Drone Unknowns: Grounded, reviewed.

Lucy Ellinson in the Gate Theatre production of George Brant's Grounded.

My review of Grounded, a George Brant's solo play about a drone pilot, is in today's Washington City Paper. 

Dear Doctor: Code Black, reviewed.

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Danny Cheng, M.D., Dave Pomeranz, M.D.,  Ryan McGarry, M.D., and Billy Mallon, M.D. in McGarry's documentary Code Black.

My review of physician Ryan McGarry's documentary Code Black is up today at The Dissolve.

This was one of those instances when what you already know about a subject can color your perception of a film. An ex-girlfriend of mine is a physician who did her residency at a country medical center 65 miles west of the one documented in Code Black, and we lived together during those years, 2000-2003. She was at the hospital all the time, and I became well acquainted with her classmates, who were exactly like the young doctors whose voices McGarry features: idealistic, accomplished, adventurous, easily bored. Many of them had done other things before medical school, like working on a fishing boat in Alaska or spending a few years as a forest firefighter. One of them was a nun who swore more crudely than any Marine I’ve ever met. They were all friendly, and I found them all intimidating. I was in awe of them.

We’d met when I was working as an editor for the American Medical Student Association’s magazine. AMSA was lobbying hard for a single-payer healthcare system in those days.

After that, I earned my living for many years writing proposals for several health-care companies. So I am very familiar with their rhetoric about how patient care is what matters most to them -- and with the reality that their shareholders are the only people they really care about.

Julie Taymor probably hates pink even more now

“Julie hated pink. It also seemed as if she could discern gradations of red on the electromagnetic spectrum that no one else could. Humans are ‘trichromats,’ meaning we have three different types of cone cells in our eyes. However, it has been surmised that because of the XX chromosome, some women may possess a fourth variant cone cell, situated between the standard red and green cones. This would make them — like birds — ‘tetrachromats.’ These hypothetical tetrachromats would have the ability to distinguish between two colors a trichchromat would call identical.

To date, only a few female candidates for tetrachomacy have been identified. I didn’t tell Julie my suspicions. And I’m not saying she is a tetrachromat. But it sure would explain several of those extra hours in Tech, when Julie had hues finessed to a fare-thee-well. But then again, a writer will fuss over a single word, to the exasperation of a choreographer who will make endless refinements to a dance step, deliberating between differences an engineer can’t even perceive. In other words, an obsession over subtleties may just be an attribute of expertise, rather than evidence of being a mutant. Still, a scientist should check her out.”

— Glen Berger, "Song of Spider-Man: The Inside Story of the Most Controversial Musical in Broadway History," pp. 146-7.

Pop Culture Happy Hour: Edge of Tomorrow and Noble Failures

Emily Blunt & Tom Cruise in Edge of Tomorrow. One of the sharpest summer blockbusters in years didn't open.

The Bruce Willis caper comedy/vanity project Hudson Hawk lost something like $50 million. I loved it in 1991. I love it still.

Writer/producer James Cameron confers with director (and ex-spouse) Kathryn Bigelow on the set of 1995's Strange Days, an ambitious cyberpunk flop.

Frank Langella and Brandon Routh in Bryan Singer's too-gentle, too-emo Superman Returns.

The ambitious but doomed Alien 3, for which Sigourney Weaver was persuaded to shave her head. The making-of documentary Wreckage and Rage from the Alien Quadrilogy Blu-ray set is better than the film itself.

It's always a thrill to be invited back on Pop Culture Happy Hour. I joined Linda, Stephen, and Glen to talk about Edge of Tomorrow -- the best would-be summer blockbuster yet in a year that's already seen several strong ones -- and noble failures. We agreed on the B topic before Edge of Tomorrow opened to less-than-stellar business, despite near-universal acclaim from critics. I hope we didn't jinx it, because this is exactly the kind of shrewd, fresh, self-aware big movie that seems to be perennially in danger of extinction.

