ADMIRATION: Saw Adaptation last night at the new Bridge "cinema de lux" theatre in University City -- which, in and of itself, merits comment at some point, but not now.

There is much to admire about Adaptation -- the inventiveness of the script, the performances, and just the sheer technical achievement of getting two Nicholas Cages into the same frame. This is a terrific concept for a movie -- a movie that both attacks and consciously adheres to the conventions of Hollywood filmmaking, showing why certain stories are both unadaptable to narrative filmmaking yet adapting this one just the same, decrying the inability of a movie to convey cinematically the sheer beauty of an orchid while nevertheless finding a way to celebrate it.

It is, on one level, a delicious mobius strip. But that's its problem as well -- I was so enraptured by the movie-within-and-above-the-movie that I was seeing that I was unable to connect on any emotional level with the characters within the movie. The whole enterprise left me cold. I just didn't care about what I was seeing, because I was too busy deconstructing its own self-deconstruction. I was anticipating its own moves even before the script called your attention to it -- the level of self-referentialism almost forbids you from making any other kind of attachment to the movie but a purely intellectual one.

Being John Malkovich, the last film by the Spike Jonze/Charlie Kaufman duo, was also a colossal mindfuck, but it was one of a different sort: its discursions on the nature of identity had a depth and feeling to them that this movie didn't. You cared about the characters in that film, and you wanted to see how things ended up -- because, unlike Adaptation, the movie allowed you to lose yourself in the cinematic experience as opposed to making you self-conscious and feel complicit in the act of watching an artificial creation adapted, more-or-less, from a real-life book.

Adaptation shreds the wall between truth and fiction. It will likely make you question any movie you see from this point forward that it alleged to have a basis in reality, and will help you see the narrative conventions being used to make you care about the characters and give you the emotional reactions that a good movie does. Real life just isn't structured the way satisfying fiction or film is, which isn't to say that it's not interesting: of course it is, and the movie makes a big point of saying this. It recognizes the futility of just trying to make a nice movie about flowers, so instead it makes one about the futility of making a nice movie about flowers, only it does so by, well, I can't give away the third act. That's not fair. But I can say that its way of calling attention to itself puts the viewer on an impossible tightrope. Either you passively watch the movie oblivious to everything it's underlining in terms of its adherence to formal conventions, and enjoy it for the goofy, unexpected romp which follows; or you remain cognizant of all that and appreciate the movie, but never escape from the experience of knowing that You Are Watching A Movie.

I mean, gosh, it's all really interesting. It really is. I admired the heck out of what they were trying to do here. It just didn't work completely for me -- or, maybe, it did, and I responded in exactly the way it was intended. Who knows?

Would you like to know more? I can only commend to you Janet Malcolm's book The Crime of Sheila McGouch, about the impossibility of arranging real-life narratives to be courtroom-plausible. It's an absolute favorite of mine, and if you find this stuff interesting, start there.

PILING ON: I'm probably going to hell for this, a hell in which I'll have to watch this movie, but, okay, here's Part III:

Philadelphia Inquirer: The result is an epic turkey, in a league with this year's Swept Away, that must be seen to be believed. . . . Concentrating on the music instead of the dialogue gave me time to ruminate on why the gentle, rubber-faced comic felt compelled to play a puppet-boy who constantly lies and is constantly forgiven. Was his purpose in adapting this classic Italian tale to make a parable about the infantile behavior of moviemakers?

Newark Star-Ledger: Yes, Mommy, I know why "Pinocchio's" nose is growing. But why is he going bald? The beloved Roberto Benigni pushes his fortuna too far with a live-action adaptation likely to disperse his American following as quickly as "Life is Beautiful" recruited it. It's not pretty to see a grown man cry, and whimper and whine and simper, even if he's playing a madcap puppet idiotically described by everyone as resembling a little boy. And especially not a sallow, balding, desiccated fellow inching into late-middle age. . . . Maybe there's an unreported Italian tradition of employing long-in-the-tooth comedians as Pinocchio, akin to casting small, dynamic women as Peter Pan. If there is no such tradition, this movie won't start one.

