Movie Review: "The Wife"

"The Wife": C.  When Sony Pictures distributed The Wife it chose a promotional campaign focusing on the acting talents of Glenn Close who plays the title character, Joan Castleman.  Most of the national reviewers, some of whom rarely have a discouraging word about any film whatsoever, followed along a similar vein, emphasizing the work of Close and writing relatively little about the story itself.  After having seen the picture in question, I can see why.  The film is a slogging dud, and the only reason to fork over your admission fee is to ascertain whether the veteran actress deserves the Oscar nomination she is likely to receive.

The plot involves a married couple, Joan and her husband Joe (Jonathan Pryce), who first meet illicitly when she is a student at Smith College and he is her married writing professor.  From their earliest years together she has served first as his editor and eventually as his secret ghost writer.  If not for Joan, it's likely Joe would have never been able to get his first novel, The Walnut, or for that matter any of his subsequent offerings, published.

Joe is a philanderer, a chauvinist, a phony and an unsupportive father, yet Jane, a bright woman, sticks with him.  We learn both from flashbacks and the present narration that he owes every bit of his success to her.  But her help goes beyond what is ethically acceptable; she is the person actually doing the writing for which he is accepting all the credit, even going so far as to tell the press that his wife does not write.  Jane seethes covertly, but when her husband wins the Nobel Prize for literature, things between them come to a boil.

There are several things wrong with this film, the most important being that lack of a surprise element.  I got the feeling that the filmmakers' plan was to stun the viewers with a late revelation that the real writer whose books were universally acclaimed was Jane, not Joe.  The problem with that plan is that anyone who saw the trailer for The Wife already knew going in that Jane was the one penning the stories.  (By the way, the trailer played in theaters and on television for weeks before its Twin Cities release on August 31.)  Even if you never saw the trailer, the cat is let out of the bag with the very first flashback to Jane's days in the sixties as a serious and potentially great writer at Smith.  The part of young Jane is played by Close's real life daughter, Annie Starke.

A second fault with the film is its dearth of realistic, interesting side characters.  Christian Slater plays Nathaniel, a non-fiction writer who practically stalks the Castlemans with the goal of writing an authorized (or, failing that, an unauthorized) biography about Joe.  He knows his preys' secret and tries to get an admission from Jane.  Slater comes across as a weasel.  Max Irons, the real life son of actor Jeremy Irons, plays the Castlemans' son David.  I am going to give Irons the benefit of a doubt and conclude that it was a weak script, not his acting, which made me wish his character had been left on the cutting room floor.

Finally, screenwriter Jane Anderson, adapting an original work by Meg Wolitzer, gets a thumbs down.  Besides the miscalculation on the audience's ability to unravel "the secret" before the half-way point, the script has many sections which deserve criticism.  The low point is a scene in the Castlemans' Stockholm hotel room where Joe, who had minutes earlier failed in his seduction attempt with a beautiful young photographer, Linnea (Karin Franz Korlof), accuses Jane of deserting him, even though it is 4:00 in the afternoon!  The dialogue imposed upon the actors here is anything but sharp, and who could not have correctly predicted that the walnut -- yes, the walnut!-- on which Joe had inscribed a sentiment to Linnea was going to be uncovered by Jane while grappling with Joe?

Seventy-one year old Close is thought of by many in connection with her contemporary Meryl Streep, who is two years younger.  Close's film career began in 1982 with The World According To Garp, and she has had very steady work ever since.  Streep got her first break with 1977's Julia, and is one of the most highly acclaimed film actresses of all time.  Streep has been nominated for twenty-one Academy Awards, winning once for Best Supporting Actress and twice for Best Actress.  Close has been nominated six times, three in each of the two aforementioned categories, but has not caught the brass ring.  It would not come as a shock if Close is not only nominated for her work in The Wife but also, as a sentimental acknowledgement for a solid and long career, is sent home with the gold statuette.

Baseball's Newest Innovation, Openers

The World Series ended last night with the Red Sox out-classing the Dodgers, four games to one.  I did not have a dog in the hunt although I must admit that, in virtually any contest involving a California team versus non-Cali, I pull for the latter.  As for a reason I'll just say it has something to do with my nine post-merger years working at Wells Fargo, and let it go at that.  Now I must wait five cold months for the best sport to resume play.  Before bidding farewell to the season I'm going to write about the game one more time.

