Julie & Julia

Another summer hit from my beloved Meryl Streep!! This actress is blessed with so much talent that she's able to single-handedly make a movie successful even when, by all Hollywood standards, it should fail.

Not only is this movie a light, girly type of picture, it also features female leads and plays in the summer. By all accounts, it shouldn't go anywhere. Unless that is, one of the two female leads is the greatest actress alive.

After the delightful The Devil Wears Prada and Mamma Mia!, which I haven't seen yet, Meryl strikes gold again with her portrayal of the famous Julia Child, a woman whose main talent seemed to be perseverance.

A record smashing 15^th Oscar Nomination seems all but assured for Streep, but the rumors are growing that she might finally be handed a long overdue third statuette, which I ardently hope.

The movie is a constant intertwining of two women's stories: Julia Child is in Paris, where she learns how to cook and starts writing the cookbook that will make her famous once back in America; Julie Powell is in New York and, feeling like a total failure at everything, decides to keep a blog of her effort to cook all the over 500 recipes in Child's book in a year.

Although it doesn't sound like much when put that simply, the script and editing move the plot along deftly. Streep is the usual powerhouse, but Amy Adams as Powell is good too and so are Chris Messina, who plays Julie's husband, and Stanley Tucci, who play's Julia's.

The movie made me happy and sad, angry and euphoric and effortlessly took me from the romantic views of 1950s Paris to the polished look of Child's kitchen kept for posterity in the Smithsonian's.

If you like Streep (or food) this movie's for you.

Grade: 8

Robots

A cute animated movie that is very pleasing on the eyes but whose story left me wanting, mostly because we've seen it before in many guises.

Think of the classic story of the guy who dreams of making it big thanks to a talent he has in order to improve the lives of others but who finds himself in a bad spot. Now replace the humans with a bunch of robots and you have this.

I'm not saying it's bad, but it's neither original nor inventive.

The animation, like I said, is pretty good but there isn't much else here to see.

Grade: 5

The 61st Primetime Emmy Awards

Last night's ceremony was brisk and elegant with the right amount of originality and a few surprises.

The host, Neil Patrick Harris, did an excellent job and I wouldn't be surprised if he were soon asked to host the Oscars, given that he's fast becoming an industry darling when it comes to successfully hosting award events. It doesn't hurt that he's gay and very cute.

The big winners of the night were:

• HBO, with the highest number of wins (21) out of the highest number of nominations (99);
• 30 Rock, taking home the Best Comedy award for the third time in a row;
• Mad Men, winning for Best Drama for the second time in a row;
• and perennial favorites The Amazing Race (the new season starts next Sunday, and I can't wait) and The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.

Other big winners were Glenn Close (Damages), Alec Baldwin (30 Rock), and Bryan Cranston (Breaking Bad) for winning a second time in a row for their work.

I was very happy for Toni Collette (who plays 5 characters in one in United States of Tara) and Jessica Lange (for Grey Gardens -- because I like her, even though I wouldn't recognize her anymore with all the work she's had done).

I felt very bad for Neil Patrick Harris, who Ray tells me is very good in How I Met Your Mother and whom I wanted to see win because he is openly gay and plays a womanizer on prime TV, thereby invalidating a lot of stereotypes.

I was surprised by Michael Emerson's win (Lost) even though he totally deserves it (he's wickedly good in the part of the bad guy) and Kristin Chenoweth (Pushing Daisies) and judging from her reaction, so was she.

A good ceremony whose new format, splitting the awards in segments based on their type (Comedy, Miniseries-Made for TV Movies, Reality, Variety, and Drama) made sense and increased the overall cohesiveness, making for a more organic experience.

However, I do wish they hadn't opened with Comedy, perpetuating its lesser status when compared to Drama. Given the innovation of the new format, to a minimum, they could have awarded Best Drama first at the end of the night, perhaps starting a trend were Comedy and Drama's top prizes alternate their order at the end of the show.

Other than that, an entertaining night.

