Miles David Moore

I have an admission to make that, for any film reviewer, must qualify as shameful: I missed Billy Crystal's opening monologue for the Oscar broadcast last Sunday.

And, by definition, I also missed the parade of stars across the red carpet. (I am truly sorry to have missed Sacha Baron Cohen dumping ashes on Ryan Seacrest. I also--BLASPHEMY!--missed the parade of million-dollar fashions, though "Entertainment Weekly" helped me catch up on the haute couture. I agree with EW--Jessica Chastain was the fashion plate of the night, with Gwyneth Paltrow, Michelle Williams and Natalie Portman not far behind.)

My reason for missing the Academy Awards' true raison d'etre is probably inexcusable, although it involved an actor who is no stranger to Oscar. A friend and I had Sunday matinee tickets to see Kevin Spacey as Richard III at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, and we didn't get back from the three-and-a-half-hour production to her home in New Jersey until ten minutes to nine. Granted, Spacey gave a performance that was worth missing quite a few things to see: an old-fashioned bravura performance, both vocally sonorous and physically daring, the sort that Olivier and Burton gave back in the day. IU realize it's unforgivable ever to miss Billy Crystal in blackface, but I hope Melpomene will prevail over Thalia to grant me mercy in this instance.

What else to say? Crystal was mildly amusing, not as funny as in previous years but a vast improvement over the puerile dithering of James Franco and Anne Hathaway last year. Of course there were a few awkward moments--what would Oscar be without them? The pre-presentation badinage between Robert Downey Jr. and Gwyneth Paltrow was obviously scripted, but Paltrow's genuine annoyance with Downey was not. Ditto for the distaste Ben Stiller showed at sharing the stage with Emma Stone, during an equally flatulent scripted exchange.

And the awards themselves? All four of the acting winners, Christopher Plummer especially, gave wonderful acceptance speeches. I was happy to see the major awards for "The Artist," the screenplay award for "Midnight in Paris," and the raft of techncial awards for "Hugo," a movie I'll have more to say about later. But I was sorry to see no nominations whatever for the best film of 2011, Jeff Nichols' "Take Shelter." At least "Take Shelter" wasn't ignored by the Independent Spirit Awards, the results of which I have not yet heard.

And now on to the next movie year...

In two days, the world will celebrate the 200th anniversary of the birth of the man who, by general consensus, is the second-greatest writer in the history of the English language. The acclaim is by no means unanimous: Oscar Wilde, Henry James and Virginia Woolf cringed at Charles Dickens' vulgarity, just as Voltaire, Goethe and Shaw decried William Shakespeare's. But the current issues of the three highly disparate publications I have in front of me now--The Washington Post, Smithsonian Magazine, and The Hudson Review--demonstrate the continuing reverence the world has for Dickens. The focus of the Smithsonian article--the dozenth-or-so film adaptation of Great Expectations, scheduled for release this fall--attests to Dickens' continuing popularity. He was an unrivaled literary superstar during his lifetime, and that star remains undimmed 142 years after his death.

It should be no surprise, however, that even as Dickens' genius is universally acknowledged, his personality continues to be a topic of heated controversy. Those who cherish the deep compassion and humanity of his novels, and who know of the multiplicitous, selfless acts of charity he made during his life, find it dispiriting to learn of his private life. Dickens was a cruel and unfaithful husband, who cast off his wife of 22 years to take up with an actress less than half his age, and an exacting, disapproving father whose nine surviving children crumbled under the weight of his iron fist. Only his son Henry, the only one to inherit anything like his father's superhuman energy and intelligence, had anything approaching his father's success, becoming a barrister, a Queen's Counsel, and a knight of the realm. The others tended to die young and deeply in debt.

Both the Smithsonian and Hudson Review articles cite "Charles Dickens: A Life," Claire Tomalin's recent biography, as a major source. Susan Balee's article in The Hudson Review is essentially a review of the Tomalin biography, which delves deeper into Dickens' private life--particularly his thirteen-year affair with Ellen Ternan--than any previous biography. Balee quotes Tomalin on Dickens' behavior during the affair. "A raging anger broke out at any opposition to his wishes. He used lies as weapons of attack and defense. His displays of self-righteousness were shocking."

A little further down in the same paragraph, Balee cites Tomalin again regarding Dickens' meeting with Dostoyevsky as the best explanation for the extremes of his behavior. "Dickens told the younger Russian writer he had two sides to his nature, one of which was evil. The good side was where his good characters came from, and the evil side created Quilp and Sikes, Squeers and Headstone."

In a footnote, Balee makes her own addition, quoting Dostoyevsky's reply: "Only two people?"

Balee bows to Dostoyevsky's powers of observation, and so do I. For it is plain that if any author in history was the sum total of his characters, it was Dickens. (We don't know enough about Shakespeare to know if that was also true of him. If so, we can only pity Anne Hathaway for having to deal with Macbeth, Iago, and Richard III.) Every last character he created came from the wellsprings of his heart and soul. Oliver Twist and David Copperfield were there; so were Bob Cratchit and Mr. Micawber, Pickwick and Sam Weller, the unrepentant and reformed Scrooge, as well as the aforementioned Quilp and Squeers. But there was one limitation: that multiplicity of personality was singularly, ragingly male. Regarding Dickens' relations with women, it is revealing to note--as Balee and Tomalin do--that Dickens had trouble creating adult women characters who weren't plaster saints. As Balee writes, "He invented not only characters, but the people around him. No wonder he often failed to understand his own closest friends and family members--when they asserted themselves as real people, he was stunned." In this fault, Dickens was different in degree from almost all of humanity, but not I think different in kind from many of us. To what extent do we project the personalities we want to see on the people we love? And to what extent does our unhappiness stem from when they don't react to us the way we expect?

In any case, to quote Dickens' detractor Wilde, "The truth is never plain and rarely simple." So it was with Dickens. From the complexity of his mind and personality came some of the most disarmingly detailed, pulsatingly living fiction ever written. Jonathan H. Grossman, in his Washington Post article on Dickens, warns against regarding Dickens as a moralistic writer. "'A Christmas Carol' aside, he is not writing fables or tracts," Grossman writes. "Don't be fooled into underestimating or trying to draw lessons from the characters' comic names or the fixed phrases they sometimes compulsively repeat. Dickens' characters are never simple or simpletons." Dickens, in the end, was like all of us, only more so. Just as we tend to be different people in different company, Dickens contained multitudes, more multitudes than even Walt Whitman might have imagined. He was greatest when he embraced those multitudes--and, like us, he got into trouble when he tried to oversimplify.

