An Anonymous Love Letter Has the Whole Town in a Tizzy

In a tiny town in New England, a love letter arrives in a bookstore. It’s addressed to no one and signed from no one. The first woman to see it assumes that it’s for her. Later, the letter passes into other hands, and each reader makes the same assumption, with the result that there’s a lot of love in the air in Loblolly by the Sea. Could unlikely relationships spring from this catalyst? And where did it come from?

This is the premise behind Peter Chan’s The Love Letter, written by Maria Maggenti. Early on, the film makes a visual reference to A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and the plot reminded me a bit of that, with this letter causing everyone to fall for each other instead of magic potions. Just reading those intense words has a strange effect on each recipient. It makes them feel appreciated and validated. It causes them to look at others in a new light.

I love the cozy setting of the movie. This is a picturesque little village, and cinematographer Tami Reiker consistently brings out its beauty. I often found myself wanting to step right into the screen, whether it showed the sunny streets or the charming bookstore where much of the movie takes place. The dialogue mostly matches up with that innocent small-town feel; there’s scarcely any profanity, though one self-referential slur surfaces and two characters drop an f-bomb, each of which feels totally out of place.

While most of the dialogue is pretty clean, it’s generally not that interesting. The best bits involve lusty, perpetually late bookstore employee Janet (Ellen DeGeneres), who has a tendency to prattle amusingly about inane topics, and quiet, good-natured firefighter George (a sadly mustacheless Tom Selleck), who frequents the shop. DeGeneres and Selleck easily give the most engaging performances in the movie, and their characters feel much more real than the others.

Kate Capshaw, who also produced the movie, is Helen, the emotionally repressed bookstore owner. I know she’s acting detached, but it was the actor as much as the character that felt stiff and uninteresting to me. She spends most of the movie with a bit of a grimace on her face, and at several points, she seems to forget her lines. Her delivery is just off, and it doesn’t help that a lot of her dialogue isn’t very good to begin with.

A similar complaint could be applied to Tom Everett Scott, who made such an adorable lead in That Thing You Do!. Here, as bookstore employee Johnny, he’s still cute, but his personality is less attractive and his performance is often wooden and lacking energy. Julianne Nicholson is a little livelier as Jennifer, the last of the bookstore crew, but there’s an abrasive edge to her that gets wearying after a while.

Other characters come and go, and seemingly insignificant interactions lay the groundwork for the ultimate revelation of who wrote the love letter and why, but the ending still felt somehow tacked-on and unnatural to me. The letter doesn’t get passed around town as much as it could, and after the first reading, in which Helen hears everyone she meets reciting bits of the letter as she tries to figure out who might have written it, the constant repetition of its lines gets tedious. Frankly, it’s really not that thrilling a letter, and anything so generic that anybody in town could think it applies to her or him obviously doesn’t contain a lot of specific personal sentiment.

Ultimately, then, this movie didn’t really deliver for me, in either the romance or the comedy department. There were moments I thought were sweet and moments I thought were funny, but mostly I found it rather dull and clunky. It did make me want to visit New England, and it did serve as a reminder that making assumptions can lead to absurd consequences. But if you write this Letter off, you won’t be missing too much.

79th Oscars Post-Mortem: It's an Inconvenient Truth That I Don't See Enough Oscar Nominees

I'm becoming quite the movie buff, so when the Academy Awards roll around, I'm eager to watch, even though I've usually (being a movie buff of modest means) seen only a few of the films in the running an award, usually in technical categories. I fared little better with this year's nominees, having watched Little Miss Sunshine, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest, Superman Returns, Cars... Gee, is that all? I need to get out more.

Anyway, I never got around to seeing The Queen, Dreamgirls or, top of my list despite the inevitably required face-shielding, The Last King of Scotland. I almost saw Pan's Labyrinth just in time to have some basis for enthusiastically predicting it would win in all its nominated categories except Best Screenplay. I have a feeling it may be the first of the bunch I see.

I don't know why I was so looking forward to the Oscars this year. It certainly wasn't like 2004, when I got to bask in the glory of Return of the King, up for - and eventually winning - half the awards of the night. I wasn't particularly passionate about any of the potential winners, though Forrest Whittaker has always impressed me and the idea of a recent American Idol alum getting an Oscar was pretty intriguing.

Ellen Degeneres had something to do with it; back in nineties, I'd never watched her show and had only the vaguest notion of who she was. A wildly incorrect notion that was amended the first time I saw her do a stand-up routine on The Late Show and realized how incredibly funny she is, and how refreshingly devoid of crudeness her humor is. I've enjoyed her a great deal ever since, so I was interested in seeing her as the host.