***

Depending on your resource, the game of baseball is believed to have originated toward the end of the nineteenth century.  For decades it was commonly labeled "America's favorite pastime" even though today the sport's enthusiasts would have to admit professional football has surpassed baseball for the top spot.  The undeniable popularity of fantasy football accounts for much of the pigskin prevalence.

MLB's executives have tried tweaking baseball's rules to make the game more interesting to viewers, especially young people.  But it's hard to accomplish that goal without incurring the wrath of the purists and traditionalists who think the rules are fine as is.  It is interesting to note that most of baseball's changes during the last ten years have been what you might call "cosmetic" rather than integral to the sport's core.  For example, since 2008 first and third base coaches have been required to wear batting helmets, the catalyst being the death of Mike Coolbaugh, a coach for the Denver Rockies' Class AA affiliate, Tulsa, in July 2007.  He was struck by a line drive while coaching first base.  Concern for safety has also led to the installation of protective netting in front of the infield seats from dugout to dugout (and in some stadia, beyond).  This came about only after several fans were seriously injured by screaming line drive foul balls.

Other more recent rules changes include waiving an intentionally walked batter to first base rather than going through the formality of the pitcher tossing four balls out of the strike zone, and limiting the number of mound visits, excluding pitching changes, to six per nine inning game.  Both of these revisions are intended to speed up the game.  The latter change has noticeably served its intended purpose; the former is more form over substance.

Since the advent of the designated hitter by the American League in 1973 there have been only two changes which clearly affect managerial strategy and the way baseball is played. It is pretty hard for a manager to come up with a unique concept or innovative approach which hasn't already been tried by the hundreds of managers who've come before, including those like Hall Of Famers Whitey Herzog, Sparky Anderson and Earl Weaver.  The first of those two changes was the employment of exaggerated defensive infield shifts.  Although infield shifts have been around since the 1940's, no one paid much attention to them until the last five years or so.  Now shifts are a prominent part of game planning, with several teams even going so far as to change their infield alignment once or twice during the same at bat, depending on the pitch count.  I'm going to save discussion of infield shifts for another day. 

The second major post-1973 change was created this season, specifically on May 19, 2018.  It was in the Tampa Bay Rays game that day against the California Angels that Rays manager, forty year old Kevin Cash (at the time MLB's youngest manager), came up with an idea that has been copied numerous times in the remaining five months of the season:  the "opener."  An opener, not to be confused with a "starter," is a pitcher who begins the game for the express purpose of throwing only one or (at the most) two innings.  His job is to face the top three to six players in the opponent's batting order, after which he is replaced by a teammate who usually functions as a regular starter in his team's five-man rotation.  The regular starter them pitches as long as he is able, which in today's style of play usually means anywhere from five to seven innings.

In that historical spring game, Cash had Sergio Romo open the game.  The thirty-five year old veteran had appeared in 588 games during his long career, but never as a starter!  Romo was unfazed by his new job description, striking out the side in the bottom of the first.  Then, according to plan, Rays regular starter Ryan Yarbrough took over the pitching duties to begin the home half of the second, hurling six and a-third innings of four hit ball, yielding just one earned run to pick up the win.

Why do managers use an opener to pitch the first inning or two instead of simply going with one of their regular starters?  There are a handful of reasons, but the two I'd place at the top both have to do with the opponent's batting order.

Third Time Through Order:  Statistics show that starting pitchers are less effective the third time through the lineup.  This is the result of a combination of arm fatigue and batters' familiarity with the pitcher's "stuff."  By the time a lineup has turned over twice, most starters, if they are still on the mound, have thrown more than seventy pitches.  Their fast ball tends to lose a little velocity, and their breaking ball isn't spinning as much.  When the fast ball is slower than it was in the early innings, not only is it easier to hit, but the difference in speed between fast ball and changeup diminishes, an advantage for the hitter who is sitting on a fastball but can more easily make an adjustment if he gets a changeup.

By using an opener for an inning or two, the starting pitcher's third time through the lineup is more likely to begin with opponents at the bottom of the order (say, those in the 7, 8 and 9 holes) than the top.  A team's weakest hitters usually occupy the bottom third of the order.

Professional Courtesy:  As you know, baseball has many so-called unwritten rules.  For example, it is deemed unsportsmanlike to lay down a late inning bunt in an effort to break up a no hitter.  Another no no is to steal a base in the last inning or two if your team is winning by more than seven runs.