In Memoriam

Patrick Swayze
1952-2009

Another well known and beloved actor has passed away. The cause, once more, was cancer.

I've seen a few of Swayze's movies, most memorably, Dirty Dancing, Ghost and Red Dawn, and while I didn't consider him a great actor, he could hold his own.

Mostly, he brought to the screen a raw masculinity and handsomeness that was magnetic and forced you to watch his every move.

I remember him from a TV Miniseries as well, North and South, and TV was were he had been planning a short lived comeback by starring in a new series that obviously suffered from his inability to nurture it properly.

Swayze was only 57 years old.

Misery, by Stephen King

I watched the 1990 movie adaptation and loved it, so given that King is one of my favorite authors, this book had been on my to-read list for a long time, and it didn't disappoint.

As I expected, the book has a lot more going on than what I remembered from the screen version, and it elicited fearful reactions and anxiety even though I generally knew what was going to happen.

King is a master of the horror genre and this is one of his best products, but I also have to give Kathy Bates and James Caan their dues, because the whole time I was reading, their faces were the ones I'd see. Their portrayals were so good that for all intents and purposes, they have become Annie Wilkes and Paul Sheldon respectively.

The story, briefly, is that of Paul Sheldon, famous writer, stranded by a car accident in a snowstorm at Annie Wilkes' secluded house. Wilkes takes care of him, while at the same time keeping him captive. Will Sheldon, once he realizes the gravity of the situation, manage to survive what she puts him through and maybe find a way out?

A must read.

Grade: 9

In Memoriam

Raymond Martin Acunto
February 2, 1930 - August 18, 2009

Ray's father passed away last month after several years of slow health decline due to many ailments that had left him pretty much unable to be self-sufficient. The past couple of years had been particularly trying for both him and his beloved wife Mary.

Big Ray, as I always referred to him to differentiate between him and my Ray, was a fun loving, people person, who never disliked chatting with someone. Being of Italian descent, he and I viewed many things the same way, especially when it came to money, which probably endeared me to him while the rest of the family shook their heads ...

I sadly realized recently that I never knew Big Ray as a healthy individual. By the time I met him in 1997 he had already suffered a heart attack and a stroke, and was virtually legally blind as a result of years of undetected glaucoma. All that had left him pretty much dependent on others for anywhere he needed or wanted to go or even for simple tasks like reading a newspaper column.

Luckily for him, he was gifted with such a bright and optimistic personality that I never heard him complain about anything, even though he had plenty of justifiable reasons to do so. Whenever you asked him how he was doing, he'd say "Perfect!" or "Wonderful!," and would immediately ask how you were doing.

Many times I felt like saying, "Oh boy, who cares how I'm doing, are you sure you're doing fine??" But I guess that's just who he was. He took life the way it came and never complained. I believe he considered himself fortunate and was content with what he had. He was a glass half-full kinda guy.

Big Ray had been a teacher, the perfect job for a guy who liked meeting and talking to people, and he used whatever leverage he had throughout his career to help others, whether students or teachers, get more work or better opportunities.

Big Ray was probably the biggest influence in my husband's life. So many times Ray told me he became a teacher because he was proud of what his father had accomplished, and most of all, Big Ray was the main reason Ray wanted kids of his own, to be for them what his father had been for him. So far, I'd say he's doing an exemplary job.

I see so much of Big Ray in my husband and I occasionally tease him about it, "Just like Big Ray ... ," but it's always done to point how the positive in his behavior. Big Ray was a guy you were wise and right in emulating and whose example deserved to be followed.

He leaves behind a wife with whom he shared 41 years of ups and downs in marriage (plus five more before their wedding), a son and daughter, and three grandchildren who will never forget him. Towards the end, he used to say he was about to rejoin his adored son David, who left us unexpectedly two years ago.


Ray told me a few times already that he misses talking to his dad. I know it's true, but in a way I feel like he can always talk to him. Big Ray was such an open book, you always knew what he was going to say when you asked him what decision would be best or what advice he'd give you.

He's now gone, but he's still always with us.

Goodbye Big Ray. Rest in peace.