Certainly she wasn't as over-the-top as some, and her whole approach was very low-key, with the exception of that Gospel choir, whose jubilant singing just gave her an excuse to do some of her trademark dancing. The up-close-and-personal moments with the various stars were nice - passing off a screenplay to Martin Scorcese, posing for a picture with Clint Eastwood. And bidding the audience goodnight half an hour before the show was over. Classic.

I got a big kick out of the trio performance of big-haired Will Ferrell, scathing Jack Black and inspirational John C. Reilly. Melissa Etheridge's performance of what ended up being the Best Song winner was powerful, and the Dreamgirls "reunion" was flashy and fun. My favorite of the Best Song performances, however, was Randy Newman, looking mighty classy behind that piano, and James Taylor, his voice rippling with warmth as he crooned the gorgeous Our Town, his face alight with a gentle joy that put the focus on the beauty of the memory rather than the sting of loss. Poor Cars, thwarted at both turns by global warming. Because if there was one man in the crowd Sunday night who was a bigger deal than Martin Scorcese, it was Al Gore. Hollywood says Al's going to save the world, and to help him do it, they're going to vote for whatever complements their green theme.

Not to say that Etheridge didn't deserve the win, and for all I know the slyly political Happy Feet was fantastic. But I sure love Cars, and that song was phenomenal. Still, it's nice to see America getting serious about the environmental issues that have been creeping up on us, largely thanks to a combination of industrialism and apathy. Though heavy-handed An Inconvenient Truth was high on my list of movies not to see, because global warming gives me enough sleepless nights without Al Gore drumming it into my head for two hours, I'm glad he was recognized for his valiant efforts to increase awareness.

On a lighter note, aren't Oscar commercials fun? JC Penney's, Diet Coke and Mastercard were really falling all over themselves to produce epic, inspiring commercials, which was grand, except it made me afraid to leave the room for fear I'd miss something. There were many wonderful ads with movie tie-ins, but my favorite commercial was the one for Mastercard with the elephant going to the store to buy a care package for his under-the-weather zookeeper. Soooo sweet...

I didn't make out a list ahead of time of who I thought would win. I made my predictions as the nominees were announced for each award, and I was right exactly half of the time. Pan's Labyrinth certainly did well, and if I was intrigued before, now they've really got me hooked. The short films got my attention; it's a shame those are always so hard to come by. I was surprised by Alan Arkin, but good for him. I like him, and his character in Little Miss Sunshine was a lot of fun.

Jennifer Hudson seemed truly overwhelmed, and really, what an amazing thing for her, to get on American Idol, make it halfway through the top 12, and then get cast in a movie and end up with an Oscar. Awesome. Helen Mirren seemed surprised too, though from all the buzz surrounding them I figured both of them for shoo-ins. I thought her speech was nice, especially the bits about the queen. And Forrest Whittaker was much more collected here than at the Golden Globes and gave one of the most powerful speeches of the evening.

The response for Martin Scorcese was thunderous. Poor Peter O'Toole... But I'm glad Scorcese got his due. Obviously a lot of people felt it was past time. They must have given him a little extra time to talk because it seemed like his speech was longer than most, and just the standing ovation should have taken up about half his time. I hate it when they play them off the stage. I like the gentle So Long, Farewell outro they played this year, though - much less abrasive than that loud band music they usually have, and still struck up a couple times, which was strange. Why doesn't everybody get the lullaby?

The special awards and the video tributes were nice, especially the composing award with the speech that seemed so much more moving because it was not given in English. Clint Eastwood didn't seem like he was in top form as he presented the award and translated the speech, but maybe he was just emotionally overcome. He seemed to have very great respect for this man.

We sure saw a lot of Jack Nicholson. When did he shave his head? And must he always wear those sunglasses? Leo DiCaprio was another face that showed up a lot. They must have had a hunch that The Departed would take home top honors...

Anyway, those dancers who came together to form symbols of different movies... way cool. The Snakes on a Plane thing was hilarious, and all of them were just really clever. Just as amazing: the sound effects choir. I never heard of such a thing, but it sure was fun to watch them work. It's a hundred Fred Newmans - or maybe Fred Newman split into a hundred pieces... At any rate, I was most impressed.

