Bar Talk # 4

Overheard Friday Night (3-5-11) at Nick-A-Nee
Providence, Rhode Island
(Purty much reported as close to verbatim as possible)“

I was freaking rocking it in the luxury box. Rocking it!”

“The guy is not even thinking about do it legislatively; he’s doing it by decree.”

“If the NFL is going to go down for the count I’m worried that my fanatic brother might go down for the count, which makes the players, the owners, and my bro all complete idiots.”

"I always dig the whole Oscar thing, but it got harder and harder to watch Anne Hathaway act like she was making her debut in a ninth-grade version of My Fair Lady while James Franco looked like he left his script out in the back of the van right next his bag of high grade weed.”

“You didn’t think I was actually capable of deep thought.”

“I wonder how many of them are wishing me total ill will upon my departure?”

“The dude singing this song sounds like he warmed up by resting his nuts in a frying pan.”

“Charlie Sheen? He’s the man, laughing his way on the way to the bank via public breakdown and somehow pleasing fans, foes and the rest of the fascinated simultaneously. I’ve never watched his sitcom but I’m totally into the whole tiger blood performance piece.”

"He’s a fool to even think about her, because all she’s interested in is drinking expensive vodka until she starts falling down on top of the closest male with a fat wallet in the vicinity.”

“You play pool like a recovering sex addict. Shaky.”

“Just a little bit of Glenn Beck everyday is enough to make me want to choke the snot outta the next five people I run into.”

“It’s hard times on the planet earth times pie, my brothers.”

"Something’s going awry when Steven Tyler is somehow fresh again. C’mon, the guy looks like a mummified pirate crossed with an organ-grinder’s monkey on acid. I mean Aerosmith plays casinos now, don’t they?”

“Peter Jackson said that he stole a whole lot from Alfred Hitchcock. You remember him right?”

“Hey bubble butt; I love those acid washed jeans.”

“That potent combo of a funeral and a bar always proved irresistible to my ex.”

“I took her to the weenie joint for gaggers and then she told me she was a serious vegetarian.”

“Deer Tick and Low Anthem ought to have a “Who’s More Authentic and Sincere Contest", although they’ll kinda split the townie/ivy league votes.”

"Christine Aguilera looks more and more like Miss Piggy every time you see her.”

“Last time I smoked that guy’s shit it was like I totally went into the Wayback Machine and I couldn’t find Sherman.”

“Bob Giusti is like the minor league, Providence version of Charlie Sheen, just not as hilarious.”

RIP: Woody Fryman (1950-2011)

(Reprinted from Shaking Like a Mountain)

I always thought that name, Woodie Fryman, was yet another of those oh-so-succulent, sublimely apropos, only-in-the-landscape-of-baseball names that sound, well, pitch perfect. While a rabid baseball fan through the vast majority of Fryman’s career, I admittedly have no specific game memories of Fryman, no on-field exploits, not even a vividly recalled mental picture to fall back on. Nope, but Iremember the name, and I still find it comfortably resounding, and even, dare I say it, one of those baseball monikers that seem intrinsically poetic, as if they’ve been scribbled down by a high falutin’ authorial voice, or handed out by a set of salt-of-the-earth parents who just somehow knew that their baby boy was going to make an adult living playing a glorious childhood game.

Moe Drabowsky. Zoilio Versalles. Gates Brown. Manny Mota. Van Lingle Mungo. Junior Griffey. Sal Maglie. Coco Crisp. Biff Pocoroba. Harmon Killebrew. Dane Iorg. Jesus Alou. Gaylord Perry. Nomar Garciappara. Milt Pappas. Sixto Lezcano. Kiki Cuyler. Boog Powell. Elroy Face. Honus Wagner. Minnie Minoso. Tuffy Rhodes. Bernie Carbo. Enos Slaughter. Mookie Wilson. Hack Wilson. And, yes, Woodie Fryman.

