how to stave off cabin fever and not become a cannibal

This post first appeared, in slightly different form, on blogcritics.org

From episodes of Gimmie a Break and Perfect Strangers, to the real-life tweeting of reporter Ann Curry, the dramedy of being trapped in an elevator is a staple of entertainment in this age of Otis. Striking the hearts of both the claustrophobic and the Luddite who should have just taken the stairs, these tales of strange bedfellows are especially chilling to those caught in the middle of the snowpocalypse that has left the Mid-Atlantic states without cupcakes for days on end. So what better way to battle cabin fever than with Hallmark Channel's Valentine's Day offering, Elevator Girl? Would you want to be trapped with these people? Come closer - let's take a look.

Under the opening credits we are introduced with keen efficiency to a typical morning for each of our predestined characters: Liberty (Lacey Chalbert, the one on Party of Five who looked like Jennifer Love-Hewitt but wasn't; this is to her great credit, as the career track of her former co-star has led to one of the most misguided and disturbing examples of celebrity too-much-informationitis: Love-Hewitt's public announcement that she had a bejewelled vajayjay ) hits the snooze button and pulls the sheets back over her head, stumbles into a kitchen past a refrigerator encrusted with post-it notes and brews herself a pot of Mr. Coffee. Jonathan (Ryan Merriman, Final Destination 3) - and note that this is by contrast, walks into an immaculate kitchen with granite counters and chrome fittings to make a perfect single-serve espresso.

Jonathan was just made partner at a prestigious law firm, and is on the way to a dinner thrown in his honor. She's on the way to cater said dinner, and runs to catch the fated elevator. I've seen a lot of forced dialogue in rom-coms in my time and I know we'll never see the verbal or charismatic ilk of Bringing up Baby again, but while their banter was not especially interesting (contrary to Libby's small-talk remarks to Jonathan how "interesting" that is), they have a kind of awkward chemistry that was surprisingly believable. It is certainly more believable than the chemistry that's supposed to make us coo at such Hollywood rom-coms as PS I Love You and Crazy Heart. Trapped for just a few minutes, Jonathan and Libby share a little bit of their lives and go their own ways ... to meet again?

"Maybe you were put on that elevator with that guy on that night to learn a little something about yourself." That's Tessa, Liberty's stock funny-looking friend, and alas it is around here that the rom-com formula starts to go bad - not as bad as a box of brownie mix that expired in 2005, but no chocolate chip cookies made from scratch, either.

Still, there are slight charms and textures to come. Patty McCormack's long career began with The Bad Seed, and television credentials that go back to Route 66 with stops at Fantasy Island and The Sopranos. Here she plays the small but crucial role of Rosemary, Jonathan's secretary. Rosemary plays matchmaker and hires Libby to cook for a dinner at Jonathan's decadent condo.This leads us to the first of a recurring variation on get-downism, but instead of the magical ethnic character teaching the stuffy Protestant to get down, Libby teaches Jonathan how to cook hummus. Earthy! The kitchen plays a role in a subsequent scene of get-downism, punctiuated by a funk soundtrack that asks us to "swing it on down and shake it up sister." Is there a clause in the contract for Hallmark Channel scripts that requires this scene? It reminds me very much of a scene in Ladies of the house, previously reviewed in this space. Hmm. Elevator Girl may be formulaic rom-com with standard-issue notions of dropping the soul-sucking nine-to-five job to answer your artistic calling, but the principals do their best to make this a pleasant diversion, and it is a good message for the kids. This Hallmark Channel Original Movie premieres Saturday, February 13th (9p.m. ET/PT, 8C).

sheena take a bow

I've been weeding. I'll weed maybe a handful of books or CDs at a time, and with as much clutter as I've accumulated over the years that barely makes a dent. Because, despite what it says under my blog header, I hoard. Not on the Collyer level but I missed that by a matter of degrees, and I was perhaps only saved from that fate by a major termite infestation that required sorting out and throwing out 40 years of basement clutter.

