Flickgrrl

The more I watch The Departed (in heavy rotation on cable this month), the more I admire the performance of Mark Wahlberg (pictured). His simmering indignation as Dignam, a cop, is the fulcrum of the film that seesaws between Matt Damon's clammy cool as the mob mole in the Boston police and Leonardo DiCaprio's agitated heat as the police mole in the Boston mob. The film wouldn't work without Wahlberg, an unassuming utility player who is great in every position, whether as star (Invincible), member of the ensemble (the improbably enjoyable Four Brothers) or supporting role, as in his Oscar-nominated Departed performance.
Though his feverish turn as porn star Dirk Diggler in Boogie Nights (1997) is widely considered the breakout role for the Boston-born rapper, Wahlberg's bedrock believability as a dumb-cluck recruit in Renaissance Man (1994) and as the Desert Storm soldier in Three Kings (1999) are equally effective. His low-key acting, more rooted in body language than in dialogue, recalls that of Gene Hackman.
It's rare for a pop star to establish him or herself as a screen presence. For every Frank Sinatra and Doris Day who succeed, there are dozens of Mick Jaggers and Madonnas and Princes who have a signature movie but never quite make it as a screen star. (Elvis was a screen success in that peculiar genre, the Elvis movie.)
Wahlberg's back in Philadelphia (having made Invincible and Shooter here) shooting The Happening for M.Night Shyamalan (whose breakout pic, The Sixth Sense, featured elder brother Donnie Wahlberg in a crucial role). As you pass 30th Street Station or Rittenhouse Square where the production is shooting, which Mark Wahlberg movie gets your shout-out? Why? Me, I'm going with The Departed and Invincible.

Wide-eyed Jane Wyman, Oscar-winning actress (Johnny Belinda), Princess Valiant of exquisite weepers such as Magnificent Obsession and All That Heaven Allows, Angela Channing of Falcon Crest, and the first Mrs. Ronald Reagan, has died.

When gossipiste Louella Parsons asked Wyman, then the bigger star, in 1948 why her marriage to Reagan had failed, the typically discreet actress replied, "Ronnie, he's the kind of guy you ask him what time it is, he tells you how they make watches." For his part, the future president reportedly cracked, "Maybe I should name Johnny Belinda as co-respondent." After her slip, Miss Wyman kept mum about Reagan, breaking her silence when he died in 2004 and she eulogized the father of her children as "a great president and a great, kind and gentle man."

If you're inspired to rent a Wyman DVD, I heartily recommend All That Heaven Allows, the inspiration for Todd Haynes' Far from Heaven. And yes, that's her as Ray Milland's girlfriend in The Lost Weekend. Any Wymaniacs out there? Your choice for best performance?

National Amusements got a lot of flak in May for admitting unaccompanied minors to its newly-acquired theater in Voorhees, NJ, Showcase at the Ritz Center. Under the prior management, moviegoers 6 to 16 had to be accompanied by an adult, a restriction that made the theater a movie-geek mecca. At the time National Amusements honcha Shari Redstone explained that her company didn't want to have an exclusionary admissions policy.

But that's exactly what Muvico, a national chain that's building an upscale movie theater in Frazier, PA, has done in the Chicago suburbs. (The accompanying pic is of the Muvico Egyptian in Hanover, Md.) Its NTA -- No Teens Allowed -- policy aims for a swankier, less honky-tonk, atmosphere, in order to draw adults back into movie theaters. The price of a ducat is higher -- $15.50 -- but food and drink are available, as are valet parking and babysitting.

Muvico, which has been scouting Philadelphia sites in recent months, is expected to open its Frazier operation in the spring of 2009 near the intersection of Routes 29 and 202.

Would you pay 50 percent more than the going rate for a movie ticket in order to escape teenagers? How are our New Jersey friends finding the Showcase at the Ritz Center?