Fryman, born in Ewing, Kentucky, made it to the majors in 1966 and stuck around until 1983, compiling a lukewarm lifetime won-loss record of 141-155, with 2411.1 innings pitched, a non-too-overwhelming ERA of 3.77, while piling up 1,587 strikeouts, and racking up 68 complete games and 27 shut outs. He pitched for six separate teams (in chronological order: Pirates, Phillies, Tigers, Expos, Reds, Cubs, and the Expos again), managed to toss four one-hitters, and was named to the National League All Star squad twice___ making him the sort of scrappy journeyman that predominate the rolls in major league baseball. No all-time sensation, he was consistently competent, just missing a perfect game in his rookie season with the Pirates and evolving into a late-career reliever, saving 17 games for the Expos in 1980. (He was also inducted into the Montreal Expo’s Hall of Fame in 1998, a Pyrrhic achievement if there ever was one.))

Woodie Fryman. Who knows? Without that name he may not have been destined to stand tall in the midday sun, leaning into a batter after a cursory glance at his catcher’s sign, a king of the hill toiling under the unwavering banner of America’s once greatest national pastime. Maybe he would’ve wound up being the guy unlocking the corner gas station doors at the break of dawn in Ewing, or traveling the backroads of the deep South trying to sell vacuum cleaners or household cleaning supplies, or possibly somehow uprooting himself to settle in as insurance man in a dull gray suit in Hartford, CT.

Maybe. But stop, and imagine that name, emblazoned on a Topps baseball card, with his everyman visage smiling from underneath one of his six specially designed home team caps, and you have to know that he found his proper calling, struggling through another tight spot late in the game, taking a deep breath and hurling that round bit of rawhide over the plate, willing himself a strike or a batter out, the crowd urging “C’mon Woodie,” or “ For Christ’s sake Fryman, get this bum out,” the right guy with the perfect name in a place that could never be righter.

Oscarmania 2011

Cute-But-No-Cigar Award--Opening Hathaway/Franco/Baldwin/Inception Footage

Self-Aware Banter Award—Co-hosts James Franco and Anne Hathaway

Young Gun Becomes Elder Spokesman Overnight Award--Tom Hanks

Oscar Night Turn of a Phrase Award Part 1--Kirk Douglas: “When I was making pictures…”

Spotlight Grabbing /Method Acting Acceptance Speech Award--Melissa Leo

Welcome to Lowell, Ma Award--Melissa Leo’s F-Bomb

Youth Brigade Coupling of the Evening--Justin Timberlake and Mila Kunis

Oscar Night Turn of a Phrase Award Part 2--Justin Timberlake: “I’m Banksy.”

Tribute to Warren Beatty & Dustin Hoffman circa Ishtar Award—Josh Brolin & Javier Bardem and their awful-awful white tuxes

Did the Right Thing Award—Power writer Aaron Sorkin invoking screenwriting great Paddy Chayefsky and properly puffing up his director David Fincher

Oscar Night Turn of a Phrase Part 3—Screenwriter David Seidler: “My father always said I’d be a late bloomer.”

Unexpected Pitchman of the Night Award—Christian Bale for dickyeklund.com

Possible Sign of the Apocalypse Part 1--Trent Reznor wins an Oscar

Best Aside of the Evening Award—The Sound Mixing Award winner commenting that his stellar crew was “Union, of course.”

Be Still My Heart Award—Scarlett Johansson

The Christopher Nolan Drumbeat Continues Award—Best Art Direction,Cinematography, Sound Mixing, Sound Editing

Best Special Effect Award- James Franco’s increasingly surreal smile

Swellegant Award- Cate Blanchett

The Future is Thiers Award--Michelle Williams, Jennifer Lawrence, Hallie Steinfeld

The Future is Now Award--Natalie Portman

Classy Gal Award—Hilary Swank

Perpetual Bon Vivant Award—Robert Downey Jr.

Best Eyebrow Action Award—James Franco

The Prez Sez Award-- “As Time Goes By” named best movie song by noted cinephile Barack Obama

Oscar Night Turn of a Phrase Award--Invisible Man Kevin Spacey: “I’m George Clooney.”

Good Concept, Ineffectual Delivery Award—The ongoing Oscar history tidbits

Whatever happened to Jennifer Hudson? Hello Jennifer Hudson.