The Oscar nominations came out last Wednesday, and once again I found them less than satisfactory. (Is anyone ever really satisfied with the Oscar nominations?) By now it's become a YouTube staple that a scene from the German film "Downfall"--featuring the great Bruno Ganz as Hitler, ranting at the news that the war is lost--is retooled over and over again, with subtitles expressing the latest disappointing trend in sports, entertainment, etc. Yesterday, I saw the "Downfall" scene once again, this time with Der Fuhrer venting his rage that the Academy passed over Albert Brooks' performance in "Drive" for Best Supporting Actor, nominating Jonah Hill for "Moneyball" instead. "All Jonah Hill did," Hitler shrieks via subtitle, "was stare at Brad Pitt for two hours like a fucking sheep in heat!"

At the risk of being considered a Movie Nazi, I have to agree with the "Downfall" funsters that Brooks' performance as a movie producer-turned-mobster was infinitely more thrilling and charismatic than Hill's as a baseball statistician. (It probably doesn't matter in the long run, because Christopher Plummer has a virtual lock on this year's award with his performance in "Beginners," and deservedly so.) I will extend the grumbling to the Best Actor nominations. The race seems at this point to be between George Clooney for "The Descendants" and Jean Dujardin for "The Artist," and both actors deserve their nominations. I haven't seen "A Better Life," so I can't comment on Demian Bichir's performance. But it is a crime against all things cinematic and thespian that Leonardo DiCaprio for "J. Edgar," Brendan Gleeson for "The Guard" and Michael Shannon for "Take Shelter" were passed over in favor of Brad Pitt for "Moneyball" and Gary Oldman for "Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy." Not that Pitt or Oldman were bad; far from it. But DiCaprio, Gleeson and Shannon were on an entirely higher plane of excellence, in notably more difficult roles. There wasn't even any serious buzz for Gleeson or Shannon, though Gleeson did at least get a Golden Globe nomination.

I have heard many other grumbles about this year's nominations, but these are the ones that bother me the most. So here's my message to Albert Brooks, Leonardo DiCaprio, Brendan Gleeson, and Michael Shannon: for what it's worth, the Miles David Moore/Scene4 Acting Awards, for actors unfalrly slighted at Oscar time, go to you.

Since the January issue is a special double issue, it will be March before any regular film review from me appears again. Here are a few movies I've seen recently that are worth the price of admission with whatever money you have left over from Christmas shopping:

* Early critics' awards nominations have completely ignored Jeff Nichols' Take Shelter,which is a gross injustice. It is a masterpiece of slow-building suspense, about an Ohio road construction worker named Curis (Michael Shannon) beset by nightmares and visions of cataclysmic storms, and becomes obsessed with building a state-of-the-art tornado shelter for his family. The question of whether Curtis is insane or psychic fuels the plot. For my money, Shannon gives the performance of the year, and Jessica Chastain continues her miraculous year as Curtis' mystified but loyal wife.

* Alexander Payne specializes in tragicomic, delicately nuanced movies about decent but flawed people ("Sideways," "About Schmidt") and The Descendants is one of his best. George Clooney, in his best performance to date, is Matt King, decendant of Hawaiian royalty and the islands' first white settlers, who has the sole power of decision over whether his family will keep or sell a multi-thousand-acre seaside wilderness property in Kauai. Simultaneous with this decision, Matt faces decisions on whether to pull the plug on his comatose wife, what to do with his two rebellious daughters, and what to do about his wife's lover, among other things. The tone of "The Descendants" masterfully combines wry wit and melancholy; Payne and cinematographer Phedon Papamichael give us brilliant visuals of a Hawaii that is part beachfront magnificence, part urban Southern California. ("My mainland friends think I live in Paradise," Matt says at one point. "Are they insane?") The very fine cast combines young up-and-comers (Shailene Woodley, Nick Krause), fine character actors in mid-career (Matthew Lillard, Judy Greer), and beloved old hands (Robert Forster, Beau Bridges).

* My Week with Mariyn is Simon Curtis' film adaptation of Colin Clark's memoirs of his brief fling with Marilyn Monroe while serving as a prodiuction assistant on the film "The Prince and the Showgirl." Clark, the son of art historian Sir Kenneth Clark, apparently spent his life believing he alone understood Marilyn--one of many, many men who believed the same. The film, though meticulously made, is fairly lightweight, but the performances of Michelle Williams as Marilyn and of Kenneth Branagh as Laurence Olivier make "My Week with Marilyn" an absolute must-see. The supporting performances of Judi Dench, Zoe Wanamaker, Philip Jackson, Toby Jones, Dominic Cooper, Julia Ormond and Eddie Redmayne are the icing on an airy and elegant cake.

* I'm not particularly enamored of Fozzie Bear using the word "fart," but in every other way The Muppets is a delightful film for the whole family, as well as a worthy return to the big screen for the late Jim Henson's lovable brain-children. Jason Segel and Nicholas Stoller created an enjoyable story about Gary (Segel) a regular guy; Mary (Amy Adams), his loyal girlfriend; and Walter, Gary's brother, who happens to be a Muppet. The story takes the threesome to Los Angeles, where they must reorganize The Muppets to save their movie studio from demolition at the hands of the evil Tex Richman (Chris Cooper). Segel & Co. have great fun in creating stories for Kermit, Fozzie, Miss Piggy, etc. as to what happened to them after going their separate ways, and it effectively demonstrates to a new generation of children the unique lovability of these nubbly-cloth characters--particularly Kermit, an Everyfrog for the ages. When Kermit and Miss Piggy sing "The Rainbow Connection," it's as if The Muppets were always with us. A steady stream of cameo players (Whoopi Goldberg, Alan Arkin, Neil Patrick Harris, etc.) adds to the fun.

With the advent of streaming and on-demand, I'm not even certain people give DVDs as gifts any more. But at least DVDs are still for sale, and so--technological dinosaur that I am--I still give them. Whether my friends and family just smile at me and then put my gifts in the attic with Great-Grandpa's 78s of Guy Lombardo is up to them.