To paraphrase that noted philosopher, Sara Lee, everybody doesn't like something, but nobody doesn't love The Rules of the Game. That's Jean Renoir on the left, pictured with Roland Toutain and Nora Gregor in his 1939 masterpiece, voted best foreign-language film by American cineastes. In recent weeks Eddie Copeland, friend of film and e-friend of Flickgrrl, has been taking nominations for best foreign-language features of the sound era through 2002. Here are the results. Get out your Netflix lists. Love these titles. Your thoughts? Are your favorites represented?

How does a filmmaker seamlessly move from naturalistic sequences into musical numbers without being corny? This is the challenge filmmaker Julie Taymor set herself in Across the Universe. (That's Evan Rachel Wood pictured in a scene from the trippy, terrific '60s-era love story set to 33 Beatles songs.) Wow, does Taymor ever re-invigorate the movie musical with this eye-popping pop opera.

Much as I had previously admired Taymor's theater work (The Lion King) and films (Frida) and opera (The Magic Flute) I approached Universe (or X the U, as it's called in internet chatrooms) with scepticism. I left the theater exhilarated. Taymor uses the Beatles to conduct a symphony about a couple united by love, divided by political and artistic allegiances -- in four distinct movements.

Truly, Taymor is the girl with kaleidoscope eyes. She lets the music (in new arrangements by her partner, Eliot Goldenthal and T. Bone Burnett) bridge the naturalistic and musical spheres. And she choreographs the camera and actor movement in a manner that is stylized without being theatrical. Unlike other filmmaker refugees from theater -- I'm thinking Sam Mendes here -- she doesn't frame the action as though it was under the proscenium arch at a distance from the viewer, rather composes her characters and edits to bring the audience into the characters' physical and emotional space.

I also like the way Taymor appropriates the art styles of the '60s, from photorealism and neon art to psychedelic and expressionism, to capture the era's helter skelter and tell her story visually. The day it opened I saw the film (for a second time) with my 11-year-old, one of many in the sold-out audience to spontaneously clap and sing along to the film's final cut, "All You Need is Love." So far the film has received mostly mixed reviews, admiring of its form, derisive of its content. Any thoughts?

In between steering Leonardo DiCaprio from the atmospheric heights of The Aviator to the emotional depths of The Departed -- and winning a long-overdue Oscar as best director of the latter film -- Martin Scorsese has found the time to document the soundtrack of his youth.

There was the Bob Dylan doc No Direction Home, coming in December is Scorsese's Rolling Stones chronicle, Shine a Light and just announced his untitled George Harrison project. (That's Harrison, the thinking girl's favorite Beatle, above, in the legendary Richard Avedon photo with the all-seeing eye on the guitarist's hand.)

Why Harrison, and not, say, the more musically prolific John or Paul? John's life and legacy was the subject of the 1988 Yoko Ono-approved Imagine. Paul is still alive and kicking it. Harrison, the Beatle who married British music hall with Indian music, was not only a gifted musician, but one of the first rock activists (the 1971 Concert for Bangla Desh), a spiritual seeker ("My Sweet Lord,") and producer of Monty Python's Life of Brian.

Scorsese -- an editor on Woodstock, documenting the legendary 1969 concert -- made one of my nominees for Greatest. Rocumentary. Ever. That would be The Last Waltz,, an onstage/backstage account of The Band's final concert. (In the mockumentary This is Spinal Tap , Rob Reiner hilariously satirized Waltz.) Scorsese long has composed his pictorials to music, whether it's Faust in The Age of Innocence or those of the Stones in Mean Streets which set the tone and rhythms of these films.

What is your favorite rockumentary/popumentary/rapumentary? My top-six would be The Last Waltz, Jonathan Demme's Stop Making Sense (starring The Talking Heads), Demme's Neil Young: Heart of Gold, Jay-Z: Fade to Black, Wattstax, with Isaac Hayes and The Staples Singers, and The Girl Can't Help It, the rollicking satire of early rock'n'roll that stars Jayne Mansfield, Little Richard, The Platters, Gene Vincent and The Treniers. These films are about more than the music. They are zeitgeists in a bottle. Your favorites? Why?