Not Too Funny Award—James Franco in drag

Not Really Funny Award—Russell Brand & Helen Mirren’s translation schtick

Semi-Funny Award- Billy Crystal

Semi-Funnier Award-The Ghost of Bob Hope

Mr. Laconic Award--Jeff Bridges

Actually Funny Award--Sandra Bullock

Funniest Guy of the Night Award-Randy Newman

No Thanks for the Memories Award: To Celine Dion for effectively wringing away the grand memories of the likes of Tony Curtis, Patricia Neal, Pete Postlewhite, Jill Clayburgh, Blake Edwards, Lynn Redgrave, Robert Culp, Arthur Penn, and Dennis Hopper, while simultaneously warbling the one and only Charlie Chaplin’s “Smile”.


Sign of the Apocalypse Part 2- Instant television juxtapostion from the alien-like Celine Dion to the heavenly Lena Horne

Warrior Goddess Award: Kathryn Bigelow

My Lips Are Redder Than Her Lips Award: James Franco

Absolutely Coolest Collection of Peeps on Stage Simultaneously Award: Kevin Brownlow, Francis Ford Coppola and Eli Wallach

King of Shrugs Award--James Franco

Oscar Night Turn of a Phrase Award Part 4 –Colin Firth: “I have a feeling my career just peaked.”

Cheesy but Cool Award—Blink-of-an-eye PS 21 kiddie chorus finale with Oscar winners surrounding them

I am the Mailman, Koo Koo Kachoo--James Franco

(My Oscar pick 'em score? A not so great 17 out of 24.)

I Ain't Talking About Oscarmayer

The following column is reprinted from the Feburary issue of Providence Monthly (including the stuff my youthful editors somehow deem necessary to leave out):



Eyes Wide Open
By Scott Duhamel






Despite the steady proliferation of Award’s show, despite the ongoing barrage of awardees, festival winners, on-line accolade bearers, despite the indisputable presence of The Grammy’s, the Tony’s , the Emmy’s, the Golden Globes, the Razzies, even the Eeenie, Meenie, Miney and Moes, none of the competitors hold a candle as a far as prestige, importance, and actual historical significance like the Academy Awards.

The 83rd Annual Oscar show looms in the near distance, and while I should be donning my coolest threads and stepping out to the VMA on Feburary 27th at 6:30 to catch what promises to be an enjoyable and gussied up night of big screen television viewing presented by the Rhode Island International Film Festival group, I’ll be home safely ensconced on the couch, muttering about the pairing of presenters, waiting for the every-so-often potential moment of weirdness or controversy, and feverishly checking off categories on my well-thought-out Oscar ballot. Yes indeed, I’ll be unabashedly basking in my longtime out-of-the-closet inner cinephile nerdiness. Below, a quick overview of the major awards.


Best Picture
127 Hours
Black Swan
The Fighter
Inception
The Kids Are Alright
The King’s Speech
The Social Network
Toy Story 3
True Grit
Winter’s Bone

Should Win: The Social Network. It’s racked up $95 million at the box office , and among the Best Picture Nominees, only True Grit and Toy Story 3 have earned more, but the former was helmed by the Coens, recent award recipients, and the latter is an animated, and Hollywood just isn’t ready to hand out the Grand Wazoo to an animated feature. Also The Social Network is director David Fincher’s best achievement so far, and it danced its dexterous fingers all over the current zeitgeist.

Will Win: The King’s Speech. Hollywood adores all things British, costumed, and historical, and the this one is right up the alley to the vast majority of over-the-hill Academy voters.
Overlooked: The Ghost Writer, The Town, Carlos.

Best Actor
Javier Bardem-Biutiful
Jeff Bridges-True Grit
Jesse Eisenberg-The Social Network
Colin Firth-The Kings SpeechJ
James Franco-127 Hours

Should Win: Javier Bardeem. A power house piece of acting that only James Franco came close to matching, and the acting side of the Hollywood elite (including Julia Roberts and Sean Penn) has been touting Bardeem’s turn all over town.

Will Win: Colin Firth. See aforementioned Oscar predilection for all things British.
Overlooked: Ryan Gosling (Blue Valentine), Mark Wahlberg (The Fighter), Robert Duval (Get Low), Michael Douglas (Solitary Man).

Best Actress
Annette Bening-The Kids Are Alright.
Nicole Kidman-Rabbit Hole
Jennifer Lawrence-Winter’s Bone
Natalie Portman-Black Swan
Michelle Williams-Blue Valentine

Should Win: Annette Bening. A tremendously modulated and affecting performance, plus she’s been nominated three times (The Grifters, American Beauty, Being Julia) and came up short.

