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About Just out. (Portland, OR) 1983-2013 | View Entire Issue (Nov. 5, 2004)
33 J U S t l i f t » nnvftmher 5. 2004 FILM ......... ▼......... 2006 CHICAGO GAY GAMES 2006 arm s I Í .& V 1 martial arts physique pool volleyball rugby swimming soccer track & field wrestling baseball basketball ballroom dance bridge cycling darts diving golf iceskating I info@teamoregon2006.org 2006 MONREAL OUT GAMES 2006 fitjf 1W OÍÜH I* tssro about nktig yp pul sBstainiBg srofic i giving no receiving pleasure, no yoar desires. mikimm iaaahima m I aa . hka . . J T e le b r a t in g o d y E r o t ic ortland • Nov. 13-14 Call fll, 503-493-9421 Bodq Electric School ivww.bodvelectric.org Bring your Dance to be held SATURDAY N O V EM B ER 27 Metro Police Club (PPAA) 618 SE Alder TICKETS K ì t mKi^mìfdP^ P m B uste Millennium le * 801 N W 23rd r&> BAND x- x org , _ t'..'. Talented Mr. Ripley. Michell and Penhall’s Jed is the laughably outdated Deranged Homo Killer, with an openmouthed kiss at knifepoint between him and Joe (entirely the filmmakers’ an McEwan’s subtle, unnerving 1997 novel lunkheaded invention) depicted, ridiculously, is given the big-screen treatment by direc as the ultimate horror. tor Roger Michell and screenwriter Joe Frankly, Joe and Claire are also short Penhall, and the results are almost a textbook changed as characters, which brings us to the example of the pitfalls of adapting a novel for film’s underlying, fatal problem: Michell has the cinema. some arresting visual ideas and a cast ranging In McEwan’s version, a male writer and his from skilled to brilliant, hut the characters, female professor fiancée live a serene life in particularly Jed, have been whittled into stan upscale London before a traumatic event brings a male stalker into the writer’s life. The dard, dull thriller clichés. We’re left to wonder which is worse: active, obviously bigoted couple are subjected to escalating mental, emotional and physical menace as the young homophobia that singles out a queer character, or Enduring Love’s kind, which is merely symp man develops a mysterious, fanatical, relent tomatic of the ultimately lazy, one-dimensional less, almost entirely asexual attachment to the thinking behind the work as a whole. writer. — Christopher McQuain Michell and Penhall have made many small and some noticeably not-so-small excisions T arnation and alterations. They’ve come up with an aes thetically inventive film containing the char Nov. 5 to 11, Cinem a 21 acters and story of a conventional thriller, rob bing us of McEwan’s very precise yet emotion here are a couple of key lines in Jonathan ally complex rendering of the fraught scenario. Caouette’s dirt-cheap documentary (sup Daniel Craig and the ever-riveting Saman posedly made for $200 using an iMac). tha Morton (whose singularly corporeal screen During an interview, his boyfriend, David, says: presence makes the film almost worth seeing) “You’re not paying attention. You are not lis play Joe and Claire, the couple; Rhys Ifans is tening.” In another scene, Caouette’s grand Jed, the stalker. In the father says to him, “You’re novel, Jed’s bizarre trying to scheme some pursuit of a same-sex thing on me!” This is the movie in a nutshell, a sur stranger has its cause prisingly unrevealing not in anything so autobiography of an over everyday and benign as homosexuality, but hearing, narcissistic, exploitative drama queen. in quasi-religious mania, loneliness and, Caouette was raised it’s revealed, a rare hut in a dysfunctional family diagnosable mental (like who isn’t?)— a illness. mother, Renee, and Vito Russo, the grandparents unbalanced late Celluloid Closet to various degrees. Much of this gay boy’s life from watchdog, would have had a fit over Michell preteen to the present and PenhalPs regres was captured in home sive revision. McEwan movies. Tam atim strings took pains in his together this footage novel to make a clear along with interviews past Broadway: The Qolden Age director Rob distinction between and present with all the McKay strolls down memory lane with leg functional gay men principals, and lots of endary dancer and actress Ann Miller, who and this specific, sexu maudlin images of poor died Jan. 22 ally stunted man, hut Jonathan in various the filmmakers have (homo)sexualized Jed nruxJes of suffering, and drenches it all in com while leaving him without a shred of the puter-generated split screens, extreme rapid humanity and empathy offered to, say, Matt cuts and other staples of experimental footage. Damon’s murderous hut human queer in The Caouette’s mother emerges as a tragic case, E nduring L ove Nov. 12 to 18, Fox Tower Cinemas I l TS SWÜŒ IflOOW W SLf ’*T. -, ./ j ,-.t . „.