An unwritten rule germane to this post is the practice of each manager announcing at least one day ahead of time who his starting pitcher -- i.e., the one designated to pitch the first inning -- is going to be.  Although managers are not mandated to make such a proclamation, it is nevertheless offered as a professional courtesy.  Most managers will set up their batting order to utilize and emphasize left handed batters facing a right handed starting pitcher, and visa versa.

The use of an opener makes the rendering of such a courtesy almost useless.  When the opponent uses an opener followed soon by a regular starter who pitches with the opposite arm, a manager's best laid plans can be thrown asunder.  For example, let's say a manager stacks his lineup with left-handed batters because the opponent's announced starting pitcher is a righty.  If a different pitcher, this time a southpaw, enters the game in the second or third inning, that manager must choose between two poisons: use pinch hitters early in the game, or be stuck with his original lineup which he drew up thinking that it would work well against the guy who turned out to be merely an opener.

Other Reasons:  A team might choose to use an opener if no one in its regular five man rotation has had the standard four days of rest between starts.  This can result from double headers or previously postponed games which now have to be made up.  On the flip side, a manager might choose to use as an opener a relief pitcher who hasn't pitched in a week, just to give him some work.

The Rays ended up using an opener fifty-four more times this season after May 19.  Seven other teams, including the Twins, experimented with the innovation as well.  The Brewers manager, Craig Counsell, took the concept to an extreme in the final week of the season when he used relief pitcher Dan Jennings as the opener, then replaced him with another pitcher after Jennings had faced only one batter, the Cardinals' Matt Carpenter, whom he retired.  One clever Twitter fan opined that Counsell brought in Freddy Peralta for Jennings to preserve the no hitter.  No wonder baseball games last so long!

Kevin Cash and Craig Counsell, ages 40 and 48, respectively, are both youthful managers.  Young managers are more likely to think outside the box, bucking methodologies which have been around for more than a century.  Last week the Twins hired Rocco Baldelli as their new field general.  At age 37, he supplants Cash as MLB's youngest.  It would not surprise me to see Baldelli use openers for around 20% of the Twins games next season, especially given the fact that the team has only two regular starters, Jose Berrios and Kyle Gibson, whose places in the rotation are etched in stone.

Quarterly Cinema Scan - Volume XXXIII

Look out for Miss Lotte Lenya,
And ol' Lucy Brown- Mack The Knife (Bobby Darin, 1959)


Movie lovers who claim that the best James Bond movies were those in which Scottish actor Sean Connery played Agent 007 (pronounced "double-O seven") typically receive little argument.  There have been twenty-four Bond films going back to 1962, with the chic, debonaire Connery starring in the first seven.  The first four in the series set the bar high: Doctor No (1962), From Russia With Love (1963), Goldfinger (1964) and Thunderball (1965).  Since they were released during each of my high school years, I consider them main elements in the pop culture of my youth.

Bond was a creation of British novelist Ian Fleming, who unfortunately died at the relatively young age of fifty-six in 1964, just as his fictitious hero was becoming internationally famous via the silver screen.  You might say that James Bond was Sean Connery's alter ego.  Connery became so identified as the secret agent that it took years for audiences to accept him in other roles.  The handsome Bond character exuded confidence, calmness, bravery, a sense of derring-do, and most importantly, a keen wit on display especially at the end of certain scenes.  [Bond after the bad guys' helicopter crashes and burns: "I'd say one of their aircraft is missing."]  With those attributes in mind, perhaps Connery was born to play Bond.  And of course, Bond was a lady killer.  Some of the most ravishing actresses of the day were "Bond Girls," including Ursula Andress, Honor Blackman and Jill St. John.

Last month I had the chance to watch From Russia With Love, which I had not seen since my Minot days.  Almost all of the several rankings of Bond films available on the internet have From Russia With Love graded as one of the top three.  Inquiring minds want to know, "Why?"