San Francisco Chronicle: "Pinocchio" is punishment for the moviegoer. Given that Miramax made a killing off Benigni's "Life Is Beautiful," the studio's dumping of "Pinocchio" may seem shabby and ungrateful. After seeing the movie, however, its decision is clearly the kindest possible move, short of shelving the movie altogether.

In the interest of equal time, if anyone finds a favorable review, please know that I will run it. I owe Benigni that much.

And then nothing turned itself inside-out: Tonight on Larry King Live -- Larry King and James Lipton, host of Bravo's Inside the Actor's Studio, compete in the finals of the Ass-Kisser Of The Year tournament. 2001's winner, Vanity Fair's Dominick Dunne, will be on hand to award the trophy.

edited to add: Here's the transcript. In addition to kissing each other's asses, look at the Double Smoochy they put on Robin Williams here:

KING: Back to Robin Williams. There are critics -- and I guess you read them -- who seem to be angry at him for doing movies, like, where he plays the good doctor or the sad movie or the prison camp in the Holocaust. Do you criticize him for doing that? Sentimental...

LIPTON: I criticize those critics. The reason being that they're doing one of the worst things that ever can be done to an actor, which is to say, Look, you do what we like you to do or else. Cary Grant spent an entire career being light-hearted and suscient and a wonderful leading man. He tried once in his career to do a serious part and they excoriated him and he never went back to it the rest of his career.

KING: Brando told me the best ones -- actors are risk takers. They will take the shot.

LIPTON: Absolutely.

KING: Right?

LIPTON: Yes.

MORE ON PINOCCHIO: As promised. No, it doesn't get any better:

Associated Press: Apparently unhappy with his efforts to dub his character into English with his own voice, Benigni fired himself at the last minute and hired American actor Breckin Meyer, whose voice work as Pinocchio takes the form of a nattering, whiny, supremely annoying monologue. He talks to himself frequently, but even when he's talking to someone else he sounds like he's the only one in the room.

Why did Benigni think this was a good idea? Beyond that, why did he think anything about his deadly live-action version of "Pinocchio" was a good idea? Using the creative freedom afforded to him by "Life is Beautiful," Benigni has massacred a children's classic

Baltimore Sun: For one thing, there's Benigni in the title role. It is very hard to accept as a child a man of 50 who does nothing to hide his receding hairline or his height. It's also tough to accept him as a puppet: There is nothing especially puppetlike in his appearance or in the way he moves. Couldn't Benigni, a gifted clown elsewhere, at least have drawn a couple of lines down the sides of his mouth to indicate a hinge? Or something?

Fort Worth Star-Telegram: Here's a simple rule for Oscar-winning actors: If you're going to make yourself look like a complete idiot for a movie, you should at least get a few laughs for your trouble. Roberto Benigni, in his little clown's pajamas and his little cone hat, certainly looks like an idiot in his new live-action version of Pinocchio. He does not, however, get any laughs.

The Globe And Mail: [A] Pinocchio with 5-o'clock shadow and tufts of arm hair poking out from under the sleeves of his puppet costume [] borders on creepy.... For grownup Canadian viewers who prefer watching their foreign films with subtitles, the dubbed version of Pinocchio also presents the annoying distraction of using well-known voices, namely, Glenn Close (the Blue Fairy), Regis Philbin (the Ringmaster) and John Cleese (the Cricket). It was hilarious hearing Cleese's voice as a gorilla in Disney's live-action comedy George of the Jungle, but it is decidedly odd -- and not in an amusing Monty Python way -- hearing his familiar British cadence emanating from a balding Italian actor with antennae on his head.

If there's more, I'll keep 'em coming.

CORRECTION: A reader points out that Woodrow Wilson was born in Virginia. Also, Missouri, home of Harry Truman, kinda-sorta-seceded -- but not really, and I don't really see Missouri -- or Truman -- as Southern. Your mileage may vary.

