"People ask me what I do in winter when there's no baseball. I'll tell you what I do, I stare out the window and wait for spring." - Rogers Hornsby

:: Thursday, November 06, 2003 ::

Movie Review: "The Station Agent"

So, we decided to go see this movie today, the one we were supposed to have seen via screening on Monday.

And we nearly got a private screening. At 3:10 on Thursday, there were only three other people in the theater: a man alone, who came in after the trailers started, and two older women, who I was worried about because they were speaking very loudly to each other before the movie started, and people like that often yak to each other throughout the film -- seriously, can anyone tell me why people think they have the right to do that? -- but they didn't.

This film fits the definition of "quirky". I don't even know how to begin to describe the characters, only to tell you who they are.

The oddly named "Fin" is a dwarf. I know it's not politically correct to say that, but the character himself calls himself that, so who am I to argue? He loves trains. Watching trains, repairing model trains, reading about trains. He works in a model train shop. When the owner dies and the shop is sold, Fin inherits some land and an old train depot in the bizarrely named town of Newfoundland, NJ, which I thought had been made up for the film, but in fact (click above) is a real town in north-central New Jersey, about 50 miles northwest of New York City. He goes to live in the depot, and watch the trains go by. He's not really the "station agent", but as he tells one of the other characters later, that's who lived there before.

The pace is really slow as we meet several other "quirky" characters: Joe, who operates a mobile hot dog stand that sets up near the depot every day (but who never seems to sell a single hot dog), and whose father is ill and constantly calling Joe via cellphone to do one thing or another; Cleo, a grade school student who wants Fin to come speak at her school about trains; Emily, who has recently moved to the area from Arizona (why, we never find out), has an abusive boyfriend and is attracted to Fin in what appears to be a genuine way; and most importantly, Olivia (Patricia Clarkson), who lives alone in a house on a hill and apparently has no job, and no one else in her life, but we learn differently very quickly.

The three main characters are Fin, Joe and Olivia, and Olivia meets Fin when she nearly runs him over with her car -- twice. The three of them hang out together, and talk, almost mindlessly. We learn about events in their lives that make them do this, and although at the beginning of the film you are almost saying, "Huh? Why do I care at all about these people?", you learn how deep their lives are, how much pain they are all in, and how they got to both the physical and emotional place they inhabit.

Peter Dinklage, who plays Fin (short for the even more preposterous name "Finbar"), is very brave to play this role, where the character wants very much to be accepted simply as a human being, rather than a dwarf, and for the most part is so. We are jarred into reality on a couple of occasions where we see the cruelty of those who want to make fun of people like that, and it's easy to put yourself in that place.

This movie made me think, and I liked that. Only Clarkson (who's been in "Far From Heaven", "The Untouchables", and "The Dead Pool", among others) and Richard Kind (best known for his role in the TV series "Spin City") are well known in this cast, and Kind's role is minor. The rest of these relatively unknown actors are all so realistic, even as odd as they are, that they absorb you into this weird, but ultimately fascinating, story.

AYRating: *** 1/2

:: posted by Al at 7:06 PM [+] ::
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Cubs Convention

The 2004 Cubs Convention, scheduled for January 16-18, sold out in three hours yesterday, the fastest sellout ever.

Just for grins, go on over to eBay, type "Cubs convention" (without the quotes) in the search box, and see for yourself what these passes are now selling for.

Face value is $40.

:: posted by Al at 4:44 PM [+] ::
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Movie Review: "The Human Stain"

As a member of the Directors Guild of America, I often get invitations to movie screenings, especially this time of year when it's getting toward time to vote for awards (we vote for many DGA awards including Best Director, which is often an indicator of who will win the Best Director Oscar).

So I receive in the mail an invitation to a screening last night of "The Station Agent", playing at the Esquire Theater on Oak Street. It required an RSVP to a phone hotline at Miramax in New York, which I gave.

When we got to the theater the ticket agent waved us inside (I brought the letter), whereupon we found... no one. Usually there's someone in charge of these screenings. So we went up to the theater floors, where we found... the movie wasn't playing. Not on any of the six screens.

Having gone all the way there (and gotten a parking space for free within a block of the theater, almost impossible to do near Oak Street), we decided to see another movie, and the one with the time closest to what we were supposed to see was "The Human Stain", which I wanted to see anyway.

This movie got very good reviews in both the Chicago Sun-Times (Roger Ebert) and the Chicago Tribune (Michael Wilmington).

There is a major plot development that is a real spoiler if it's revealed. Ebert chose to reveal it; Wilmington didn't. I won't reveal it here.

Anthony Hopkins plays a professor and dean at a small liberal-arts college in Massachusetts, who is accused of racism because of an offhand remark he makes in a class. When you see this you'll see how ridiculous the charge is, and the movie does make a powerful statement against political correctness.

It forces him to resign (he was near retirement anyway), and his wife, angry about the charges, almost literally dies in his arms.

Then the fun starts, as he meets a novelist (Gary Sinise), who Hopkins wants to write his story, and also a woman (a nearly unrecognizable Nicole Kidman) who is more than she seems. Despite the age difference, they begin a love affair which, in this insular college community, further scandalizes the heretofore-untouchable reputation that Hopkins has built.

We find out, through flashbacks, about his life growing up, and I can't say more without giving away the crucial plot point. Suffice to say that as good an actor as Anthony Hopkins is, he's not totally believable in this role, and some of the other casting is equally odd. I did like Ed Harris as Kidman's ex-husband who apparently has post-traumatic stress disorder from serving in Vietnam -- Harris is terrific at this type of role. We also learn about Kidman's life, and how these two people, one who seems at the top of life, the other at the bottom, find common ground.