Visual Effect

I love visual effects in movies, especially when they look awesome, are used to great effect, seamlessly blend into the story, and aren't self serving.

I guess that's why I often skirt the summer blockbusters, because even though they overflow with visual effects, they have so little to say, your eyes feel raped, but your soul feels dumped.

Anyway, here's a cool clip about visual effects throughout the years:

Delusional quote of the day

From Towleroad, here's how new Utah Governor Gary Herbert, who is against anti-discrimination laws that include sexual orientation, justifies his pathetically delusional views:

"I don't believe sexual orientation should be a protected class in the way that race, gender and religion are. We don't have to have a rule for everybody to do the right thing. We ought to just do the right thing because it's the right thing to do and we don't have to have a law that punishes us if we don't."

In Utah it is legal to fire someone for being gay or transgender, which pretty much sums up the stupidity of the statement of the highest official in the state saying that "we should all do the right thing because it's the right thing to do."

Then again, in his warped mind view, doing the right thing probably does include firing someone simply because he's gay.

Prop Hate

I was in Italy when the California Supreme Court decided to uphold Prop 8, or, as it has come to be known, Prop Hate, so I never posted about it, but I think a quick comment is warranted.

Obviously, I think they made a big mistake. While a year prior 4 courageous justices decided to uphold the rights of every individual, this time 3 of them bent to the threats of being recalled by the religious right and forever stained their legacy.

Thankfully, they let the 18,000 marriages performed before the passage of Prop Hate stand, but that's a small consolation. Actually, they virtually created a new class of people in California.

I'm no lawyer, but a lot of constitutional scholars were surprised not really by the decision (they were expected to uphold Prop 8), but by the language in the opinion, lacking any hints of limiting what people can do to the Constitution and practically denting their own opinion from a year earlier.

A few excerpts from a series of articles I read once back from our vacation.

The California Supreme Court's decision Tuesday to uphold Proposition 8 and existing same-sex marriages left in place all rights for California's gays and lesbians except access to the label "marriage," but it provided little protection from future ballot measures that could cost gays and other minorities more rights, lawyers and scholars said Tuesday.
[...]
Proposition 8 merely "carves out a narrow and limited exception" to the state constitutional protection gays and lesbians now receive, Chief Justice Ronald M. George wrote for the majority.

The court majority said same-sex couples would continue to have the right to choose life partners and enter into "committed, officially recognized and protected family relationships" that enjoy all the benefits of marriage under the state's domestic partnership law.

"Like opposite-sex couples, same-sex couples enjoy this protection not as a matter of legislative grace, but of constitutional right," George wrote.

UC Berkeley constitutional law professor Goodwin Liu said the ruling shows "the court continues to be very deferential to the processes of direct democracy in California."
[...]
But the court's definition of what would be an impermissible constitutional revision was also narrow and left gay rights activists nervous and several legal scholars skeptical.

"It leaves us to the kindness of strangers," said Jon W. Davidson, legal director of Lambda Legal, a gay rights organization. "They could take away anything."
[...]
Justice Carlos R. Moreno dissented, calling the ruling "not just a defeat for same-sex couples, but for any minority group that seeks the protection of the equal protection clause of the California Constitution.

"The rule the majority crafts today not only allows same-sex couples to be stripped of the right to marry," Moreno wrote, "it places at risk the state constitutional rights of all disfavored minorities."

Gay rights advocates and several legal scholars said they were surprised that the court did not attempt to rein in constitutional amendments.

"For the court to see only structural changes as those requiring a greater majority is perhaps the worst feature of the opinion today," said Pepperdine University law professor Douglas W. Kmiec, who voted for Proposition 8 on religious grounds. "It makes it much too casual for individual rights to be withdrawn."

An opinion piece:

This decision raises the obvious question: “why did the California Supreme Court first rule that there is a fundamental right to marriage equality and then rule that the voters can take that away?”
[...]
The Court made clear that today’s decision was not a ruling about whether there should be a right to marry in California; it was a ruling about whether the California Constitution, as written, permits the voters to pass Proposition 8 and thereby limit the right to marry.