Still, I buy books I never read and CDs and lps I never listen to and movies I never watch. I end up buying duplicates. With no discernible organizational system, I'm not surprised to find two copies of a book I've never read. What surprised me was the CDs. Despite having at least 80% of my thousands of CDs in alphabetical and categorical order, I still found five inadvertent duplicates - which doesn't count remasters of CDs I found filed right next to their original, arguably inferior but perhaps more valuable for sentimental reasons iteration. (n.b., If anyone reading this would like a sealed copy of the compilation CD, "Brazil Samba Jazz Vol II," with the Tamba Trio's terrific version of "Se voce se pensa," let me know.)

I hoard to fill the void, and I found absolute proof of that last weekend when I discovered, in the back of my closet, a bunch of empty boxes of various sizes, shoe boxes and shipping boxes that I thought I might need some day. Some of them must have been in my closet for more than a decade, and had accumulated several inches of dust. I took those metaphors to the recycling bin right away and I can walk in my closet now.

I've been weeding regularly, and I've made progress, and discoveries.

As I weed I come across things I forgot I had. One is a VHS tape of Sheena Easton's Act One special, one of dozens of tapes I scrounged from a video store's $2 closing sale several years ago. The program was originally broadcast on NBC in 1983 and captures a moment in the Scottish singer's career between the girl-next-MOR success of "Morning Train" and the tarted up persona of "Strut" and "Sugar Walls" (number 2 on the PMRC's "Filthy 15," right behind her collaborator Prince Rogers Nelson's "Darling Nikki.")

Act One is a strange piece of celebrity self-consciousness, with Easton trying on a variety of 80's fashions and identities only to fail to hide behind any of them. Maybe it's all that 80's make up, a Bonny lass hidden under a very pretty cakeface. She is not one of those performers who disappears behind her roles. Rather, Act One reveals that for Ms. Easton, as for many of us, as many disguises we try to hide behind, who we are will unmistakably shine through the cake.

Speaking of clutter, I happen to have a copy of Chambers's Scots Dictionary at my desk. Did you know that gardy-moggans are what they call long sleeves?

The first number "A song for you" serves as an overture of the major themes we will be exploring in the next hour; most strikingly, that of a Whitmanesque multiplicity and a personality in fragments (or shallmillens, as her people call them). Easton comes into focus from a black silhouette of her head against a stark white backdrop (apt echoes of Bergman's Persona). A soft-focus head shot dissolves into Ms. Easton leaning against some kind of prop box, mirrored on the other side of the box by her animus, or anima, or some androgynous harlequin mixture of both. Not that I'm suggesting anything.

As the overture comes to a close, the camera closes in on Ms. Easton pouting for the camera and attempting to look soulful and amorous underneath the volumes of 80's makeup; then she breaks out of character and asks somebody in the booth "is tha' akae?" Looking for approval. Over the studio intercom an unseen techinician tells her there was a glitch and they'll have to make some adjustments before they can continue with the production.



Ms. Easton then wanders through NBC back-stages killing time when she happens upon The Tonight Show set. A tarp is draped over the guest chairs but Johnny Carson's desk is open. Sheena takes Carson's chair and sets up the framing device for the rest of Act One, where she imagines herself a talk-show host. She interviews herself, surveying her career from the relatively subtle makeup of "Morning train" to today (then, 1983), never imagining the makeup she has in store. She also invites guest stars, including Al Jarreau and, naturally, Kenny Rogers, who joins her in a duet of "We've got tonight" in which you are forced to imagine that Ms. Easton would romp (rommie, v. to rumble, to beat. to stir violently) in the hay with that grey-haired beast simply because he's there.

