
Favorite Performance (Female): Julianne Moore in The Kids Are All Right almost steals the limelight from Annette Bening, no small feat. As a lesbian couple whose children reconnect with the sperm donor who gave them life, Bening and Moore are note-perfect here. Bening has the difficult task of watching so much of her life seem to fall apart in front of her, but Moore has, in a way, the more challenging role. She has to be the instigator for the series of events that lead to the near-collapse of her family. You can sense just how long she's had to endure people's low expectations of her, how she's never really been expected to do anything on her own that was successful. When she begins a sexual affair with the sperm donor--and who wouldn't, considering that it's Mark Ruffalo at his most rakishly charming--I almost felt betrayed myself, but then I realized just how emotionally needy Moore's Jules is feeling needed and wanted by someone for the first time in a long time. She's not just being taken for granted the way she usually is. It's tough to pull that off, to make an audience care for you when you're engaging in behavior that is really inappropriate, but Moore makes you like, even love Jules despite her mistakes.
Favorite Performance (Male): Joseph Gordon-Levitt in Inception is probably not on most people's radar as a standout performance this year, but what he brings to the role of Arthur, the most steady and reliable member of a team of intriguing misfits who plant dreams in people's heads, is a sly charm and a wise sense of the absurdity of the events that swirl around him and the rest of the main players. I know Leonardo DiCaprio is the star of the film and Tom Hardy brings a reckless abandon to his role and Ellen Page is playing up the snarkiness for which she has become well-known, but I kept waiting for Gordon-Levitt to return to the screen while watching Inception. He is sleek and professional and, with his sleek hair and carefully tailored clothing, a real charmer. When he steals a kiss from Page's Ariadne because, as he puts it, "it's worth a shot," you can't help but find him appealing. I realize that I may have asked this before, but who knew when we were watching Third Rock from the Sun years ago that we were witnessing the beginnings of what has turned out to be a remarkable and diverse career for a young actor?
Favorite Play: Del Shores usually writes plays that are more comedic that Yellow, stuff like Southern Baptist Sissies or Sordid Lives. Yellow has its moments of humor as well, but it takes on such serious topics as religious fundamentalism, faithfulness in marriage, parent-child relationships, even critical illnesses. Throughout the couple of hours that the actors occupy the stage--a beautifully if typically blandly done middle-class household in Mississippi--we learn a lot about the kinds of people their characters are. The son of the neighbor who befriends the main characters' family (and who winds up being taken in by them) will, of course, grow up to be gay. The way he is treated by his mother and his best friend (the family daughter) and even the family's son whom he has a crush on says a lot about who we are as a people and who we can aspire to be. The run of Yellow was extended several times at the Coast Playhouse, and it's easy to see why. Shores is a masterful writer, one who understands that so-called simple people truly lead complex, complicated lives.
Favorite Musical: I saw only a few musicals, and all of them were pretty spectacular, but the one I remember most fondly is [title of show]. No, that's not a typo; that's what it's called. It's a four-person show about the creation of an off-Broadway musical. Two men, one of them gay, and two women, both hilarious, present vignettes about the process of writing a show that you hope someone will see. All four actors--one of them best known for playing a drag queen called Bridgette of Madison County--are good singers and dancers, and the fact that the show was in the small venue of the Celebration Theatre made us in the audience seem even more invested in seeing this show-within-a-show musical come to fruition.
Runner-Up: The rest of the musicals I saw were all touring companies of Broadway productions, and the one that stands out is South Pacific. The revival of this well-loved show was everything you might have hoped for in a musical: great cast, spectacular sets, memorable songs. Everything about the production was gorgeous, and I (and the rest of the audience) sang along with the performers all night long. I had previously only seen the film version of South Pacific, never the full stage musical. This was definitely the way to make up for that deficit.
Favorite Book (Fiction): Sometimes picking up a new book is like visiting an old friend. You immediately know about the main character, and you just want to find out what's been happening her or his life since last you met. Reading Mary Ann in Autumn by Armistead Maupin was just such an experience. I've read all of the books in the Tales of the City series, even used one of them in my dissertation, and I've loved the characters so much since I picked up my first book (Sure of You) many years ago upon the advice of a then-boyfriend in Alabama. In Maupin's latest, Mary Ann returns to San Francisco after many years away focusing first upon her career and then upon her second marriage. All of the characters from the earlier novels return, some of them all too briefly, and once again, I found myself caught up in the lives of the former residents of Barbary Lane. Maupin is such a master of handling multiple plots and numerous characters. I hope there are many more Tales of the City books to come.