This column was going to be a list of favorite and unfairly neglected films that would make great Christmas gifts or at least great Christmas viewing, but it is going to begin with a burst of outrage at the extreme variation in DVD prices, at least as listed on Amazon. (Given the closure of stores such as Borders and Circuit City, with dwindling DVD stocks at other stores, Amazon, B&N.com and other online dealers are becoming the DVD purveyors of choice.) With the average price of a DVD in the $15-20 range today, it is a travesty that many cinematic masterpieces are being priced out of the market. William Wyler's two greatest films, "Dodsworth" and "The Best Years of Our Lives," are priced in the $40 range, as is Gary Sinise's superb 1992 version of Steinbeck's "Of Mice and Men." All three of these films belong in any good home video library--particularly "Of Mice and Men," which has never received its just due as one of the truly great screen adaptations of a literary classic. (Go on Amazon and see just how many reviewers of the Sinise film say they are teachers who show this film in their classes. This alone is emblematic of the film's high quality and fidelity to its source.) By contrast, the old 1940 version, directed by Lewis Milestone and starring Burgess Meredith and Lon Chaney Jr., is available at a bargain price; you get what you pay for. Even with a score by Aaron Copland, the Milestone "Of Mice and Men" is comparatively crude and tarted-up, making obvious what Steinbeck and Sinise preferred to imply. If you're in a position to see both films, compare the way Milestone films the fatal meeting between Lennie and Curley's wife, with Lon Chaney Jr. and Betty Field, with Sinise's version featuring John Malkovich and Sherilyn Fenn. You'll see exactly what I mean.

If the Sinise "Of Mice and Men" were a Criterion Collection release, I wouldn't be writing this animadversion. Criterion Collection DVDs regularly run in the $30-$40 range, but for that you get lovingly restored prints of hard-to-find foreign films, indie films and major studio releases that somehow fell into obscurity, complete with fascinating documentaries, interviews and critical essays about the making of those films. The Criterion Collection offers luxury DVDs, and again you get what you pay for. Thanks to Criterion, I have "My Dinner with Andre," "Black Narcissus," "The Third Man" and "Au Hasard Balthasar" in my DVD collection.

In some cases the Criterion Collection offers DVDs of certain films in competition with other companies. If you care enough about Herk Harvey's one-of-a-kind "Carnival of Souls" to buy it, then surely it's worth forking out the $35 or so to have the pristine Criterion Collection version, rather than the gapped, scratched, execrable versions released for much less by Rhino Video and others. On the other hand, I have never seen the Criterion release of Ang Lee's much underrated Civil War drama, "Ride with the Devil," which is billed as the "Director's Cut." I would like to see it someday, but meanwhile I don't see anything wrong with the studio DVD, which is available for less than $10.

In any case, there are plenty of excellent DVDs readily availalble at reasonable prices. Some of my favorites include "Laura," "Double Indemnity," "Out of the Past," "L.A. Confidential" and most of the Hitchcock canon (ah, the siren call of the thriller). However, I want to make a pitch for a couple of flims that I think are unfairly obscure.

Billy Bob Thornton's "The Gift" was roasted by critics on its first release--they mocked its Southern Gothic milieu as cliched--and mostly ignored by the public. This is sad, because the film offered a superb cast in an absorbing, supernatural-tinged murder mystery. Cate Blanchett, playing a recently widowed psychic hired by her local Georgia police department to help solve the murder of socialite Katie Holmes, is deeply moving as a young woman who has a gift she never wanted, didn't ask for, but must use simply to make ends meet. The cast includes such stalwarts as Hilary Swank, Greg Kinnear and J.K. Simmons, but besides Blanchett the standouts are Keanu Reeves, surprisingly effective as a mean, violent redneck, and Giovanni Ribisi, who is simply astounding as a mentally and emotionally damaged young man. Ribisi ends up playing the pivotal role in "The Gift:" to say anything more would be sabotage.

I hesitate to recommend "Used Cars," Robert Zemeckis' corrosive 1981 comedy, because it is so raucous, vulgar and altogether un-Christmasy. The raunchiness of "Used Cars" has been mightily eclipsed in the last three decades, but the film still gives off an acidulous odor of raunchiness as it tells the story of two warring bands of used car salesmen who will literally stop at nothing--larceny, graft, FCC violations, even murder--to best each other and flim-flam the public. There's a love story, too--Boy Meets Girl, Boy Loses Girl, Boy and Girl Cheat Little Old Ladies. It's as if the Ben Jonson of "Volpone" collaborated with the John Waters of "Pink Flamingos." Nevertheless, "Used Cars" is replete with hilarious sight gags, and Kurt Russell, playing the plaid-polyester-clad leader of one of the salesman factions, gives unequivocally one of the greatest comedy performances of the 1980s. It's a vital corrective to those who think there is nothing in the Russell filmography except "The Barefoot Executive" and "Tango and Cash."

Finally, for a film that IS Christmasy: the 1948 English version of "A Christmas Carol," starring Alastair Sim, has the reputation of being the classic screen version, and indeed it is very fine. But for my money the best version is the 1984 TV-movie starring George C. Scott. Sim gives the best version of the traditional, crabbed-old-miser Scrooge, but Scott rethinks the role in compelling fashion, portraying Scrooge as a smug, high-powered fat cat--someone you could see in a Wall Street corner office today. Scott's transformation over the course of the spirits' visitation is genuinely moving, and the cast surrounding him is splendid. It includes David Warner and Susannah York as Bob and Mrs. Cratchit, Edward Woodward as the Ghost of Christmas Present, and Frank Finlay as the absolute, guaranteed scariest Marley's Ghost ever. With the ancient Midlands town of Shrewsbury standing in for Victorian London, this moving and colorful "Christmas Carol" should become a seasonal favorite in every home.