It's when Ms. Easton takes her seat at Johnny Carson's chair that Act One begins to remind one of Werner Herzong's Grizzly Man. The documentary shows copious footage of the video Timothy Treadwell made in the wilderness as he tried to live with bears, but despite the magnificent natural backdrops and the danger we knew was coming, his tone struck me as that of a child putting on a private show in their bedroom. Ms. Easton put on that show for us in what indeed was only the first act of her career. It's a keeper.

That's No Ladies of the House, That's My Wife!

The Hallmark Channel takes pride in providing “quality family programming,” a welcome antidote to the age of irony. But if you scratch the belly of their latest feel-good movie, you’ll find a barely disguised contempt for the very audience they want to reach.

Ladies of the House is an ensemble piece of no small complexity. In a cinematic tradition that reaches from Stagecoach to The Jane Austen Book Club, characters from diverse backgrounds - in this case, from middle to upper class - come together to meet a common goal, and learn something about themselves in the process. The ladies, Rose (Florence Henderson), Elizabeth (Donna Mills), and Birdie (Pam Grier), are led house-ward by their pastor, who calls a meeting of his best donors and asks them to give not their money but their time - and their hearts. Their charge: to fix up a run-down house to raise funds for the church’s day care center.


Florence Henderson has long been an icon of family entertainment, but her activities outside the Bunch have frequently revealed a sensuous side. Who can forget the sultry chanteuse-in-black whose “That Old Black Magic” brought sexy back to The Paul Lynde Halloween Special? What Brady Bunch-admiring pre-teen did not blush when she took off her blouse for Robert Reed in a very very special episode of The Love Boat? Now in her golden years, Henderson still keeps a touch of vixen underneath layers of pancake makeup, and lets it shine straight through her characterization of Rose. She takes a line like “I think an older body is more interesting than a younger one” and embraces not only the words but herself, literally, caressing her torso as she coos, perhaps at the memory of a very special cruise. Rose’s marriage to Frank (Lance Henriksen) is the most nurturing of the ladies of the house, and the best relationship for a Baskin Robbins product placement — which makes their ultimate fate that much more bittersweet.

Pam Grier has come a long way since Coffy and Jackie Brown, and her Birdie fully laments the salad days - “I used to have tone and muscle!” As the movie opens, she celebrates the retirement of her husband Stan (Richard Roundtree). He worked long and hard towards days which he thought he’d be spending with his wife, but now that he’s retired he finds Birdie thoroughly absorbed in a new project. Birdie also happens to be a textbook example of what I call “get-downism”, as she not only teaches her white sisters to get down with the rap “buy it fix it sell it!” but goes so far as to coax out of a boom box the rousing sheet-rock-laying groove “Get on down.”

With Elizabeth, Donna Mills plays to her prime time strength: the spoiled rich girl. But this time she’s got a heart of gold. Her wealthy husband Richard (Gordon Thomson) gives her everything but love and respect. Elizabeth has the farthest to go to find herself, and designer dresses soon give way to flannel shirts and jeans - she even trims down her manicure! Alone among the ladies’ husbands, Richard does not encourage or support Elizabeth’s efforts. In fact he treats her like an idiot who doesn’t know a hammer from a handsaw.

Therein lies the problem with the film. Richard’s estimation of his wife is exactly the filmmakers’s estimation of the Ladies — they’re not called Women, they’re called Ladies. As the women struggle with their assignment, we’re treated to scenes of infantilized women who can barely take care of themselves. Sure they learn and grow into their roles and find a kindly Latino hardware store salesman who treats them with respect, unlike the burly white permit office clerk who laughs them off when they ask for help. But when it comes time for the final exam, Birdie enlists the help of a strong (but soft-spoken) African-American to softly browbeat the burly permit clerk into scheduling the inspection. Sisters doing it for themselves? Not if the filmmakers can help it. Ladies of the House promises empowerment, but if the inner strength of the lead actresses finally evokes great pride in their accomplishment, it’s no thanks to the script. See the Hallmark Channel Original Movie Ladies of the House, premiering Saturday, October 18 (9/8c).