Were the 79th Oscars too long? Of course. But I didn't really care. I snuggled up under my blanket on the couch and absorbed the warmth of movie magic for four hours. And vowed that somehow, come this time next year, I will have seen more of the nominees...

You'll Find Few Fish Flicks to Top Finding Nemo

Cinematically speaking, 2003 was all about one thing for me: the 12-month-long hiatus between The Two Towers and The Return of the King. Fortunately, there were a few films throughout the year that helped keep my mind off the wait. Second-hand Lions, featuring the formidable triple-threat of Haley Joel Osment, Robert Duvall and Michael Caine. From Justin to Kelly, by the sheer virtue of negative comparison. And then there was a little flick by the name of Finding Nemo…

I’m an unabashed Disney enthusiast, though I’ve tended to find the quality of their recent output largely unpredictable. I can no longer assume that I will enjoy most of the movies that bear the Disney label. Disney / Pixar, however, is another matter. This is a glorious collaboration that unfortunately is coming to an end after a string of masterpieces. When Toy Story first hit the theaters, computer animation as it was utilized in the film was a novel concept. By last year, audiences were fairly used to the medium, but Finding Nemo presented the most gloriously eye-catching animation yet. As one friend of mine put it, the film was visually very “pleasing.” All that ultramarine water through which the movie’s brightly-colored inhabitants traveled was just the ticket to cool off an audience wilting their way through a sweltering summer.

Finding Nemo focuses on two complementary quests: little clownfish Nemo’s (Alexander Gould) efforts to escape from the aquarium in the office of the dentist who swiped him from the ocean and his father Marlin’s (Albert Brooks) journey, aided and hindered by the forgetful blue tang Dory (Ellen Degeneres), to get his son back. Because Nemo is the lone survivor of a predatory attack that killed his hundreds of unborn siblings and his mother, he bears the distinguishing mark of an undersized fin. While this gives the neurotically protective Marlin another reason to fret about his son’s fragility, it only serves as an obstacle for Nemo to overcome.

After his first attempt to prove his courage landed him in the aquarium, Nemo must rely on his resourcefulness and his new friends to help get him out again. Among his colorful companions: Gill (Willem Dafoe), moorish idol with scars recalling his days out in the ocean; Gurgle (Austin Pendleton), a gramma obsessed with cleanliness; Peach (Allison Janney), a starfish who serves as tank lookout; Bubbles (Stephen Root), a yellow tang in love with the aquarium’s bubbles; Jacques (John Ranft), a shrimp who makes it his business to clean everything in the tank, including his companions; Bloat (Brad Garrett), a puffer fish who has a tendency to expand into a sphere when he’s stressed out; and Deb (Vicki Lewis), a damselfish who believes her reflection in the aquarium glass is actually a twin sister named Flo.

The tank is a pleasant enough place on the whole, but Nemo misses home. His desire to leave is lent urgency when the fish discover the dentist, a man who comes across as decent enough but dim-witted, announces his intention to present Nemo as a birthday present to his niece, who is notorious for shaking her previous pets to death. Led by Gill and aided by Nigel (Geoffrey Rush), a bumbling but magnanimous pelican willing to help any creature in need, as long as it isn’t a seagull, he plots a daring escape.

But the main storyline involves the quest of Marlin and Dory. Together, the wimpy clownfish and ever-bubbly tang encounter a number of frightening situations. They find themselves in the company of a group of sharks, led by the charming Bruce (Barry Humphries), who have difficulty abiding by their encouraging mantra of “Fish are friends, not food.” They are lured into the clutches of a grotesque bottom feeder. They must cross a stretch full of jellyfish after failing to follow the advice of a school of silver fish, whose leader is voiced by Pixar regular John Ratzenberger. They fall in with a group of turtles whose easy-going leader, Crush (Andrew Stanton), teaches Marlin something about letting go. They even make the useful acquaintance of a whale, thanks to Dory’s hitherto unknown linguistic talents. Their adventures are perilous, but there is always enough humor to balance out any overriding sense of danger. Degeneres is the standout cast member here; she makes Dory an incredibly likable and memorable character who provides most of the film’s biggest laughs. Her unlikely partnership with Marlin is very touching.

Finding Nemo broke box office records and became the most celebrated movie of the summer. The film lent itself especially well to the big screen, where its bright palette of colors could be best appreciated. But the story is just as charming and the animation just as superb on a television screen. While the adventure and colorful characters enthrall children, clever dialogue reels in the adults, making it a film to be celebrated and cherished by people of all ages. It’s just a shame the partnership is coming to an end…