The national tour of "Next to Normal," Tom Kitt and Brian Yorkey's Tony- and Pulitzer Prize-winning musical, opened in Washington last night for a two-week run. I didn't see "Next to Normal" in its tryouts at Arena Stage in Washington or its later Broadway run, but better late than never. It is hard to sort out the emotions that grip me after seeing this superb piece of theater. Suffice it to say that this story of a family beset by tragedy and mental illness is moving in a way few plays ever are, and that few actors have seemed more intensely alive on stage than the sextet of actors here. Alice Ripley, reprising her Tony-winning role, has a rich, throbbing contralto that is the perfect instrument for registering every shade of emotion, and Curt Hansen, singing his show-stopping number "I'm Alive," is spectacularly vibrant and charismatic. But the other actors are also brilliant: Asa Somers as the beleaguered husband, Emma Hunton and Preston Sadleir as the young lovers, and Jeremy Kushnier as the psychiatrist who is, perhaps, just a little too fond of himself.

"Next to Normal" contains plot twists and surprises that would be criminal to reveal; if you haven't seen it, go. It will be at the Kennedy Center until July 10, and then it moves on to Charlotte and Toronto.

***

Margaret Tyzack was one of those great English actors who spent a lifetime of hard work to appear effortlessly regal on stage and on screen. I never had the honor of seeing her on stage, but those who did were unanimous in their praise. I have heard reports of her Mrs. Alving in "Ghosts" at the Stratford (Ontario) Festival that made me forever regretful that I missed it. Anyone who saw Tyzack as Antonia in "I, Claudius," an innocent among wolves who took out her frustrations on her disabled, stammering son, knew they were watching a performer of rare accomplishment. Even in that glittering assemblage of Derek Jacobi, Sian Phillips, John Hurt et. al., Tyzack stood out. Of course, she could stick in the memory in even the smallest role, such as the few minutes Woody Allen doled out to her in "Match Point."

One of Tyzack's final appearances was in another Allen movie, "Scoop," in which she was one of a group of shades being ferried across the River Styx. She died in London, of undisclosed causes, on June 25, and I can only wish her a happy eternal sojourn in the Elysian Fields. She earned her place in Paradise.

In the early morning, seeking only solace in quiet music and a cup of freshly brewed coffee, have you ever had the experience of being assaulted by a herd of prancing Lippizzaner stallions, accompanied by a troupe of tumbling circus clowns and a chorus line of high-kicking can-can girls?

If you have, then obviously you have been listening to your local public radio station, and you have been the victim of the unholy alliance of station programming executives and the diabolical Prince of Bad Music, one Francesco Ezechele Ermenegildo Cavaliere Suppe-Demelli, better known to the world as Franz von Suppe.

Von Suppe, a 19th-century Viennese composer, conductor and theater director, produced some four dozen operettas that--inexplicably in the city of Mozart, Beethoven and Brahms--were smash hits in their day. They are largely forgotten now except for their overtures, with the overtures from "Poet and Peasant," "The Jolly Robbers" and "The Light Cavalry" the ones most beloved by programming directors who need something to fill the seven or eight minutes in the morning program between the first movement of the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto and the news from NPR.

In 2011, can anyone REALLY like the music of Von Suppe? (Apparently Sir Neville Marriner and the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields do, since it's their CD of Von Suppe overtures public radio seems to play most often. Oprah Winfrey should go back on the air to make them explain themselves.) To me at least, Von Suppe's overtures contain everything that makes people think they hate classical music: loud, self-important orchestration married to melodies that lack any contour of grace or beauty. The music has some utility, in that it can be heard over prancing ponies and tumbling clowns, but other than that it sounds natural only as an accompaniment to Elmer Fudd chasing Bugs Bunny. (I can't imagine Elmer or Bugs liking the music either.)

What von Suppe's overture most obviously, definitely, egregiously fail at is providing a pleasant listening experience to people who have risen unwillingly from their beds and are contemplating another difficult day of existence in an abrasive world. Unless, of course, you are a circus clown, a can-can girl, or a Lippizzaner stallion.

Let's all join together in a quest to make public radio a von Suppe-free zone. Once we have accomplished this noble goal, we can turn our attention to other goals--such as banning the music of Victor Herbert and Meredith Willson.

If you read the profile of Richard Peabody in today's Washington Post Sunday Magazine, you read the story of someone who has given far more to the Washington literary scene and its denizens than they can ever repay. (The article also contains a cameo appearance by Kim Roberts, of whom the same is true.) The most striking (and galling) portion of the profile, however, is at the beginning, when Rick is at the 15th Annual F. Scott Fitzgerald Literary Conference, waiting to hand out the awards to the short story contest winners, listening to the keynote speech by Jonathan Yardley, the longtime literary editor of The Washington Post.

"The fact of the matter is that the number of respected, certifiably serious novelists now at work within the District of Columbia is embarrassingly small," Yardley is quoted as saying. He then goes on to mock his city as a stagnant literary backwater, before ending with praise of a few "new" Washington writers. The punch line is that Rick Peabody has served as mentor to a good portion of those writers for decades, either as teacher, or publisher, or both.

Lora Engdahl, author of the profile, later quotes Rick as saying he and Kim "were just marveling at that disconnect between life as we see it in the trenches and lit life as Yardley sees it." To that I can only add, "Amen."

I'm no expert on Jonathan Yardley and his views on the Washington literary community, but I can assure him there is an enormous amount of extremely serious literary activity going on in DC and its suburbs. It does not normally reach the attention of the major media, because almost all of it occurs under the aegis of small presses and home-grown reading series. A great deal of it, pace Yardley, deals with everyday life in the nation's capital and its surrounding areas. I can't speak to fiction--like Kim Roberts, I work the poetry side of the street--but as the host of a reading series at IOTA Club and Cafe in Arlington for the past 17 years, I can attest to the existence of hundreds of accomplished poets in the DC area, Occasionally (and always deservedly) a Henry Taylor, a Jean Nordhaus or a Sandra Beasley might break through to a national audience, or an already established poet such as Lyn Lifshin might move here. But most are in the same trenches with Rick Peabody and Kim Roberts, forming small presses, organizing reading series and workshops, supporting each other's efforts, and writing largely because they can't NOT write. They'd love to break through the regional barrier, but for them the work--actually getting the words right on the page, and crafting something that someone, somewhere, might find resonant or memorable--is the true goal.