Runner-Up: I also had a chance to read the book Maupin finished in the series before Mary Ann in Autumn. Michael Tolliver Lives diverges from the other novels in that it is told in first person. This isn't too much of a distraction, however, since Michael (or "Mouse") is probably the surrogate for almost every gay men who's ever read one of these books. This is a novel about life and death and the consequences of both living and dying. I know that sounds rather unhelpful as a description, but reading Michael discuss how his life has changed after finding love with a younger man despite Michael's own diagnosis with HIV is a joy. I'm so grateful Maupin didn't allow this beloved character to die. The spectre of death isn't limited to just the main character, though, as he has to deal with the illnesses of his mother in Florida and his "adopted" mother in San Francisco. This is a somewhat melancholy work, but it was a pleasure for me to read this and Mary Ann in Autumn and get back in touch with these characters once again.
Favorite Book (Non-Fiction): The Star Machine by Jeanine Basinger looks at the Hollywood production system from almost the start of moviemaking until the collapse of the studio system in the 1960s. Basinger looks at fan magazine stories and publicity stills and in-house manuals, among other materials, to examine how it was exactly that our modern notions of what it takes to be a "star" got created and refined. This is fascinating reading, particularly when she begins looking at specific performers. I especially liked the attention to those stars who really didn't quite fit the mold of traditional Hollywood standards.
Runner-Up: I read two autobiographies, in particular, that I enjoyed this year: Like a Lampshade in a Whorehouse by Phyllis Diller and This Time Together by Carol Burnett. Diller has always been one of my favorite funny people, and I still have very fond memories of watching Burnett's show on Saturday nights when I was a kid. Both women are great storytellers. Diller's is a somewhat more traditional biography in that it follows her life from its beginnings through her failed marriage to success as a performer. Along the way, you get some of her best jokes as well. I laughed at the ones I recalled and at new ones I'd never heard before. Burnett's book is more like a series of vignettes, brief memories of people and instances from her life that people tend to ask her about most frequently. Both are fun and informative and testaments to perseverance.
Favorite Book (Poetry): The Fact of a Doorframe by Adrienne Rich was a book I was assigned to read in graduate school at USC almost twenty years ago now. I picked it up and started rereading it this summer and couldn't stop. Rich has written such a remarkable body of work over the years, and this collection of some of her best from the start of her career until the early 1990s is magnificent. I recall sitting in a packed auditorium at USC listening to her read from this collection and An Atlas of the Difficult World and just feeling like I would never get a chance to experience someone with this much power and control over the written word. I think almost any collection of Rich's work would transport a reader, but The Fact of a Doorframe is a great starting point.
Highlight of the Year: I dubbed it The Week of Music. On Friday, Aug. 20, The Boyfriend and I and a couple of friends went to see Rufus Wainwright at the Greek Theatre. Friends and readers of this blog know how much I love Rufus, and he didn't disappoint with this show. The first half was devoted to his most recent collection, All Days are Nights: Songs for Lulu. He didn't allow anyone to applaud during this portion of the show as he was performing the music as a song cycle. He entered slowly, walking across the stage in a goth-glam rock outfit, and sat at the piano and played. Behind him was a screen that projected a series of images of eyes throughout the performance. You can't say he doesn't try something new now and then. The second half of the show featured Rufus in his more traditional style of performing, charming the audience with anecdotes and flubbed lines. I loved that his sister Martha and her infant son were a part of the show as well; Martha is a great, underrated performer. Then again, I think Rufus still is too.
Next, on Sunday, Aug. 22, the Boyfriend and I went to the Hollywood Bowl to see John Mayer. Say what you want to about Mayer, but I enjoyed the show. He's only a passable singer, to be honest, but even he realizes that about himself. In fact, I found one of the most endearing aspects of the show to be his self-deprecating humor. He's heard all of the stuff written and said about him, and he freely admits to some of it and even laughs about the public persona he has. However, the best part of the show is his guitar playing. No matter what you might think about him overall, you should acknowledge that he is a remarkable picker. He sang some of his more famous hits and a couple of songs such as Journey's "Don't Stop Believing" that show just how talented he really is. I can't say much about his opening act, Owl City, except that I did recognize the one song "they" had that was a hit.
The following Friday, August 27, we were back at the Greek Theatre to see Cyndi Lauper in concert. Most of the first part of her set was music from her blues album, which by the way is pretty fantastic. She also told some hilarious stories about what life on the road is like, including on very bizarre, rambling one about a cricket that she befriended. The second part of the show was devoted to her hits, and I have to say that the audience went wild when she started singing songs like "Girls Just Want to Have Fun" and "Time after Time." Lauper may not still be on the minds of today's pop music programmers, but she knows how to perform. Her opening act was the legendary Allen Toussaint. He even came back to perform a couple of numbers with Lauper.
In all my 47 years, I've never attended that many concerts in just one week. However, given how much fun we had at all three, I'd be willing to try it again this summer. The schedule for the Hollywood Bowl is due in about another week, and I'm sure the Greek Theatre can't be far behind. Maybe they'll lead to the most memorable highlight of 2011.