Will Win: Natalie Portman. A bravura, showy turn from a good citizen that has grown up on camera in front of the assembled, her votes will be multiplied by a huge dose of her colleague’s good will.

Overlooked: Julianne Moore (The Kids Are Alright), Isabelle Huppert (White Material), Lesley Manville (Another Year).

Best Supporting ActorChristian Bale-The Fighter
John Hawkes-Winter’s Bone
Jeremy Renner-The Town
Mark Ruffalo-The Kids Are Alright
Geoffrey Rush-The King’s Speech

Should Win: Christian Bale. The eye-popping, in-yer-face, take-this-roll-and-grab-it, most magnetic role playing of the year, hands down, in the strongest category, as Hawkes and Renner did splendid work, and Ruffalo just about (despite Benning’s excellence) walks away with his picture.

Will Win: Geoffrey Rush. Hate to say it (or think it) but add another one to the win column for The King’s Speech.

Overlooked: Andrew Garfield (The Social Network), Matt Damon (True Grit).

Best Supporting Actress
Amy Adams-The Fighter
Helena Bonham Carter-The King’s Speech
Melissa Leo-The Fighter
Hallee Steinfield-True Grit
Jacki-Weaver-Animal Kingdom

Should Win: Melissa Leo.

Will Win: Melissa Leo. She’s a great journeyperson actress, she’s campaigned unabashedly for the honor, and someone has to break up the momentum generated by The King’s Speech.

Overlooked: Greta Gerwing (Greenberg), Barbara Hershey (Black Swan), Mia Wasikowska (The Kids Are Alright), Ellen Page (Inception).

Director
Darren Aronofsky-Black Swan
David O. Russell-The Fighter
Tom Hooper-The King’s Speech
David Fincher-The Social Network
Joel Coen and Ethan Coen-True Grit

Should Win: David Fincher
Will Win: David Fincher. Its Fincher’s turn, although Tom Hooper (The King’s Speech) will be looking closely over his shoulder.

Overlooked: Christopher Nolan (Inception)

Original Screenplay
Mike Leigh-Another Year
Scott Silver, Paul Tamasy, Eric Johnson; story by keith Dorrington, Paul Tamasy, Eric Johnson-The Fighter
Christopher Nolan-Inception
Lisa Cholodenko and Stuart Blumber-The Kids Are Alright
David Seidler-The Kings Speech

Should Win: Inception. Writer/director Christopher Nolan non-nomination for Best Director is one of the more blatant snubs in recent Oscar history, there may be enough sympathy or fairness votes to throw him the bone that is Best Original Screenplay.

Will Win: The King’s Speech.

Adapted Screenplay
Danny Boyle and Simon Beaufroy-127 Hours
Aaron Sorkin-The Social NetworkMichael Arndt; story by John Lasseter, Andrew Stanton, Lee Unkrich-Toy Story 3
Joel Coen and Ethan Coen-True Grit
Debra Granik and Anne Rosellini-Winter’s Bone

Should Win: The Social Network.

Will Win: The Social Network. Hollywood loves it when a premier, big-timey screenwriter like Aaron Sorkin (For a few Good Men, Charlie Wilson’s War )hooks up successfully with a brainy, independent sort of filmmaker like David Fincher (nominated for The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, equally as well known for The Fight Club and Se7en ) and they make hay, and heavy duty ticket sales, together.

Greek Coffee

(Reprinted from PopKrazy)


Leslie Buck passed away, at the ripe old age of 87, during 2010, and inexplicably enough, not that many paid much attention to his passing.

Born Lazlo Buch in Khust, Czechoslovakia (now part of the Ukraine), he was a Holocaust survivor who made good in the US, first starting up a paper-cup manufacturing company in Mt Vernon, New York called Premier Cup. It was during the 1960’s that Buck joined the Sherri Cup Co. of Kensington, Conn, and he created one of the most iconic delineation’s of everyday American life, particularly the East Coast version, the exquisitely appealing Anthora paper coffee cup (Buck couldn’t quite pronounce “amphora” correctly), the design adorning coffees served at diners, deli’s, construction sights, factory yards and food carts, sales which peaked at 30 million pieces a year in the 1990’s.