There are far too many of them for me to name here. I can only point to the IOTA reading last December, in which Kim Roberts hosted a reading for her "Full Moon on K Street" anthology of Washington, D.C.-based poems, at which the readers were Rick Peabody, Robert L. Giron, Francisco Aragon, Jose Padua and Kathi Morrison-Taylor. Two months before, Grace Cavalieri--who has mentored more poets and writers in the D.C. area than Rick Peabody and Kim Roberts combined--hosted an anthology reading at IOTA that included Karren Alenier, Cicely Angleton, Christina Daub, Nan Fry, Barbara Goldberg, Patricia Gray, Katherine J. Williams and Ernie Wormwood. Anne Caston was forced to bow out in October, and Kwame Alexander in December. What these people have done for poetry and fiction in Washington, both individually and taken as a whole, is incalculable. And I could name a hundred more off the top of my head.

I have nothing more to say, except that in a just world, Jonathan Yardley would be Rick Peabody's limo driver. Or maybe Kim Roberts', or Grace Cavalieri's.

As always when I try to make a list of favorite films or favorite anythings, I forgot one. Yes, everybody, I saw Black Swan, and I would put it among those films that weren't my absolute favorites but which I did think had strong merits. Still, if you're looking specifically for gorgeously photographed dance movies with knockout music scores, based on beloved old stories and featuring bummer endings, Black Swan still has to take a back seat behind The Red Shoes, first, and Black Orpheus, second.

Because I'm not one of those film reviewers who makes a living from my reviews, or even one who gets free passes to movies, I don't see enough movies in any given calendar year to make a relevant Top Ten list. I will feel this lack most keenly this year, when the Motion Picture Academy will announce ten instead of five Best Picture nominees for 2010--the first time the Academy has done this since John Barrymore snatched a bottle out of Jackie Coogan's cradle.

The Academy will issue its nominations in a few days, and so in advance of those announcements I will take the step of naming my own favorite movies released in 2010. After the Golden Globes, it is obvious that the Oscar front runner this year will be The Social Network,a deviously exciting movie enhanced by David Fincher's audacious direction, Aaron Sorkin's scintillating dialogue and superb performances by a gifted young cast. However, I personally found The King's Speech more satisfying, Inception more intriguing, and Winter's Bone a greater work of art. Oh well, not all of us will be happy when that magic phrase, "And the Oscar goes to..." is uttered.

Besides these four movies, my favorites in the past year included The Fighter, The Ghost Writer, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, True Grit, Inside Joband Toy Story 3. Movies I liked somewhat less, but still considered considerable achievements, were Blue Valentine, The Secret in Their Eyes, Get Low, Animal Kingdom, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, Shutter Island, I Am Love, and The Town.

Most critics don't bother having a "Most Overrated" or "Most Underrated" category, because their Ten Best and Ten Worst lists implicitly cover those categories. But again, since I see only the movies I choose to see, I find it instructive--if only for myself--to have those categories. My choice for Most Overrated is Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland, intermittently engaging but most often as silly and graceless as Johnny Depp's "Flutterwack" dance. I also was not enchanted by Lisa Cholodenko's The Kids Are All Right. I loved all the performances, but not the screenplay that made Mark Ruffalo's character the whipping boy for Julianne Moore's, and added a blameless Latino gardener as collateral damage. (Not since Steve Buscemi in Ghost World have movie characters received such a raw deal.)

Winner of my Most Underrated prize--an award I'm sure the filmmakers would just as soon forgo--is Raymond De Felitta's City Island, which has received zero Oscar buzz despite a witty screenplay and one of the finest ensemble casts of the year. That Andy Garcia didn't at least rate some award talk for his performance as Vince Rizzo, a corrections officer and aspiring actor who lives his entire life as if he were starring in a Scorsese movie, is rank and festering injustice.

There are plenty of 2010 films that are receiving Oscar buzz that I haven't seen yet: Another Year, Barney's Version, 127 Hours, Rabbit Hole.. I intend to see most or all of them at some point, and when I do, you'll be the first to know. Meanwhile, let's just have fun, as usual, with the awards season, and remember that going home disappointed--whether you're a director, an actor, or just a rank-and-file fan such as myself--is what you should expect. If you do, there's a chance you may be pleasantly surprised.

Daniel Sullivan's extraordinary version of "The Merchant of Venice" is almost certainly sold out for the remainder of its limited run at New York's Broadhurst Theater, but those of you lucky enough to hold tickets have a treat in store. This somber yet thrilling production is the only truly cohesive version of this notoriously problematic play that I have ever seen.

How good is it? Top-billed Al Pacino gives one of the finest performances of his career--and yet he does not dominate the production. Sullivan's overall vision of a stultified, hypocritical Venetian society, in which hatred is ingrained and all protestations of love and affection merely hot air, reinterprets the story for modern audiences with great effectiveness. The production is designed so that all the scenes--whether set in a Venetian prison, Shylock's counting-house or Portia's villa--appear as a series of cages, and the costumes are funereal except for Portia's (fire-engine red in the first half, mauve-pink in the second). Shylock is by no means a hero in this production, but his vituperative rage is not villainy, but the logical reaction to a life filled with both personal and societal oppression. Sullivan includes a wordless scene after the trial, depicting Shylock's forcible baptism in the bowels of a Venetian dungeon; the sheer degradation of the scene, and Pacino's outraged dignity in the face of his ultimate humiliation, are things you won't soon forget. After that scene, it is no surprise that the romantic folderol at the end, involving the exchange of rings and vows of fideltiy, comes across as bitter and acrid--the product of a false and cruel society.

With excellent performances throughout--particularly Lily Rabe as Portia and Byron Jennings as Antonio, as well as Pacino--this "Merchant of Venice" seems bound to become one of Broadway's legendary Shakespearian productions.

There's about a week to go for the Shakespeare Theatre's "Free-for-All" production of "Twelfth Night" at Sidney Harman Hall in Washington, DC. I imagine all the tickets are gone now (though it wouldn't hurt to check); if you have tickets for one of the remaining performances, you are in for a treat. Some critics have been hard on this production, a revival (with a few slight revisions) of a 2008 production of "Twelfth Night." Well, it might not be the most subtle performance of Shakespeare you've ever seen, but it is imaginative, visually stunning, excellently performed, and above all one hell of a lot of fun.

From the opening scene, we are drawn in to this production's special world. It shows Viola (Christina Pumariega) suspended above the stage, rolling in blue light that simulates the action of pounding waves, while below Countess Olivia (Sarah Agnew) walks the stage in darkness, weeping, swathed in mourning black. I cannot think of a better visual way of capturing the polarities of the play, and the production's continuing visual scheme--panels of red roses, multiplying as if by magic as the play's romantic entanglements increase and multiply--is simultaneously cheery and thrilling.

