Blithe Spirit, the Blog

Last night “What Happens in Vegas,” co-starring Cameron Diaz (or was it Jennifer Lopez? one of the Z-ladies) and (Half-) Ashton Something, with volume turned up so as to make this yet another cartoon with live people.  Comic books used to show “pow” and “bam” when hero socked bad guy.  Movies have bass chords or thunks.  This one had a series of thunks at one point, lest we hoi polloi moviegoers miss something.

That said, it was diversionary, in a semi-crowded theatre (Lake on Lake) half-filled with decent enough crowd.

First thing to remember (after thunks) is that this moviegoer had no spontaneous laughter coming out of his throat, nor any other kind, nor any smile.  The entire attraction was the plot line: something about this movie kept this m-goer wondering what comes next.  The characters, in addition, were not overtly off-putting, and once you accept the presumed sleep-around dating scene — if it feels good, it’s good, genitally speaking, which it is, genitally speaking — you can even appreciate the basically human (i.e., good) responses and developments of the hero and heroine.

Moreover, Dennis Miller as the judge unloads a hard-nosed, credible defense of wedded perseverance: he looks at his wife of 25 years sometimes and wants to set her on fire — but among other things, that’s not legal.

So for a night at the movies, 7:30 version, out in the sweet May air by 9:30, not bad.  What’s more, I had to correct the young woman at the ticket booth, prepared to charge me $8 — “I’m a senior,” I said, without adding my line, “not high school or college either” — and she switched it to $5.50.

Close call, reminding me of telling the booth lady at the State on Madison in 1944 that I was eleven, which I wasn’t, but twelve was the age of adulthood when it came to ticket price.

Phew.

Ben Stein’s documentary, “Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed,” is an attack partly on academic pussy-footedness and partly on Darwinism.  Stein opens with a half dozen or so cases of professors who were punished for showing even in a small way openness to Intelligent Design as explaining the origin of species than Charles Darwin.

The scientific community demonstrates nonsensical fear of intelligence as having a hand, apparently panicking at the thought of lending even a smidgen of respectability to the idea and forbidding scientists to do so at cost of their web sites, jobs, and careers, Stein argues through the film, which is being shown in six Chicago-area movie houses.

He goes after Darwinism itself with the point that the cell Darwin and anyone else knew about in the 1850s was a very simple item compared to the information-filled cell that scientists know about today.  The film makes the point partly with an animated display of dozens of shapes and colors and movement patterns. 

If Darwin’s cell were a tennis ball, one man told Stein when asked, today’s is a galaxy.  No comparison, in other words, but meanwhile science limps along with Darwin’s explanation, which doesn’t even hold together internally, much less explain that galaxy of data, which as accident is ridiculous on its face.  That’s what the film says, in a manner that I cannot but take seriously.

Filing this by Chi Trib’s Sid Smith under wish-I-wrote-it:

Shot simultaneously in a dozen or so locales, “Election Day” offers a snapshot, and a vibrant one, of our national diversity: urban dwellers in New York City; Arab-Americans in Dearborn, Mich.; farmers in Stockholm, Wis.; African-Americans in Quincy, Fla.; and Native Americans striving to get out the vote in Pine Ridge, S.D. Factory workers and dishwashers share their experiences. So does a convicted felon voting for the first time.

The movie deals with some thorny issues of disenfranchisement, in Florida in 2000 and in Shaker Heights, Ohio, in 2004. But this is more about the hues of the nation’s fabric, more an amiable glimpse into everyday life during one of our quadrennial watersheds. It’s a pleasant pastime rather than a revelation, though here and there it zeroes in on underlying anxiety. How did we get to be so divided, a woman wonders near the end, and no one seems to have an answer.

“Election Day” ran last night at the Siskel Center on State a few doors south of Lake and runs again, same place, Monday at 6 p.m.  Tix on line or at the door.  Nice refreshment bar for your usual popcorn, espresso, etc.

The director Katy Chevigny and producer Maggie Bowman were on hand for q&a.  Maggie will be there Monday.  They are also to be on WBEZ-FM’s “Eight Forty-Eight” show, 9 a.m. Monday, though .

As for viewer response to last night’s showing, (a) the parents approved, which is the first thing for a producer of anything to worry about, as we all know even if we don’t admit it, and (b) so did everyone else.

Ellen DeGeneres should learn that the world laughs with you when you laugh but sometimes laughs at you when you cry. I did.

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Ellen DeGeneres’ talk show was put on hold for a day because of her emotionally wrenching dog-adoption drama.

“It’s been a long week and a tough week and we decided to take a long weekend and be back on Tuesday,” said Laura Mandel, a spokeswoman for Telepictures Productions, which produces “The Ellen DeGeneres Show.”

So what was it all about, Ellen? She got this dog from this non-profit animal-rescue agency, Iggy his name, and he didn’t get along with her cats. So she gave him to her hair-dresser’s kids in violation of contract: adopter has to give it back to agency, who then re-locates the animal.

So the agency took the dog back, leaving both the kids and Ellen in tears, she on air.

Not gonna let “the Ellen DeGenereses of the world” push them around, said the agency women, who (I have heard on the radio, where I also heard a clip of her losing her composure completely) have since found another home for Iggy.

So Ellen took a few days off to recover. It’s like Oscar Wilde’s comment on the death of Little Nell in Dickens’s Old Curiosity Shop:

One must have a heart of stone to read the death of little Nell without laughing.

Tags: Ellen+DeGeneres, Iggy+the+dog, Oscar+Wilde

“I never knew a passion for politics exist for a long time without swallowing up, absolutely excluding, a passion for Religion,” wrote Samuel Taylor Coleridge, in 5/16/1797 letter to J.P. Estlin.

A few months later, to his clergyman brother, Coleridge said he had withdrawn himself from consideration of “immediate causes,” i.e., current political arguments.

AUTHOR: Hugh Kingsmill, mentioned here earlier as declaring Victorian sentimentality the product of “an unnatural union of poetry and Puritanism,” has two books on Samuel Johnson, one, Samuel Johnson, is a bio. The other, Johnson Without Boswell, consists of passages from others who knew him besides his famous chronicler.

1. “The Chorus,” or “Les Choristes,” on DVD from OP Library and elsewhere, a marvelous story about teaching kids and being a human being.  Cinematically, if I may be so bold, it’s very intelligent.  For instance, we see someone beckoning another and are NOT given the face of the one beckoned.  Rather, the camera remains on the beckoner as we wait for the other to heave into view.  Small thing, but telling as the movie continues and you realize you are not going to be treated as a TV-viewer, with all spelled out for you.  Neither is this film wantonly mysterious (read dumb).  Nor is time spent on face shots nervously wondering when the damn camera goes to something interesting.  See “Les Choristes.”

2. The Dennis Miller Show on WIND-AM in Chicago, also national.  Mid-day, competing nicely with Rush Limbaugh on WLS-AM.  Miller went all conservative after 9–11.  He’s excellent with language and has decided it hurts only when you DON’T laugh.  Rush laughs too, but I think Miller will wear better over a longer period.  Of course, either one has its limits, when one is well advised to send them on mute, which is a killer on radio, of course, and pursue one’s Times Literary Supplement over lunch in the kitchen.  A word to the wise is sufficient, I hope.  In any case, it’s all I have to offer.