I'd been summoned to PCHH this time at least in part because of my enduring affection for the 1991 caper comedy/Bruce Willis vanity project Hudson Hawk. This is, to my mind, a creatively successful film that also just happened to lose something north of $50 million in 1991 dollars.

I always over-prepare when I'm invited on a podcast. I came in ready to talk about a few other movies big genre films whose reach exceeded their grasp: Kathryn Bigelow's ambitious social sci-fi Strange Days, Bryan Singer's way-emo Superman Returns (to which Man of Steel's shrugging, genocidal violence was, I'm convinced, a direct, and stupid, reaction), and Alien 3, the fascinating, troubled sequel that marked David Fincher's feature debut and that he refuses to talk about to this day. Of those three, only Strange Days was a big money-loser like Hudson Hawk was; the other two did okay but fell short of their aesthetic objectives. 

Anyway, we didn't get to any of those. I'd even jotted down a quote from Roger Ebert's four-star review of Strange Days to read on the air. Having come from a screening of Steve James' wonderful documentary Life Itself -- about Ebert's life, career, illness, and death -- just hours ago as I'm typing this, I'm doubly sorry I didn't get to. We didn't even get to everything I meant to say about Hudson Hawk. Hey, it's a discussion, not a lecture.

I'll correct one of those omissions right here: One of Hudson Hawk's villains, Caesar Mario, is a guy who had a chip on his shoulder because he's the lesser-known brother of a more famous gangster. This character is played by Frank Stallone. That's a good casting joke, there.

Recorded but cut for time was an acknowledgment -- initiated, would you believe, not by me but by my Pal-for-Life Glen -- about Edge of Tomorrow's homages to ALIENS both large and small, from the armored power suits to the gender-neutral division of action-hero labors between stars Tom Cruise and Emily Blunt, to the presence of Bill Paxton, doing a hilarious 180-degree inversion of Private Hudson, his panicked, "Game over, Man!" Marine from ALIENS.

Also cut was my observation that I'm pretty sure this is the first time a live-action summer blockbuster has won the approval of the full PCHH panel in almost four years of this show. The only other one I can remember coming close was J.J. Abrams' Super 8, which only Glen disliked.

In 2011.

Listen above or listen here.

FURTHER READING: I wrote about Edge of Tomorrow and blockbuster fatigue, and about PG-13 vs. R-rated cine-violence, and about how seeing ALIENS on VHS 400 times as a kid set up expectations that the 2012 ALIEN prequel Prometheus could not possibly satisfy.

You Must Remember This: I Am I, reviewed.

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Jocelyn Towne in I Am I, an amnesia drama she wrote and directed.

My review of Jocelyn Towne's amnesia drama I Am I is up at The Dissolve today.

The Human Race will make you at least temporarily ashamed to belong to it.

Ugh.

My review of the low-budget horror movie The Human Race is up on The Dissolve. It's wretched, but I tried to write a fun piece about it.

Anyway, here's the 1987 Mick Jagger video I cite as one of this uninspired film's obvious inspirations.

Transforming Tysons: My Atlantic Cities debut

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A view of the Silver Line's Spring Hill Station as seen from Leesburg Pike westbound in Tysons Corner, April 2014. I took this with my phone and tarted it up in Photoshop a little.

And Now for Something Completely Different: I wrote a 2,000-word feature for Atlantic Cities about the ongoing effort to turn the Northern Virginia suburb of Tysons Corner -- a massive, unplanned, car-dependent "Edge City" -- into a walkable, public transit-accessible, liveable urban locale. The opening of Metro's Silver Line this summer will be a key element of this plan, and the place is expected to remain a site of rapid-but-smart growth for the next four decades. Read all about it.

I've made a concerted effort to branch out this year, writing on subjects and for outlets I haven't previously. My 3,000-word feature for Air & Space / Smithsonian about the under-construction James Webb Space Telescope was a rewarding experience, and tackling my first urbanism/transit piece was, too. I've got a least a couple more long magazine pieces I hope I'll be able to execute before I get busy with Capital Fringe Festival coverage and other stuff.