Of the many, many fine performers on stage in this production, I was particularly impressed by the clowns. Chuck Cooper is properly Falstaffian as Sir Toby Belch, Philip Goodwin admirably prissy as Malvolio, Tom Story delightfully pixilated as Sir Andrew Aguecheek. My favorite, however, is Floyd King, who brings a sad, sly, disabused worldliness to the role of Feste, a jester who'll do absolutely anything for you as long as you put a large enough sum in his outstretched hat. At the end, with all misunderstandings explained and all wrongs righted (well, OK, Malvolio's punishment seems a little harsh, but that's the problem with the play), King's Feste appropriates the Fool's Song ("He that hath a little tiny wit...") from "King Lear," putting an appropriately bittersweet cap on Shakespeare's little meditation on life's confusions.

If you're anywhere near Washington, DC, check for tickets--NOW. And remember, they're free!

This was how good Patricia Neal was: when Hollywood wanted to make a TV-movie about her courageous struggle to resume a normal life after a series of strokes, it hired Glenda Jackson to play her.

No one else was quite real enough, or quite regal enough, to suggest Neal, a nonpareil among screen actresses. Her broad, arresting, not-quite-beautiful face and her gravel voice, combined with a screen presence that tended to white out every other performer she appeared with, made her unique. She was equally believable as the imperious rich girl in "The Fountainhead" and the seen-it-all, done-it-all housekeeper in "Hud," and few other actresses--Bette Davis comes to mind, as does the aforementioned Jackson-- could be so commanding and so down-and-dirty at the same time. Neal wasn't quite the right type to assay the role of Elizabeth I, as Davis and Jackson did, but it would have been interesting to see what she might have done with it.

Although Neal's career was blighted by ill health, she maintained a sterling reputation, both as an actress and as a woman of character and courage. Her men done her wrong--Gary Cooper, Roald Dahl--and so did her body. But her spirit remained strong, as did her talent. From her first screen appearances in the 1940s to her last in Robert Altman's "Cookie's Fortune," she always brought to the screen the fascination of an idiosyncratic yet solid personality.

One of my favorite all-time moments in the cinema belongs to her. In Elia Kazan's "A Face in the Crowd," she plays a reporter hopelessly in love with a monstrous TV superstar she helped to create, played by Andy Griffith. When Griffith jilts Neal for Lee Remick, Neal reviles him in a towering rage. But the truly magnificent moment comes after Griffith leaves: the raw, wounded-animal sound that emanates from Neal, lasting no more than a couple of seconds, suggests a depth of pain the cinema has rarely portrayed. It is that raw reality that made Patricia Neal great.

I am listening to WETA-FM right now, and their big Brahms-Tchaikovsky birthday bash. It makes a convenient programming ploy for the station, because Brahms and Tchaikovsky shared a May 7 birthday (Brahms in 1833, Tchaikovsky in 1840). Wherever the souls of Brahms and Tchaikovsky are residing now, they must be gnashing their spectral teeth, for each had a deep, abiding detestation of the other's music. Tchaikovsky went so far as to call Brahms "a talentless bastard" in a letter to a friend, and I don't think they even choose to make public what Brahms said about Tchaikovsky!

One wonders if in the future there will be pretexts for Leonardo-Michelangelo weekends, Voltaire-Rousseau weekends or Hemingway-Faulkner weekends, to name three other pairs of implacable antagonists. With the passage of time and the hard-wiring of all these names into the Canon of Western Civilization, the idea of these artists being enemies seems ineffably ridiculous. And so it is with Brahms and Tchaikovsky: Brahms hated Tchaikovsky's music, and Tchaikovsky hated Brahms' music, which is proof positive that they were idiots. Anyone who hears the third movement of Brahms' Third Symphony, or the opening of Tchaikovsky's Serenade for Strings, can only agree. Meanwhile, I will continue to listen to WETA this morning, to treat myself to some of the most beautiful music of the 19th century.

I don't pretend to have anything deep to say here, but I cannot help but note several recent show-biz obituaries. The first is that of Corey Haim, who died under mysterious (or perhaps not so mysterious) circumstances at the age of 38. As a teenager Haim starred in two semi-popular films, "The Lost Boys" and "Lucas," then spent the next 20 years in a blur of drug arrests and straight-to-video work.

Following closely on the news of Haim's death were the obituaries of Peter Graves and Fess Parker, two beloved TV stars who had long and extremely successful careers, and who retained the affection and gratitude of millions of fans throughout their long, happy and dignified lives.

So whose demise got the lion's share of the press coverage?

Why, Corey Haim's, of course!

A hundred years ago, the satirist George Ade noted that as far as fame in the newspapers is concerned, it is much better to jump off the Williamsburg Bridge than to be a professor emeritus at Harvard. And as went the newspapers in Ade's day, so go the blogs in ours.

In fairness, though, it's also possible to gain publicity because of a long, happy and dignified life. The same front page of the USA Today Style Section that announced Corey Haim's demise also carried a story about the 88-year-old Betty White being tapped to host a special Mother's Day edition of "Saturday Night Live," after a widespread Internet campaign by her fans to gain her that honor.

Of course the very names "Sue Ann Nivens" and "Rose Nylund" are enough to conjure warm feelings in the hearts of all sitcom fans. But by chance I happened to rent Otto Preminger's 1962 political thriller "Advise and Consent" from Netflix a few days after reading the USA Today story, and there in a small but important role was Betty White as the Honorable Senator from Kansas, holding her own on screen with the likes of Henry Fonda, Charles Laughton and Walter Pidgeon. And now she will get to hold her own on screen with the likes of Tina Fey, Rachel Dratch and Amy Poehler, all of whom are returning to the show for that episode.

You go, girl.

The passing of J.D. Salinger has caused readers from 17 to 75 to moan for their lost youth, and literary agents from New York to Nanking to salivate over the putative unpublished (and undestroyed) manuscripts that must, they assume, be lying in lovely and squalid piles all across Cornish, N.H. I too have read "The Catcher in the Rye," and of course I read it at 16, the same age as its protagonist, Holden Caulfield. Holden will always be 16, whereas I am nearly 55; on the other hand, unlike Holden, so far I have eluded the shrinks.