Buck’s coffee cup became an instantly recognizable American artifact, a fairly improbable accomplishment considering its creator was both an immigrant, and artistically untrained. The cup, with its above-and-below border of Greek urns framing a bill boarded white background with a slightly ornate outline, three images of piping coffee cups and the phrase “WE Are Happy To Serve You” etched in a font meant to resemble ancient Greek, remains a totemistic likeness of the highest order.

Buck’s cup immediately conveyed what it set out to: coffee making and drinking as a daily (or hourly) pleasure of the simplest, yet most satisfying order. The years have made it’s lasting image, particularly when gripped in hand (shaky or firm), sends an immediate vibe of well-being, of order, of universal familiarity, of celebratory and tragic times, when a hot cup of Joe served to cure a multiplicity of ills, a direct on-the-spot cure, as countless eyes drank in its serene depiction of everyday classicism.

Fashioned to be tossed away, these cups always held firm and prodded the user back to solid ground (with grounds) and an inherent sense of lean functionality, freezing the moment, typically punctuated by the cups drainage and disposal. (There ain’t nothing more Zen than the exquisitely dream-like state one enters upon completing the purchase, lifting the thin yet perfectly fitted plastic cover, and peering into the perfectly quantified portion of liquid gold before focusing on the task at hand—the first sip translating into direct, immediate sustenance.)

In John Berger’s Ways of Seeing (a pro-forma college text in my higher education days), he discusses some of the effects of what he calls the “publicity image”:

“We are no so accustomed to being addressed by these images that we scarcely notice their total impact. A person may notice a particular image or piece of information because it corresponds to some particular interest he has. But we accept the whole the total system of publicity images as we accept an element of climate…Yet despite this, one has the impression that publicity images are continually passing us, like express trains on their way to some distant terminus. We are static; they are dynamic…”

The Anthora cup is a bonafide artifact, a pop cult object d art, an image and form fused to analogous contents. It was, and remains a simple, pure design worthy of its own Warholization, and if it was framed square in front of a glossy black background in a Soho gallery it would be dissected and discussed with heady terms and suggestions that it directly symbolized both desire and consumption.

Perhaps the vagaries of time will eventually erode the power of this seemingly pedestrian image--Solo Cup, Co out of Illinois, who took over Sherri, only makes the originals upon receiving a special order--but you can be sure the Leslie Buck’s terrific creation will never truly be replaced.

The mental stirrings evoked by it’s pure, straightforward imagery, as one’s hands are warmed by the brimming hot coffee temporarily housed within the container, conjure the type of internal shivers caused by yet another viewing of Citizen Kane’s cinematic perfection, yet another listening of Sinatra’s sonorous emotionalism, yet another glance at one of Edward Hopper’s twilight tableau’s, all of them simple and transcendent, eternally evocative, with Buck’s Anthora cup potentially remembered as among the most unique blendings of form and function, of artful commerce, to ever literally hit the mean streets of America

Bad is Good, Awful Even Better

The following column is reprinted from the Feburary issue of Providence Monthly (including the stuff my youthful editors somehow deem necessary to leave out):



Eyes Wide Open
By Scott Duhamel


To many of those of us who follow the wonderfully weird world of commercial cinema there is nothing quite as fascinating as a movie train-wreck or an outright film bomb, that shaggy dog species of pure cinematic failure on either the artistic or commercial plain ---or in the best/worst case scenario, both. Of course, film flops provide a lot of heightened film nitcrit rhetoric, and often an equal amount of finger-pointing and ha-ha fodder for a variety of media types and the general public, although they can be pure talk-talk nirvana for your run-of-the-mill barstool film buff (and I am definitely looking in the mirror as I utter that).

Thus, I bow my head with a combo of deep and overwhelming envy and admiration towards Nathan Rabin of The A.V. Club (the sister publication to The Onion) who published one of the more entertaining and erudite movie books of 2010, My Year of Flops (264 pp. Scribner. Paper, $15)), an extremely humorous but strangely respectful small tome devoted to being a largely effervescent look into film flops both big and small, both heralded and obscure, both at the box office and laid out as targets at the movie reviewer’s collective shooting range.