The movie moves very slowly, but that's not a criticism; the story is absorbing and makes you think, and it does indeed make a powerful statement not only about political correctness, but about how racial issues have in many ways defined this country in the last 60 years, and are still doing so.

There's a great scene in which Hopkins and Sinise dance together; it's totally unexpected, but makes great sense in its context.

Digression: Gary Sinise graduated the same high school that I did, one year earlier. I didn't know him, but knew of him. He was active in the high school theater program, and had the general reputation of someone who was going places. Only a couple years after graduation, he, John Malkovich, and Laurie Metcalf, among others, founded the Steppenwolf Theater, and that started him on his way to becoming one of the best actors of our generation. I'd say he's perhaps the most famous person who ever attended my high school.

And I still do want to see "The Station Agent".

AYRating: *** 1/2

:: posted by Al at 1:02 PM [+] ::
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The New Soldier Field



The last time I was at a Bears game was September 2, 1979, at the old Soldier Field, one of the dullest games in NFL history, a 6-3 Bears win over the Packers. I remember coming back to the home of my friend who had taken me, to learn that the Cubs, who were marginally in contention that day, had lost their game to the Dodgers in Los Angeles 6-2 on a Davey Lopes grand slam in the bottom of the 9th.

Anyway, that's a digression. Jeff, who has both Cubs and Bears season tickets, offered me two for today's game, and wanting to see the new Soldier Field, I took my son Mark and hied on down to the lakefront.

First, I was glad that the weather was going to be at least decent; forecasts had some rain, but temperatures in the 50's, and it's been much worse at a lot of April Cub games. Of course, they don't allow umbrellas at any NFL game, so I brought a poncho, but didn't need it. The sun actually peeked through for a few minutes and the rain didn't start until after we got off the L train in the Loop for the car ride home.

It's fairly easy to get to the new stadium if you park downtown (I have a monthly pass at work, so parked there and took the train), and the L stop, though a bit far at Roosevelt and State, is easily walkable. The police have various places barricaded, so you have to walk a bit north, through Grant Park, then back south to the stadium. That's mistake #1, I think -- there should have been several more pedestrian underpasses to get out of the stadium, though I can imagine they didn't want any directly west of the place, as that would let thousands of pedestrians out in the new residential neighborhood. It's only a minor inconvenience.

About the stadium: the sightlines are great. The photo posted above (apologies for the graininess; that's a camera-phone photo) was taken from the seats, second row, second level in the southwest end zone. You can see clearly, and nothing is obstructed. I'd hate to be high up in the upper level; it looks Ballmall-like in its steepness, but even from there, from a football standpoint, you can see everything. The fact that the "spaceship" (or "toilet bowl", if you prefer) design completely encloses the stadium accomplishes two things: first, it cuts whatever wind there is down to virtually nothing inside. Even the 55-degree temperature never felt as cold as such a temp does at Wrigley Field. Second, it makes the place really loud. If the Bears ever have a good team, this will make for a huge homefield advantage. The fans in the third level in the corners have already figured out that you can make it even louder by banging on the steel facing that's on the corners of the upper deck.

The rest of the place is fairly pedestrian. It's very concrete-and-steel, and though they've put a lot of Bears history and memorabilia inside, it still feels kind of sterile. Food choices are pretty spare, at least the ones I found: your basic hotdogs, pizza and beer. There is one fairly large souvenir store at the northwest corner, but the lines, even an hour before game time, were horrendously long, and so was the line at the one souvenir stand I found on the middle levels.

Walking among the colonnades (which you couldn't do at the old stadium -- they were shut off to the public, now open) kind of gives you a feeling of being in a museum -- you can see the seating bowl above, and the old concrete columns, which haven't really been touched, just spruced up a little bit, feel like they've been there for centuries, not just 75 years.

The JumboTron boards, one at each end of the field, keep up with the game action if you are too far from the field, but I rarely looked at them. The way they kind of stick out from the upper levels, they appear (especially the north one) to be leaning over, which is a very strange effect. Though there are plenty of large game and play clocks, there isn't a single time-of-day clock in the place, which is kind of disconcerting. On the facade, where they keep the downs and score, there is a rudimentary out-of-town scoreboard, but they keep switching off of it to show relatively useless information like "Bears FG % - 2 for 2 - 100%". Like we couldn't figure that out for ourselves. Most of the scoreboard and PA announcements, of course, are filled with advertising. Geez, even the national anthem is sponsored, which I found tasteless.

Twenty-four years later, I don't remember whether they did this back then, but the fans amuse themselves when the PA announcer says "There's a time out!" Everyone replies, "Where?", and then the PA guy replies, "On the field!"

Funny a couple of times, I suppose.

As for the game itself, a 20-7 win for the Bears over the San Diego Chargers, the Bears' second win in a row, the Bears actually looked like a real football team, though how much of that is them and how much is the fact that the Chargers really look horrible, is debatable. The only life that the Chargers showed was when 41-year-old Doug Flutie took over at quarterback, leading San Diego to its only touchdown. He got a warm ovation from Bears fans who remember his years here. And it was 38-year-old Chris Chandler having a good day, 21-for-30 passing for 224 yards (his first 200-yard day in almost two years), leading the Bears down the field nearly at will through a defense that looked like it wanted to be anywhere but at Soldier Field today.

I couldn't find a box score with attendance figures, but it didn't look like too many no-shows today, maybe 2,000 or so, which would have made the crowd just under 60,000.

The new stadium is a definite improvement over the old, but then, a circus tent would have been better than the smelly, dirty mess that Soldier Field had become by 2001. The sightlines are great, the access OK, the amenities average. I give it a "very good" rating, not excellent, but a good addition to the public institutions of our city.

I just wish they had spent the extra money to put a retractable roof on the place, which would have made it suitable for dozens more events every year.

:: posted by Al at 5:07 PM [+] ::
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