GEORGE ALLEN, HERE'S YOUR SISTER SOULJAH MOMENT: The Sons of Confederate Veterans have announced their opposition to a statue of Abraham Lincoln and his son Tad to be dedicated in April 2003 at the Civil War Vistors Center in Richmond, VA. Lincoln and his son had visited the city days before the war's end, and the Richmond-based United States Historical Society felt it was worth commemorating.

According to the AP dispatch, "The Sons of Confederate Veterans view the Lincoln statue as "a slap in the face of a lot of brave men and women who went through four years of unbelievable hell fighting an invasion of Virginia led by President Lincoln," Brag Bowling, the SCV Virginia commander, said Thursday."

Or, if you look at SouthernCaucus.org, home of the Dixie Daily News, we see a link to the news item, with the description: "A Statue of Lincoln To Be Placed in Richmond - How disgusting and maybe next we will have one of Sherman in Atlanta or of Hitler in Tel Aviv. We urge Southerners to organize, e-mail the sponsors to stop this heritage and cultural outrage!" Or, via the same website, this cartoon for more on what they think about Lincoln.

Why all the outrage? According to Civil War scholar Edward C. Smith, director of the American Studies program at American University, "To the best of my knowledge there is no public statuary that commemorates Lincoln anywhere in the South. Therefore, the only image that Southerners see of Lincoln is on our national currency: the one cent penny and the five dollar bill."

Smith may have inadvertantly hit the nail on the head two years ago in a speech supporting the concept of a Lincoln statue in Richmond:

At some point in time, and it still may be too soon, a sculptured statue of Lincoln should be erected in Richmond. If that should ever happen, the war would finally be over.

For most of us, of course, the war ended in April 1865. And if there are still people walking around claiming that it's not really over -- not after Reconstruction, not after Brown v. Board of Education, not after the civil rights movement and the laws passed in the 1960s, not after Lyndon Johnson (the first Southerner elected President since Zachary Taylor in 1848) spearheaded the passage of those laws from the Senate and the Presidency, not even after South Carolina's multiracial Hootie and the Blowfish won the 1996 Grammys for Best New Artist and Best Pop Vocal Performance (Duo or Group) . . . well, I don't know that a statue's going to make everyone all hunky and dory all of a sudden, but it's a necessary start. It will be interesting to see how the South's conservative politicians line up on this issue, whether pro-statue, against, or, as I'd expect, silent.

The current UPI article has a bit more on Smith and this controversy.

SHOWGIRLS? IS IT THAT BAD? Fans of this website (yes, all three of you) know that I'm a big fan of bad reviews. Well, god bless Roberto Benigni, because his Pinocchio was quietly dropped into theaters yesterday, and the reviews are trickling in:

The New York Times: The voice-overs [ ] are so sloppy you might feel as if you're watching a 1978 Hong Kong action picture: the dubbed mouths of the Italian cast are probably still moving an hour after the film is over... I guess Geppetto doesn't get out much, because his idea of a child is a 40-ish man with a receding hairline, pancake makeup and 5 o'clock shadow: the Pinocchio he fashions is Mr. Benigni. . . . a picture that is mostly a desert of strangeness, a movie so bad that it quickly enters the pantheon of wreckage that includes "Battlefield Earth" and "Showgirls."

Mr. Benigni's decision [to play Pinocchio] makes this "Pinocchio" as believable as Diana Ross playing Dorothy in "The Wiz" or Matthew McConaughey portraying a college graduate in "Contact".

New York Observer: This gluttonous overdose of whimsy cries out for animation, but when the nursery-book action is played out by real people in tacky costumes from a Macy’s parade, it loses its magic fast. It’s unusual to see so many people making fools of themselves at the same time. Lethal for kids and an unspeakable insult to adults, this unreleasable fiasco is a torture for all.

Slant Magazine: It's like watching an ass put on a blue suit--there's still an ass underneath.

As more reviews come, I'll try to post them here.