As a reader of many alternative history novels and stories, I found this version by historian Nigel Hamilton, speculating on a different track taken if JFK hadn’t been assassinated, very interesting.

Today’s movie: The Good Girl

Range is not something you expect that much of from creative types. Actors, well, that’s a little different but writers, directors, musicians, even painters generally stay within a certain zone and when you find someone capable of reaching beyond the normal boundaries, that’s quite a pleasant surprise. Kind of like Wynton Marsalis, reaching out from his jazz exploits, where he was from a young age considered one of the greats, to produce some outstanding classical compositions as well.

Perhaps The Good Girl and School of Rock don’t quite put scriptwriter Mike White at that level yet but throw in his Chuck & Buck and you’ve got a pretty good start for someone well shy of 35. The movies are so different that I didn’t realize the connection until well in Good Girl, a drama that has nothing to do with music but in a certain light is the flipside of Jack Black’s epiphany in Rock.

Jennifer Aniston(!) is Justine, a worn-down wife to John C. Reilly’s Phil, working at a sad little discount store in a strip mall in nowhere Texas, 30 years old, no children, a stoner husband and no view to a future. Aniston plays Justine as if all the air had been squeezed out of her body, slumped, totally out of energy. She shows up at work just to get a paycheck, something her cosmetics counter supervisor (Deborah Rush) points out a couple of times. Then she notices a cute, younger new cashier, played by Jake Gyllenhaal, who seems as weary as her and when he explains that he’s taken the name Holden (as in Catcher of the Rye’s Caulfield), she’s interested.

Gyllenhaal’s Holden is able to verbalize Justine’s feelings, recognizing a kindred spirit, and he can’t help noticing she’s the hottest female in 30 miles. So he quickly falls for her and Justine falls for the bait. Admittedly, though no real nudity can be seen, the one sexual romp the two have in a cheap motel room is very hot. And with their passion, the pair attempt to burn away the ennui, to find a connection that might bring some light into their dreary lives. Director Miguel Arteta furthers this feeling by setting the movie in winter, with few blue skies but lots of rain and snow on the ground.

Hollywood allows dramas to not end happily, and we don’t get to turn off the TV with Justine and Holden happily ensconced in a cozy apartment together in San Diego, even though the couple does consider running away as an option. Though The Good Girl is major studio-influenced enough to tie down all the loose ends, use up all the foreshadowings and leave the audience satisfied that the title is true rather than ironic.

Recommended

Out damn spot!

Swearing on the Bible is a carryover from English common law, and the oath-taking of Presidents is aped from the British coronation ritual.

When I read this letter (before seeing Garret’s post) my reaction was perhaps this is something that should be changed. Just because we’ve done something one way up until now hardly means we need to keep doing it. Swearing on the Bible (or the religious text of the person’s choosing, as is the case), the phrase ‘under god’ on currency, even the use of a chaplain to open Senate proceedings, all ought to go as part of a more complete (more perfect?) separation of church and state.

Elliot Spitzer: Looking good, baby

Spitzer, New York’s crusading attorney general, has written an outstanding essay for today’s NY Times OpEd page, Regulation Begins at Home, in which he tears a nice chunk out of the Bush Administration. Specifically he attacks the SEC’s settlement with Putnam over their misadventures in mutual funds and the administration’s decision to abandon pending enforcement actions and investigations of Clear Air Act violations. This guy is 44 years old, Princeton undergrad, Harvard Law (married to another Harvard Law grad), and clearly one of the brightest future stars of the Democratic Party if he can sustain the momentum–I absolutely look forward to seeing him take a bigger seat down the road and would recommend he be considered for Attorney General should (when) the Demos unseat Bush next year.

Today’s movie: I Spy

In the ’60s, I Spy was a fun TV show but like far too many films based on similar inspiration, I Spy the movie should never have been made. Eddie Murphy can usually be counted on for a laughs and he does deliver here and Owen Wilson is okay, but director Betty Thomas (yes, the former Hill Street Blues cop) makes everything easy and obvious. She has a track record of doing the same, so no big surprise.

Not recommended

Yesterday’s movie: Love Actually

Richard Curtis gives us one of the sweetest movies of recent memory with his meditation on the many aspects of love in Love Actually. This is not a slick, made for Hollywood movie and if you were expecting a love story with Hugh Grant’s Prime Minister falling for Martine McCutcheon’s Natalie, as some of the advertising might lead one to believe, you would be wrong though hopefully not disappointed.

Curtis, who made his directorial debut with this effort, is a veteran screenwriter who has long effective in combining romance and comedy (Bridget Jones’s Diary, Notting Hill, Four Weddings and a Funeral for romantic comedies, most of Rowan Atkinson’s oevre for pure comedy) and I think he’s really put it all together for Love Actually. The film is a melange of vignettes on different types of love, elegantly stitched together, and elevated to a lofty whole by an excellent cast. Grant is definitely a personal favorite, as is Emma Thompson playing his (younger?) sister–her Much Ado About Nothing is in my all-time Top 10–married to philandering Alan Rickman.

Love can be wonderful, sweet, endearing, unanticipated but also hard, painful, demanding, disappointing and unrequited, and Curtis covers them all. This is on my Top 5 for the year and I don’t expect that to change.

Definitely recommended

Thank you Bank One

The nice people at the bank which holds the paper on my 4Runner’s loan sent me a letter saying that to celebrate the coming holidays I can skip my December payment. $279 isn’t a huge amount of money but in my situation it surely is helpful. The letter stated that I would be liable for additional interest at the end of my loan, so to be sure I wasn’t getting into something more expensive than it would be worth I called and asked. But according to the rep, the only effect is to move the December 2003 payment to somewhere in early 2008. Seems to me like a four year and a few months interest-free loan and I’ll be taking it. This is not the first time I’ve gotten a good break and good service from Bank One, I need to keep that in mind next time I need a loan or something similar.

Oh yeah!

Landon Donovan did it again, babies, scoring the golden goal tonight in the 117th minute of the MLS Western Conference finals to lead the Earthquakes to a 3-2 win over Kansas City. Second game in a row that the Quakes had to come from behind and did. I thought the referee wasn’t all there and missed badly on a foul in the box that he didn’t call that would have given San Jose a penalty about two minutes before the winner. But, oh yeah, Landon was the Man!