Even the casual filmgoer has some knowledge about big-time movie floparamas, particularly in this era when a film’s weekly intake of cashola gets examined on the pages of USA Today and on the nightly TV entertainment wrap-ups. Any moviegoer with a modicum of knowledge outta be to able to come up with a quick list of infamously failed flicks, from Cleopatra to Gigli, from Paint Your Wagon to Heaven’s Gate, from Ishtar to Waterworld (all of which Rabin examines). Flops are yet another way to peer into the constant push-and-pull between art and commerce that is omnipresent (and often vastly under evaluated) when interpolating the art and craft of moviemaking. What makes an exceptional filmmaker go so strangely astray? How can so many dedicated and truly knowledgeable artisans contribute their earnest and hard-earned efforts to a project that seems so spectacularly stupid? Why green light such obvious crapola? Does more popcorn get consumed during the screening of yet another Hollywood misfire rather than that dripping-with-sincerity offering playing down at the near empty boutique art theater?

Rabin doesn’t have the answers, but he delves into the good, the bad, and the very, very weird without adopting a hipster pose, and with an eyes-wide-open enthusiasm that makes for some trenchant and amusing reading. Calling each movie reexamination a Case File, he positions himself as a cinematic sleuth with puppy dog eagerness, attempting to place each failure in one of the following categories: Failure, Fiasco, or Secret Success. (Or in once case, “a semisecret fiascopiece.”) Thankfully, particularly with such a potentially ripe subject, Rabin can be legitimately funny without being overtly snarky, as in his attempt to explain the way-out acting turns in the final chapter’s of acting great Marlon Brando’s onscreen career: “…sometime in the mid-70’s, Marlon Brando began taking marching orders from The Great Gazoo, the tiny effeminate green alien only Fred Flinstone could see.”

The book’s subtitle is “One man’s Journey Deep Into the Heart of Cinematic Failure”, allowing the author to utilize his cinematic detection talents to equally scrutinize such diverse degrees of badness as Inexplicable Directorial Lead Ballons ( Robert Altmam’s O.C. And Stiggs, Cameron Crowe’s Elizabethtown, Preston Sturges’ The Great Moment, and Paul Mazursky’s Scenes From a Mall), Truly Execrable Efforts (Freddy Got Fingered, The Adventures of Ford Fairlane, and The Love Guru), or more Fascinating Failures ( the 1962 and 1997 versions of Lolita, The Rocketeer, or the truly gonzo Tough Guys Don’t Dance).

Rabin can indeed be cutting (on Sgt Peppers Lonely Heart Club Band: “ But Stigwood’s film reduces the Beatles diverse, literate humor to history’s dumbest variety-show skit. …It ransacks vaudeville and silent film for its hokey jokes, grossly exaggerated performances, and groaning stupidity, but adds disco flourishes and special effects that wouldn’t look out of place in a Rudy Ray Moore movie.”), but his lack of film snobbery and general authorial high spirits make it all palatable, as do the constant stream of descriptive bon mots and eye-winking one-liners. (The book’s appendix, a scene by scene dissection of Waterworld, is something of a comic tour de force.)

Critic and film historian David Thompson once called Heaven’s Gate “a wounded monster”, and Rabin is bright and blithe enough to place it and it’s fellow monstrosities into a cage with plenty of water and food, and, yup, popcorn. After all, the scary monsters of commercial cinema ought to be watched and enjoyed as much as the holy beasts that we spend so much time endlessly analyzing, handing out awards to, or compiling all-time lists about. My Year of Flops, may not be a highly illuminating, sturdily academic study probing directly into the heart of film flop darkness, but it is an exceptionally witty read and an undeniably cool concept.

Style and Substance: Aronofsky and Russell

The following column is reprinted from the January issue of Providence Monthly (including the stuff my youthful editors somehow deem necessary to leave out):


Eyes Wide Open
By Scott Duhamel

This relatively short space won’t quite allow me to do justice to two late season releases, both already appearing on a majority of film nitcrit’s top ten lists and also garnering various nominations by the great spate of end-of-the year awarding bodies. Both films, Black Swan and The Fighter, while quite different in tone and execution, share one common element: They are helmed by on-the-rise directors with considerable talents, who both boast relatively small but sharp and intriguing bodies of work.