I liked "The Catcher in the Rye," but it wasn't a life-changing experience for me. Holden moved me in some ways, but his experiences did not particularly resonate with me. I can't really explain why; they just didn't. I disliked "Franny and Zooey," the only other book by Salinger (not that there are that many) that I have ever read. I read the rather charming interview in the Washington Post with Roger Lathbury, proprietor of the tiny Orchises Press in my current home town of Alexandria, Va., about how he almost became Salinger's last publisher. Salinger dropped Lathbury the way he dropped everyone else in his life, without apology or explanation. I look at the one picture of Salinger the author ever allowed to be released to the public, and see an unpleasant, Mailereseque combination of physical and intellectual bully--the kind of guy who'd beat you up in the parking lot and add a few withering insults from La Rouchefoucauld for good measure.

Personally I was much more affected by the news of the death of Jean Simmons, who would have turned 81 tomorrow. Whereas Salinger for me was The Catcher in the Rye, Jean Simmons was Black Narcissus, Elmer Gantry, Spartacus, Young Bess, David Lean's Great Expectations, and Olivier's Hamlet (to which, of course, Holden Caulfield famously and dismissively refers). Although I was never exactly a rabid fan of Jean Simmons, she was much more a part of my mental landscape than J.D. Salinger ever was. Simmons was the last of the breathtaking trio of beauties who graced Black Narcissus (the other two, Deborah Kerr and Kathleen Byron, have already been eulogized on this blog). Of the three, Simmons possessed the most delicate and heartbreaking beauty; with her sloe eyes, high English cheekbones and delicate creamy skin, she had a face on which men could write whatever fantasy they chose. It was her great misfortune that one of those men was Howard Hughes, who repaid her rebuff of his sexual advances by hobbling her career. She was never quite as famous as she deserved to be, partly because of Hughes' treachery but also partly because she did not have the sort of talent that called attention to itself. She was not a diva, just an actress of great sensitivity, nuance and charm. As one critic said, Simmons was so good from such a young age that audiences took her excellence for granted.

I have no particular thoughts to sum up this entry, just an image: a crew-cut teenager in raincoat and deerstalker cap, huddled in an Upper East Side moviehouse, watching a girl in blonde pigtails as she floats in a stream near Elsinore, the water soaking her long velvet dress.

At the urging of a friend, I finally watched the 1953 Dr. Seuss cult classic, "The 5,000 Fingers of Doctor T," all the way through. I had seen bits and pieces of it on TV, and my overall impression of it from those viewings was unchanged from seeing the whole thing via Netflix DVD: wildly uneven, alternating between the delightful, the off-putting and the '50s-style didactic. But one part I remembered as brilliant seemed even more so this time: the sublime Dr. Seuss-Frederick Hollander song, "Do-Me-Do Duds," sung by the eponymous Doctor T with gusto and aplomb as a retinue of valets dresses him in a hilariously, Seussically elaborate uniform. Visually and musically, the song is a stunner, but best of all is the actor playing Doctor T: the great, unique, too-little-remembered Hans Conried.

I was an odd, anti-social child, given to long flights of fantasy. Various cartoon characters and TV actors were more intimate childhood companions to me than any of the neighborhood kids. My playmates included all pre-Scooby-Doo Hanna-Barbera cartoon characters, especially Huckleberry Hound; Dennis the Menace, both the cartoon character and as embodied by Jay North; Agnes Moorehead (Endora on "Bewitched"); Donna Douglas (Elly May on "The Beverly Hillbillies"); and Fess Parker (I was too young for Davy Crockett, but old enough for Daniel Boone). But one of the most important, with his sardonic expression and grandiloquent voice, was Hans Conried.

Conried of course was one of the busiest voice-over artists in the business; he was Captain Hook in Disney's "Peter Pan" and Snidely Whiplash in "Dudley Do-Right," among many, many others. He also appeared on many TV programs, mostly sitcoms. He was Danny Thomas' crazy Uncle Tonoose on "Make Room for Daddy;" he was the overbearing diction teacher on "I Love Lucy" who forced Lucy, Ricky, Fred and Ethel to sing a flowery madrigal of his own composition; he was the pixilated aviator on "Gilligan's Island" who just couldn't believe Gilligan, the Skipper, Thurston Howell III, etc., actually wanted off their island paradise. But I knew him best from "Fractured Flickers," the Jay Ward-produced show he hosted, which presented fragments of silent films with comic voice-overs, anticipating Woody Allen and "What's Up, Tiger Lily?" "Fractured Flickers," when it's remembered at all, is condemned for cutting up and trivializing great silent films, including comedies by Buster Keaton and others that were incomparably greater than what Jay Ward came up with. I probably would agree with that assessment today; but when I was eight years old, I ate it up. It was torture for me, because "Fractured Flickers" aired in my home town at 11:30 Sunday mornings, which was about the time church let out. I remember running home to catch the last few minutes of the show, and gnashing my teeth when the sermon ran over or the pastor called a congregational meeting after the service. But that's beside the point; I realize, now as then, that Hans Conried was all-important to the show. His slightly superior air and painfully crisp diction preserved perfectly the line between tortured seriousness and being totally in on the joke. Some latter-day comedians could take lessons from Conried.

Conried was one of those ever-elegant, all-purpose actors who could be convincing in virtually any role and never, ever, took himself too seriously. Like Vincent Price, he excelled at comic villainy; like Tony Randall (whose father he played on a short-lived sitcom), he cultivated a fussy, self-mocking elegance. Reading up on Conried's life on the Internet, it is no surprise that Conried's father was a Viennese Jewish immigrant and his mother a Connecticut Yankee who traced her ancestry to the Mayflower. Conried's whole persona could best be described as a combination of Middle European scholar and authoritarian WASP fussbudget.

Although Conried has been gone nearly thirty years, he was an actor whose witty and singular presence was always welcome, and deserves to be remembered. I still think I could have done much, much worse for a childhood playmate. Meanwhile, I have placed all three DVDs of "Fractured Flickers" on my Netflix queue. It will be interesting to see if I can go home again.