Although same-sex couples in California who did not marry before November 4, 2008 are barred from marrying until Proposition 8 is itself repealed, the Court made clear that same-sex couples have a constitutional right to enter into a family relationship (i.e. domestic partnerships) with access to all the constitutionally based rights and responsibilities of marriage.
[...]
I realize, of course, that the right of gays and lesbians to marry in this state has only lately been recognized. But that belated recognition does not make the protection of those rights less important. Rather, that the right has only recently been acknowledged reflects an age-old prejudice that makes the safeguarding of that right by the judiciary all the more critical …

Proposition 8 represents an unprecedented instance of a majority of voters altering the meaning of the equal protection clause by modifying the California Constitution to require deprivation of a fundamental right on the basis of a suspect classification. The majority’s holding is not just a defeat for same-sex couples, but for any minority group that seeks the protection of the equal protection clause of the California Constitution.

Another one:

The decision Tuesday that upheld a state constitutional ban on same-sex marriage was social and moral nonsense.
[...]
Legal precedents notwithstanding -- and the six clearly nervous justices who made up the majority in this case reached all the way back to the state Constitution of 1849 for those -- Tuesday's decision was intellectually and morally incoherent. It essentially tells Californians that a right as fundamental as the ability to choose the marital partner of your choice is a kind of judicial lottery ticket -- if you got in early, you win, but those who arrived a few days late lose. Sorry.

You could feel the justices straining for their convoluted result in every tortured sentence of Tuesday's 6-1 opinion, and it was impossible not to draw comparisons with the moral and legal clarity of the court's ruling last year that the state Constitution guaranteed gays and lesbians the right to wed the partner of their choice.
[...]
Consider this passage from George's latest majority opinion, asserting -- against all reason -- that Proposition 8 did not entirely repeal or abrogate same-sex couples' right to privacy and due process or the "constitutional right of same-sex couples to 'choose one's life partner and enter with that person into a committed, officially recognized and protected family relationship.' " Instead, George wrote, "the measure carves out a narrow and limited exception to these state 'constitutional rights.' "

George went on to argue that Proposition 8 did not abrogate "all of the other extremely significant substantive aspects of a same-sex couple's state constitutional right to establish an officially recognized and protected family relationship and the guarantee of equal protection under the laws."

In other words, gay and lesbian Californians can board the marital bus but must take seats at the rear.

Moreover, denying an entire class of people the right to marry the partner of their choice is a "narrow exception" to the equal protection clause? And it's morally permissible to carve out exceptions to constitutional rights for specific groups, as long as it's done by majority vote?

So, if a majority of Californians voted to "carve out a narrow exception" to California's right to privacy and applied it only to Jews, would it be constitutionally acceptable? If Native Americans were accorded all the protections of the law by a ballot proposition, except the right to marry a non-Indian, would that be legal?

This is social and moral nonsense.

The court tried Tuesday to cover itself with a fig leaf of decency by allowing the 18,000 existing same-sex marriages to stand. It won't work. This is a logically and morally incoherent decision that simply will plunge the state into another round of bitterly divisive initiative politics, while adding fuel to the growing sense that all three branches of California's government have lost the ability to function in the public interest.

Very eloquently written. And they pretty much say it all.

Now two of the brightest lawyers in the country have taken up the fight and raised the bar by suing at the federal level on the grounds that Prop 8 was unconstitutional under the privacy, due process and equal protection guarantees of the US Constitution, a big gamble that makes a lot of gay rights organizations uneasy at the prospect of an unfavorable outcome in a US Supreme Court that currently leans right and won't lightly rule in favor of homosexuals.

We'll see what happens next, but a new battle at the ballot box is inevitable, possibly as early as next year.

A video tribute

Someone put together this great tribute to Meryl Streep's incredible movie career on the occasion of the release of her latest film, Julie and Julia, which I'd love to be able to catch in a theater, maybe with my friend Vittorio, who's about to get here.

Enjoy it.