the odd life and odd film that is timothy green

What an odd little film is The Odd Life of Timothy Green. It's certainly not what my eight year old daughter expected. It's a fairy tale and a meditation on life and love. For anyone who thinks from the previews that this Disney film will just be about a cute boy who has leaves on his legs is in for a bit more. The movie, directed and written by Peter Hedges (About A Boy, Dan in Real Life, What's Eating Gilbert Grape) from an idea by Ahmet Zappa, starts off with a young married couple, Cindy (Jennifer Garner) and Jim Green (Joel Edgerton), who are being given the bad news that after many attempts and procedures and lots and lots of expense, they are unable to have a child. They are bereft. Their sad mood extends to the depressed town, Stanleyville, they live in, with its multiple closings and threats of job loss. Everyone in town seems to be cranky or unhappy.

As a sort of closure exercise to how hard they have tried to have a child and failed, they decide (after drinking a lot of wine) to write down what their kid would have been like (a big heart, always truthful, not great at sports but would one day kick the winning goal, etc.), and they place all of the notes in a wooden box and bury it in their garden. That is not the end of their hopes but the beginning.

A storm rages that night — only over their house — and they awake to find a 10-year-old boy (CJ Adams), covered in dirt, and a big hole in their garden where the box was buried. Their dreams have come true and their new son Timothy is very special, indeed — he has beautiful green leaves growing out of his lower legs. Timothy has a special effect on everyone he encounters. But it isn't always positive. The Odd Life of Timothy Green is full of small and quirky supporting characters: Ron Livingston as Jim's horrible boss (a nice switch from his part in Office Space); Dianne Wiest as Cindy's not-quite-as-horrible-as-Jim's boss; Odeya Rush as Joni,  a girl who befriends Timothy and sees him for how special he is; David Morse as Jim's hard-to-please father; Common as Timothy's not very encouraging soccer coach; and Shohreh Aghdashloo as a woman who works at an adoption agency.

Timothy makes friends with Joni

The Greens take Timothy to a horticulturist friend for a check-up

Timothy practices some photosynthesis

The magical realism in the movie may be a bit difficult for some audience members (and not just the kids) to grasp. They may just find it corny. So many of the Greens' friends, family, and neighbors are just cruel or stupid and border on caricature. What is truly unique about the film is how it points out that no matter how hard the Greens have wanted a child, when he finally turns up they haven't the slightest idea of what to do with him. Just having set up a nursery/kid's room doesn't mean they have any idea on how to parent. They make mistakes, jump to crazy conclusions, hover and fumble their way through each day with their unusual son. This is true for all parents. No matter how many handbooks might be consulted, children and life are highly unpredictable and uncontrollable. The Greens are also wrapped up in competing with their families — Cindy with her over-achieving, snobbish sister and Jim trying to prove that he will be a better, more attentive father than his father was to him.

What is at the heart of The Odd Life of Timothy Green is how odd it is, not to be a boy with leaves on his legs, but a parent. It's about yearning, and feelings. It's sweet and even sappy at times. Nothing blows up. It might be a tad too sentimental for some, but it's so earnest that its hard to be hard on it. Like Timothy and Cindy and Jim it has a big heart.

miss marple is hotter than you think

Article first published as Miss Marple Is Hotter Than You Think on Blogcritics.



It's partly a tribute to the strength of Agatha Christie's characters and stories that Hollywood and its equivalents keep churning out new versions every few years. David Suchet has got a lock on the inimitable Hercule Poirot. Thank goodness for that. He is such a perfect Poirot in every way that I am not able to contemplate someone else trying to step into the Belgian detective's shiny tight patent leather shoes.

Miss Marple, for some reason, has never been as easy to capture. Maybe because the character's description by Christie is as fluffy as the shawls Marple is always knitting. Poirot is specific. In fact he has so many quirks and eccentricities that Christie grew to loathe being forever saddled with him while the public loved him. Miss Marple, apart from being elderly and smart and more than a bit of a snoop doesn't have many other descriptors except blue eyes and white hair. She has been open to interpretation to readers — plug in your favorite little old lady stereotype and add a pink or blue wooly shawl.

Miss Marple has also been open to interpretation by a variety of actresses. Margaret Rutherford made a series of four B&W films in the 1960s. They are very enjoyable and silly comedies, but as any Christie devotee will tell you, they aren't Miss Marple.

Miss Marple saw a surge of popularity in the 1980s. Angela Lansbury in The Mirror Crack'd (1980) is a good attempt. I enjoy her version of the character, but I think she found a better fit for her vigorous physicality in Jessica Fletcher. Helen Hayes was my perfect physical idea of Miss Marple. She's petite and fluffy and wily. She was in two American made-for-TV movies in the mid-80s. They lack the British locale and polish, but are fun to watch.


Joan Hickson is to me the ultimate Miss Marple, as Suchet is the ultimate Poirot. She may be the least "fluffy" of the portrayers, but she gets everything else very, very right. From 1984 to 1992 she played Marple in 12 movies.