The personal essay--that most civilized of art forms--has gone somewhat out of fashion in the IT Age, where passionate opinion takes precedence over rational experience. If you look closely in the blogosphere, however, you can find gallant souls who can reflect calmly on topics that have nothing to do with the question of which current public figure is the most ghastly traitor to the United States of America. You can even find bloggers who can write on a wide variety of subjects with elegance and erudition, and even--glory be!--get their facts straight.

Such a blogger is Steven B. Rogers--historian, civil servant, poet and literary scholar--whose blog, Looking Toward Portugal (www.lookingtowardportugal.blogspot.com) is celebrating its first anniversary this month. Rogers has no axes, political or otherwise, to grind; he enjoys reflecting on his life, studies and travels, plumbing them for whatever lesssons and revelations they might present, or sometimes just for the pleasant memories he wants to share.

Like everyone, Rogers has his favorite topics of discussion, though his tend to be wider than is found on most blogs. In one entry, he combined two of his obsessions: the life and works of Thomas Wolfe (he is a former president of the Thomas Wolfe Society) and the state of Maine, which he visits every summer and otherwise as often as he can. His essay on Wolfe's experiences in Maine is a little gem of historical and literary research. Other blog entries have Rogers retracing John Steinbeck's New England travels with Charley; visiting Robert Frost's Mending Wall at Derry Farm in New Hampshire; fishing for grouper in the Gulf of Mexico; remembering the now-vanished pond near his grandparents' farm in Michigan; attending his class reunion at Maine South High School in the Chicago suburbs, which he attended with a bunch of siblings named Rodham (the eldest, of course, was named Hillary); presenting a scholarly paper on the sense of place in Bruce Springsteen's music at the annual Springsteen conference in Asbury Park; or simply expounding on his love of cheese (a two-parter) and that singular Quebecois delicacy, poutine. (His next post, I understand, will be an essay on the history of a unique American dish: the corn dog.)

Looking Toward Portugal boasts impressive graphics and beautiful photography, much of it by Rogers and his wife Sally Ann. (My favorite is a stunning succession of photos of a Maine sunset.) To visit Looking Toward Portugal is to share civilized pleasures with a civilized and wide-ranging mind, which is what reading, after all, is supposed to do. If you like the work of Wolfe and Steinbeck--or E.B. White, Ian Frazier, William Least-Heat Moon, or Ivan Doig--you'll find a lot to like in the blog of Steven B. Rogers.

The Donmar Warehouse production of "Hamlet" has only a few more weeks left to run at the Broadhurst Theater in New York. Although the remainder of the run is probably sold out, it's worth it to try for tickets. Reviews for Jude Law's interpretation of Hamlet have been wildly mixed; some critics have found him kinetic and brilliant, others histrionic and shallow. I side firmly with the former group. The production may be "modern dress" (i.e. the somber clothes worn by the actors are of every era and none), but Law plays Hamlet as an authentic Elizabethan gallant, his extravagant gestures and virulent mood swings reminiscent of those noblemen--such as the Earls of Essex and Southampton--whom Shakespeare knew so well. I have never seen a more brilliantly acted or staged version of the "To Be or Not to Be" monologue: Law, hugging himself in the snow against an endless brick wall (the last a hallmark of the Donmar Warehouse, so I'm told), casts the opening words away from the audience, into the void stretching before him.

Other cast members acquit themselves well, especially Kevin R. McNally as Claudius and Ron Cook as Polonius. If the production has a weak link, it is the usually excellent Geraldine James, who is too passive and reserved as Gertrude. The bedroom scene, one of the most passionate in all drama, is lopsided and somewhat chilly here. The rest of the production, however, burns with a dark fire that that makes the hundred-plus bucks for a mezzanine seat well worth it. Buy one, if you can.

This was the summer in which all the obituary writers had to cancel their vacations. The necrology of the great and famous was so relentless that merely keeping track of it became impossible. We can remark on the loss, within a few weeks of each other, of Karl Malden and Budd Schulberg, united forever in every film fan's memory because of "On the Waterfront." We can note that Les Paul, as inventor of the electric guitar, is as strong a candidate as any for the title of Coolest Dude Who Ever Lived. We can acknowledge the tragicomic irony of Farrah Fawcett, who, fighting a losing battle with cancer, meticulously prepared video diaries of her last days as a legacy to her fans, only to have her passing wiped off the front page by the death of Michael Jackson the same day.

From that long list of the deceased, perhaps the most inspiring personal story came toward the end of the summer, from an actor who--ironically enough--gained his greatest fame playing a ghost. In a 20-month battle with pancreatic cancer, Patrick Swayze presented the world with an impeccably dignified, courageous public face, continuing his career without the slightest trace of self-pity. Swayze belongs to that distinguished group from the entertainment world who, given a short reprieve from a death sentence, did everything they could to make that time count. Art Buchwald continued to write his column, Yul Brynner did a farewell tour of "The King and I," Warren Zevon recorded two albums, and Patrick Swayze signed on as the lead in a TV series. All four men will continue as shining examples of how to make an exit.

One is hard put to find any kind of prima donna behavior at any point in Swayze's career. He worked hard, he never complained, and whatever peccadilloes he had, he kept to himself. Of course he played mostly the romantic and action-hero roles that were offered him because of his looks and athleticism, but occasionally he was given the chance to show greater range. Just now a friend asked why none of the obituary writers has mentioned Swayze's masterful comic performance as a drag queen in "To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar." With this blog, I hope to rectify that oversight.

Seeing this column, some readers might object that I am ignoring a greater recent example of courage, grace and determination in the face of death: Edward Kennedy. Certainly Sen. Kennedy must be given his due. But there was a difference between Kennedy and Swayze. Tabloids regularly pick over the bones of the famous, and certainly few people have suffered as much from the predations of the gutter press as Edward Kennedy and his extended family. But, with the news of a fatal illness, statesmen tend to get a reprieve from the worst of the death-watch coverage. With movie stars, the buzzards circle thick and fast. Throughout the last 20 months of his life, Patrick Swayze was plagued with weekly headlines screaming that he was at death's door. The pain this caused him and his family can scarcely be calculated. Swayze replied to these headlines calmly, pointing out that he was still working, that he was receiving treatment, that this treatment had improved his condition. He refused to respond to the hysteria of the gutter press by becoming hysterical himself.

Patrick Swayze may not be considered one of Hollywood's greatest actors. But he proved at the end of his life that he was a great man.