Darren Aronofsky, the director of Black Swan, made his initial splash with the much praised Pi in 1998, followed up by the vivid Requiem for a Dream (’00), the admirably grand failure that was The Fountain (’06) and then his popular comeback effort The Wrestler (’08). He has become an assured stylist, and Black Swan is swaggering with style, and yet another of Aronofsky’s patented tales of despair and self-destruction, despite the fact that it is set in the seeming delicate world of ballet.

David O Russell initially made a name for himself with the idiosyncratic Spanking the Monkey in 1994, with his follow-up the low-key and equally quirky Flirting with Disaster (’96), then the superb Three Kings (’99) and the overtly droll and sadly unseen I Heart Huckabees (’04). While The Fighter is ostensibly a boxing film, it actually can rest quite assuredly on the shelf with Russell’s prior self-puncturing character studies, and it is indeed crafted with a potent mix of directorial dexterity and razor sharp acting.

The acting in Black Swan is commendable too, particularly the full goose-looney central performance of Natalie Portman (easily her best screen work so far, which is truly saying something), the type of acting turn that brings on both Oscar nominations and also a fury of hipster hating. Accused by some cinephile’s of pandering with the success of The Wrestler, Aronofsky is back in more rarified territory here, and the film is peppered with references to the greatest ballet film of all, The Red Shoes, but also to another memorable movie made by the same director Michael Powell, Black Narcissus, and it also unabashedly alludes to both the high brow psychological frisson of Roman Polanski and the pulpy machinations of Brian DePalma. A weird and potent mix. Barbara Hershey registers strongly as a very smothering stage mother, while Mila Kunis is something of a revelation as a fellow ballerina who is hard to distinguish as friend or foe.

Aronofsky, working with his regular cinematographer Matthew Libatque, follows Portman around with a highly affecting stalking camera, a camera that also dances and pirouettes with a distinctive fluidity. Black Swan starts out as a classic glimpse into a particular arena of the arts, a movie ostensibly about commitment and artistic passion, but it slowly evolves into a nightmarish tour de force, cheekily transforming from a god’s eye view of a dancer’s intensity and grace to a Grand Guignol probe into the psychology of repression. It’s a visceral ride and a hallucinatory one, accented by dozens of subliminal directorial touches and a strange, just this side of supernatural, suggestion of doubling and doppelgangers: an art film that is streaked with blood, passion, and an ever mounting touch of delirium.

On the other hand The Fighter, marketed and understandably categorized as a another entry in the age old boxing film sweepstakes (it would be pure redundancy to go through the list of stellar Hollywood boxing movies capped by the acknowledged masterpiece, Raging Bull), is one of those genre excursions that is made better by most of what takes place outside the ring. It can be linked directly to another first class 2010 movie, Ben Affleck’s The Town, as another study of a certain type of peculiarly Massachusetts provincialism. The movie depicts that true tales of boxing half brothers Dickie Eklund (Christian Bale) and Micky Ward (Mark Wahlberg), their steel-eyed (and willed) Irish-American mother/manager (Melissa Leo), and Mickey’s townie-with-some-smarts girl pal (Amy Adams), and, perhaps the most important character--the suffocatingly gray, arid, and potentially toxic air of their own personal playground/prison, Lowell, MA.

The Fighter may not quite scale the boxing film tower of greatness, but it is a rousing melodrama with galvanizing performances by all of the abovementioned. Best of all, the movie neatly balances itself between the all-the-way, astoundingly showy depiction of the herky-jerky ball-of-misspent-fire that is crack-addicted Dicky by Bale, and the admirably restrained, astonishingly vanity-less, and largely reactive (but heartfelt) choices of Wahlberg as Micky.

The Fighter works as uproarious glance at the type of familial love that is linked directly to familial dysfunction, it also works as a spritely boxing tale, and it may work best as an exploration of the socio-economic and psychological restraints, burdens and inherent contradictions brought on when one is part of a blue collar, stay-at-home, urban culture. (Really.) The Fighter is wonderfully ambivalent about it all, a movie both crackling and kinetic, yet brushed with deserved pathos. It’s obvious, that David O. Russell, like Darren Aronofsky, is currently working on all cylinders, thus the devout and ever hopeful faithful filmgoer should be already brimming with anticipation over their respective next movie moves.