For starters, all the requisites for a bona fide Bond caper are present in From Russia With Love.  Beautiful leading lady who falls for the Englishman?  Check (Russian Tatiana Romanova played by the gorgeous Italian actress Daniela Bianchi).  A wicked mastermind with a distinctive accent and a memorable name?  Check (Lotte Lenya as Colonel Klebb, aka Number 3).  A cold blooded assassin?  Check (an almost unrecognizably young Robert Shaw as Red Grant, who appears throughout the film but doesn't utter a word 'till half way through).  Then we have other Bond staples such as the slightly older homeland secretary, Miss Moneypenny, who has a tongue-in-cheek office flirtation game going with Bond, all the while realizing that the chicks in whom 007 is romantically interested are at least ten years younger than she.  Lois Maxwell plays that minor yet essential role in the first fourteen films in the series.  And what would a Bond film be without some gadgets?  There are plenty of them here, such as a folding sniper's rifle with infra-red night vision capabilities and a flat throwing knife, the important difference being they are secretly contained in a single attache case which will explode unless opened in an unconventional way.

What sets From Russia apart from many films of its genre is the plot, which is more clever and layered than your typical spy action story.  Colonel Klebb has defected from Mother Russia to Spectre, an evil organization with designs on taking over the world.  She is called upon to execute a plan devised by creepy chess grand master Kronsteen (Vladek Sheybal), whereby not only will Spectre gain possession of a top secret Russian communications device called a Lektor, but Bond will be permanently silenced as well.  Klebb dupes Romanova, a clerk in the Russian consulate office in Istanbul, into agreeing to pull off the Lektor theft, believing it to be an act of loyalty to the mother country and unaware of Klebb's defection.  Under orders from Klebb, Romanova convinces the Brits that she will turn over the Lektor to them, but only if Bond arrives in Istanbul to assist.  When Bond sees her photo, he does not need his arm twisted to accept the assignment.

From there we have Bulgarian killers working for the Russians, a pro-western Turk (Pedro Armendariz) with a secret telescope directly below the Russian consulate, a gypsy camp where Bond hides out and is immersed in a shootout, a ride aboard the Orient Express, a helicopter trying in vain to run down Bond (reminiscent of the famous crop dusting scene in North By Northwest), and gondola excursions on the canals of Venice.  It's all great fun.  There are even two scenes, following what I mistakenly took for the ending, where Bond comes face to face with imminent death.  Against all odds he lives for another day.

****

These are the movies I watched at home during the third quarter.

1. Charley Varrick (1973 drama; Walter Matthau and Andy Robinson rob a rural New Mexico bank only to find that their loot belongs to the mafia and hit man Joe Don Baker has been hired to retrieve it.)  B+

2. The Death Of Stalin  (2017 comedy; Steve Buscemi plays Nikita Khrushchev, the master plotter who out-schemes and out-maneuvers several Communist Party leaders to assume control of the Soviet Union when its dictator, Adrian McLoughlin as Joseph Stalin, dies in 1953.)  B-

3. East Of Eden (1955 drama; disillusioned James Dean tries to come to grips with the favoritism father Raymond Massey bestows upon older brother Richard Davalos, while Richard's girlfriend, Julie Harris, becomes the only person who sees Dean's good side.)  C+

4. Faithless (1932 romance; repercussions from the Great Depression wreak havoc on the relationship between heiress Tallulah Bankhead and marketing man Robert Montgomery.)  B

5. From Russia With Love (1963 James Bond thriller; Sean Connery goes to Istanbul to assist beautiful Russian Daniela Bianchi steal a top secret communications device.)  A-

6. The Girl He Left Behind (1956 comedy; college slacker Tab Hunter's lack of ambition turns off girlfriend Natalie Wood, resulting in Tab's military enlistment where he becomes an army slacker.)  D-

7. The Guernsey Literary & Potato Peel Pie Society (2018 romance; Lily James is an accomplished London author who immerses herself in the secrets of a book club started during the World War II German occupation of an English Channel isle.) A-

8. Hiroshima, Mon Amour (1959 romance; a French actress, Emmanuelle Riva, has an affair with a married Japanese architect, Eiji Okada, while she is in Hiroshima to work on a post-war, peace-themed film.)  C+

9. Love Locks (2017 romance; New Yorker Rebecca Rominj accompanies daughter Jocelyn Hudon to Paris, where they unwittingly check into a hotel now owned by Rebecca's old college flame, Jerry O'Connell.)  B+

10. Tully (2017 drama; Charlize Theron is totally stressed out before and after giving birth to her third child, but things dramatically improve when a nighttime nanny, Mackenzie Davis, arrives.)  B

11. The Way We Were (1973 romance; Barbara Streisand, a left wing activist, and Robert Redford, an apolitical writer averse to stirring the pot, fall in love during their college days and proceed to have joy and heartbreak throughout the next decade.)  A-