From 2004-2010 creators of the latest Marple series tried to sex up the stories and even Miss Marple herself. They are often confusing to watch, as so much of the original stories have been changed. Geraldine McEwan is a good actress, but her Miss Marple is just creepy to me. Julia McKenzie took over the role after McEwan, a bit more in the manner of Hickson's Marple, but the dramatizations of the stories are still pretty awful. Some of my favorite Christie novels like Towards Zero suddenly have Marple plunked in the middle of them where she doesn't belong. If you love Miss Marple, I'd skip these and find the Hickson versions on DVD.

Apparently these latest Marples weren't deemed sexy enough, because the latest news is that yet another Marple franchise is in the works, this time starring ... Jennifer Garner. The mind boggles. Obviously all previous incarnations of white hair and knitted baby items will have to be tossed out. As a huge Christie fan I should be shaking my head in disgust or outrage, right? Somehow it just makes me laugh and wonder if it might be fun to watch.

The idea is so completely off-the-wall that it might even work. Why the folks behind this production are bothering to trade on the Marple name at all is confusing, but maybe it will provide them with some decent plots to pull from, at the very least. Garner is also producing the film. I wish it had been scaled down to be a TV series instead of a feature film, as that seems to be where this actress shines. Can Garner pull a Robert Downey and mess with a beloved character and still be great? Only time will tell. But somehow, I suspect, the resilient Miss Marple will weather this latest incarnation and turn up again, in another guise, in a year or so.

the magpie effect

previously published on Associated Content.

All that glitters . . . musings on the Rachel Zoe Project

I have always liked things shiny. Baubles, bangles and beads. Is that the reason I find myself, like the proverbial magpie, drawn to watch the Rachel Zoe Project? I share this impulse for bright things with the celebrity stylist, who said in her latest installment, (paraphrasing here) that "it doesn't matter how great the dress is, it's all about the jewels." Looking at the results of her styling efforts it's hard to disagree. The jewelry, which she considers "the most fun," was the best part if the show, and I suspect, the best part of her job. She actually looked animated, practically giddy as she sorted through tens of thousands of dollars worth of gaudy gems to adorn her clients, as opposed to her perpetual glum demeanor when faced with finding a designer gown (or just trying to get a sample delivered.) Trying to select the "right dress" is almost always agony for Zoe and her staff.

It would be easy to make fun of her, and her cockeyed world and its values. Many do, but what is probably most surprising is how willing Zoe herself is to poke fun of her image (which she is also so desperately trying to promote.) Watching her deadly serious depression at the LA "downpour" that might ruin her clients' red carpet moment—well it's hard not to snigger. But the tiny woman takes her job seriously and she does want her charges to look their best. It may be a superficial world that she inhabits, but it is true that a "great red carpet moment," the right dress (matched with fabulous baubles) might actually boost the career of an actress whose latest films may not have been huge at the box office.


Most of what Zoe does is behind the scenes, and I suspect, still off camera, as what the audience gets to see is a lot of worrying and kvetching, but not a lot of actual legwork or even schmoozing of new clients. The editing of the show wants to add the drama by hinting at troubles with previous assistant Taylor (drop that - she's gone and bringing her up is boring) and intimations of her marriage possibly suffering as a consequence of her pursuit of success. We are only two shows into the season and her husband Rodger is whiny and downright pissy about wanting to be a dad and his fear that her clock is losing ticks by the moment. There is also a lot of proclaiming on his part of his masculinity and weariness of always being surrounded by girls and gays (protest much?) Do we need this storyline? I might be a tad more sympathetic to "his story" and the human angle the show is trying to push if he didn't (I assume) let his wife style him with white flowing scarves and get his hair cut like Justin Bieber. Who needs it, just get back to the clothes.

No offense to the domestic discord or bliss that may occur in their white-on-white world (their furniture reminds me of Sex and the City's Charlotte and her horror that her husband Harry might sit his naked butt down on her pristine white furniture), but the real appeal, the real "story" of the show is the suspension of disbelief that Zoe and her career can actually exist and the vicarious thrill of imagining playing dress up with all of those designer samples. Even though she is proving her clout this year by trotting out some of her bigger-name clients (Demi Moore, Kate Hudson, Cameron Diaz), it is mostly the inexplicably eternally stressed Zoe that fascinates.

What was the most interesting moment of the second episode? After all the flurry and build-up of Zoe and crew to dress four women for the Golden Globes, after Zoe's frantic rushing around to fit each actress, she didn't hang around all the lights and cameras but quietly returned home in time to watch the pre-show on television, with her buds, just like any other fan, albeit insecure that her husband might make fun of her and her love of fashion (he did and does in his soliloquies) or not like her work (he actually was quite supportive.)

Suddenly it all seemed like one big dream. Is Zoe delusional? Did she really do all or any of what we just watched? Who's to say that Jennifer Garner didn't dress herself? It's the most ephemeral of careers to fairy-godmother these Cinderellas. No wonder Zoe has decided lately that she might also like to go to the ball.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Rachel Zoe's career-making moments (cnn.com)
• Is This The Beginning Of Rachel Zoe's Baby-Making Subplot? [Reality Bites] (jezebel.com)